Opinion ID: 2621193
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Evidence relating to the motive for the uncharged murder of Glenna

Text: Defendant contends that evidence that he received life insurance proceeds after Glenna died should have been excluded under the collateral estoppel doctrine. He claims violations of the federal constitutional protection against being placed twice in jeopardy and of his federal constitutional right to a fair trial and a reliable verdict. At trial, defendant made an in limine motion to exclude evidence regarding the payment defendant had received as the beneficiary of Glenna's life insurance policy. He contended the evidence should be excluded under the doctrine of collateral estoppel because, on motion of the defense pursuant to section 1118.1, the court entered a not true finding as to the special circumstance alleging murder for financial gain. In support, he offered one page from the clerk's transcript of that triala minute order indicating the granting of the section 1118.1 motion as to that special circumstance allegation. The trial court in the present case determined that although the trial court in the Monterey County trial had found the evidence presented in that trial insufficient to support a true finding that the murder of Glenna had been undertaken for financial gain, that ruling did not preclude the introduction of evidence relating to defendant's motive for killing Glenna in the separate trial for the murders of Joyce and Martha. Under the collateral estoppel doctrine, which is a component of the Fifth Amendment's double jeopardy clause ( People v. Santamaria (1994) 8 Cal.4th 903, 912, fn. 3, 35 Cal.Rptr.2d 624, 884 P.2d 81), when an issue of ultimate fact has once been determined by a valid and final judgment, that issue cannot again be litigated between the same parties in any future lawsuit. ( Ashe v. Swenson (1970) 397 U.S. 436, 443, 90 S.Ct. 1189, 25 L.Ed.2d 469.) In the present case, however, defendant was not on trial for the murder of Glenna, and the question whether defendant murdered her for financial gain within the meaning of section 190.2, subdivision (a)(1), was not an issue of ultimate fact to be determined in the present proceeding. We observe that the collateral estoppel doctrine does not prohibit the admission of evidence that has been introduced in a trial resulting in an acquittal from being admitted for all purposes at a subsequent proceeding. As the United States Supreme Court declared in Doubling v. United States (1990) 493 U.S. 342, 348, 110 S.Ct. 668, 107 L.Ed.2d 708, the doctrine does not exclude in all circumstances ... relevant and probative evidence that is otherwise admissible ... simply because it relates to alleged criminal conduct for which a defendant has been acquitted. The Dowling case is instructive because, like the present case, it involved evidence of uncharged crimes. The defendant in Dowling had been acquitted of burglary and attempted robbery, but evidence relating to those charges nonetheless was introduced against him in a subsequent prosecution for a different robbery. The evidence of the uncharged crime was relevant to establish the defendant's modus operandi. Introduction of such evidence did not violate the collateral estoppel doctrine, because the prior acquittal did not determine an ultimate issue in the present case. (Id. at p. 348, 110 S.Ct. 668.) Because in the subsequent trial the prosecution was not required to establish beyond a reasonable doubt the defendant's identity as the robber in the uncharged crime involved in the prior trial, collateral estoppel principles did not bar introduction of that evidence in the subsequent unrelated trial. Also instructive is this court's decision in People v. Santamaria, supra, 8 Cal.4th 903, 35 Cal.Rptr.2d 624, 884 P.2d 81. In that case we determined that (assuming the doctrine of collateral estoppel applied to retrial of the same case) a prior not true finding on an allegation that a defendant had used the knife in connection with a murder did not, at a subsequent retrial for the murder, bar evidence establishing the defendant's use of the knife. We explained: [T]he jury's not true finding on the enhancement allegation does not mean defendant did not use the knife, only that there was a reasonable doubt that he did. In Ashe [ v. Swenson, supra, 397 U.S. 436, 90 S.Ct. 1189, 25 L.Ed.2d 469], the verdict, viewed realistically, showed the jury had a reasonable doubt as to the defendant's identity as the robber. That doubt necessarily precluded conviction of the robbery charge. But the same doubt as to the knife use did not preclude a murder conviction here, although it did mandate a not true enhancement finding, [¶] Evidence that defendant personally used a knife was highly relevant to show that he was guilty of murder as that offense is defined by statute. That evidence, together with the evidence that if he did not use a knife, he was guilty as the aider and abettor, combined to permit the murder conviction. But the specific fact of personal use does not have to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt to find defendant guilty of murder. Hence, personal use is not an `ultimate fact' of murder. ( People v. Santamaria, supra, 8 Cal.4th at p. 922, 35 Cal.Rptr.2d 624, 884 P.2d 81, italics omitted.) Examining the same case, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed: In this case, the State failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the ultimate fact that Santamaria used a knife for the weapon enhancement in the first trial. However, to convict him of murder under California law, the State is not required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Santamaria used a knife. [Citation.] Therefore, the use of a knife is not an ultimate fact for the retrial, and the State cannot be precluded from presenting evidence that Santamaria stabbed the victim. ( Santamaria v. Horsley (9th Cir.1998) 133 F.3d 1242, 1247; see also People v. Memro (1995) 11 Cal.4th 786, 821-822, 47 Cal. Rptr.2d 219, 905 P.2d 1305 [the trier of fact's finding at a prior trial that a felony-murder special circumstance was not true did not collaterally estop the retrial of the murder charge on a felony-murder theory].) As with the not true finding on the knife-use allegation in Santamaria, and the felony-murder allegation in Memro, the not true finding on the murder for financial gain special-circumstance allegation in the trial for Glenna's murder merely established that the state in the prior proceeding had been unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant had murdered Glenna for financial gain as charged in the murder for financial gain special circumstance. In the present case, however, the prosecution was not required to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt or, indeed, to prove it at all. Defendant claims that special circumstance allegations necessarily are part of the prosecutor's burden of proof in a capital case, unlike the personal use of a knife in a prosecution for murder. He contends that determination of a special circumstance is an ultimate fact and that the financial-gain special-circumstance allegation relating to the murder of Glenna could not be relitigated. His contention is unpersuasive, because although the financial-gain special-circumstance allegation formed part of the prosecutor's burden of proof in the trial for the murder of Glenna, there was no special circumstance allegation in the present case that defendant had murdered Glenna for financial gain. Such an allegation relating to the murder of Glenna was not charged and was not part of the prosecutor's burden of proof at the guilt phase in the present case and, indeed, it was not being relitigated at all in this proceeding. Defendant relies upon Bullington v. Missouri (1981) 451 U.S. 430, 101 S.Ct. 1852, 68 L.Ed.2d 270 in support of his claim that once a special circumstance allegation is found not true, it may not be retried. The court in Bullington determined on double jeopardy grounds that the prosecution could not seek the death penalty on retrial of a case in which the jury originally had imposed a life sentence. Under Missouri law, the prosecution was required to prove certain facts beyond a reasonable doubt at the penalty hearing, and the jury's penalty determination had the hallmarks of the trial on guilt or innocence. ( Bullington v. Missouri, supra, 451 U.S. at p. 439, 101 S.Ct. 1852.) Accordingly, the defendant could not be subject to retrial as to penalty after the trial court granted his motion for new trial on the basis of guilt phase error. The Bullington case does not assist defendant's present claim, because the court in that case did not determine that in a trial for different capital crimes, evidence regarding a crime of which the defendant was convicted but for which the death penalty was not imposed could not be admitted. The case merely established that factual findings favorable to the defendant made at the penalty phase of a capital trial barred retrying the penalty determination in that case. The Bullington case does not stand for the proposition that evidence relevant to a special circumstance allegation that was found not trueand also relevant to the underlying murder, of which a defendant was convictedcannot be admitted for the purpose of establishing guilt of different crimes in a separate trial. [9] Defendant maintains, however, that it was inherently unfair to admit evidence of financial gain related to the murder of Glenna after the not true finding on the financial-gain special-circumstance allegation in the trial for Glenna's murder. He continues: Although, technically appellant was not being tried a second time for Glenna's murder, the introduction of the Glenna financial gain evidence had that effect. The prosecution's sole purpose for introducing financial gain evidence from appellant's Monterey County trial [involving Glenna's murder] into appellant's Kern County case was to support the prosecution's theory that Joyce was murdered, rather than died of natural causes, and that the financial gain special circumstance charged in Count II, Martha's homicide, was true. Defendant's own argument rebuts the claim that the introduction of evidence of financial gain constituted a retrial of the charge involving the murder of Glenna. The evidence was admitted to establish facts regarding the murders of Joyce and Martha, not to relitigate defendant's responsibility for murdering Glenna for the purpose of financial gain. Defendant claims that when, in the present case, the jury learned that defendant had received a sentence of life without possibility of parole for Glenna's murder, they decided to punish him more severely. This claim is speculative and is unrelated to defendant's claim that the evidence at the trial for Glenna's murder should have been excluded at the guilt phase. We observe additionally that this argument was not raised below as a basis for excluding the evidence at the guilt phase, and is waived on appeal. (See People v. Ashmus, supra, 54 Cal.3d at p. 973, fn. 10, 2 Cal.Rptr.2d 112, 820 P.2d 214.) Defendant objects to the manner in which the prosecutor employed evidence of defendant's financial motivation to kill Glenna. Defendant refers to the prosecutor's use of this evidence to support the claim that defendant also murdered Joyce and Martha in part for financial reasons. Defendant contends that the evidence was irrelevant to the charge that defendant murdered Joyce, because no financial gain special circumstance was alleged as to her. This claim is not persuasive, because evidence of defendant's motive for killing Joyce was relevant to the charge that defendant had murdered her, even without a financial gain special circumstance. He makes the additional claim that the evidence regarding defendant's receipt of life insurance proceeds on Glenna's death lent undue weight to the weak evidence that defendant killed Martha for financial gain. Defendant's claim goes to the weight, and not to the admissibility, of the evidence. As long as the evidence properly was admitted, as we have determined it was, the weight to be accorded the evidence was for the jury to decide. Defendant also notes that the jury was not instructed at the guilt phase of the present case that the financial-gain special-circumstance allegation in the trial for Glenna's murder had been found not true. Defendant did not request such an instruction and, indeed, made every effort not to disclose to the jury that he had been tried for Glenna's murder. An instruction that the special circumstance allegation that he had murdered Glenna for financial gain had been found not true could give rise to an inference that, despite the not true finding on the special circumstance allegation, he previously had been tried and convicted of the murder of Glenna. Because of the potential for prejudice arising from the instruction which defendant now claims should have been given, no sua sponte duty to give such an instruction should be imposed. (See § 190.1, subd. (b) [providing for trial of a prior murder conviction special-circumstance allegation only after a guilty verdict has been reached on the charged crimes].) Defendant claims that as part of the guaranty against cruel and unusual punishment provided by the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution, any evidence is unreliable that relates to a crime as to which the defendant has been acquitted. He cites in support Beck v. Alabama (1980) 447 U.S. 625, 100 S.Ct. 2382, 65 L.Ed.2d 392. That opinion does not support his claim. In Beck, the high court disapproved a state rule limited to capital cases, that prohibited the fact finder from considering a lesser included offense within the capital charge, thereby forcing an all-or-nothing choice between the death penalty and acquittal. (Id. at p. 637, 100 S.Ct. 2382; see also People v. Waidla, supra, 22 Cal.4th at p. 736, fn. 15, 94 Cal.Rptr.2d 396, 996 P.2d 46; People v. Breverman (1998) 19 Cal.4th 142, 166-167, 77 Cal.Rptr.2d 870, 960 P.2d 1094.) Although the high court in that case observed that it has invalidated procedural rules that tended to diminish the reliability of the sentencing determination and of the guilt determination ( Beck v. Alabama, supra, 447 U.S. at p. 638, 100 S.Ct. 2382), defendant has not produced any authority suggesting that otherwise admissible evidence relating to an allegation found not true necessarily must be excluded as unreliable at the guilt phase of a capital trial for a different crime. (See People v. Jenkins, supra, 22 Cal.4th at p. 1044, 95 Cal. Rptr.2d 377, 997 P.2d 1044 [discussing the scope of the reliability requirement under the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution].)