Opinion ID: 2508357
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Inconsistent Factual Theories

Text: Petitioners were jointly charged with Viivi Piirisild's murder, but their cases were severed after Sakarias was found incompetent to stand trial. ( Waidla, supra, 22 Cal.4th at p. 704, 94 Cal.Rptr.2d 396, 996 P.2d 46.) Waidla's jury trial began with the prosecution's opening statement on October 24, 1990; penalty arguments were made on January 2, 1991. Sakarias's trial began on September 30, 1991, with penalty arguments on October 30, 1991. As reflected in the summary above, the evidence at petitioners' trials, taken as a whole, strongly suggests Waidla (who first wielded the hatchet, according to both petitioners' statements) struck the first, antemortem blow with the hatchet blade in the entryway, while Sakarias (who admitted doing so) inflicted the two post- or perimortem chopping wounds in the bedroom. (There was no evidence in either trial to suggest the perpetrators switched weapons during the initial attack.) But the prosecutor, Ipsen, did not argue at either trial the version of the attack best supported by all the evidence. Instead, at each defendant's trial he maintained the defendant on trial had inflicted all the chopping wounds. In Waidla's trial, Ipsen introduced Waidla's admission that he, rather than Sakarias, had initially used the hatchet against Viivi Piirisild. (Sakarias's confession to police, in which he admitted striking two blows with the hatchet in the bedroom, was not introduced at Waidla's trial.) Although Waidla only admitted hitting Viivi with the back of the hatchet, Ipsen argued the jury should find Waidla actually used the hatchet throughout, choosing ... the more devastating of the instruments, while Sakarias accept[ed] the knife, the lesser implement. With the hatchet, Ipsen argued, Waidla first inflicted the blunt force injuries, then, turning the hatchet blade so it was more effective ... [he] was now able to chop through the top of her skull. Ipsen suggested Waidla simply did not want to acknowledge his role in the attack, his repeated striking of Viivi Piirisild, and swinging with the sharp end of the hatchet ... until she was dead. He emphasized the extended and repeated efforts both assailants made to ensure Viivi's death, as Mr. Waidla indicated, himself with the hatchet, Mr. Sakarias who came up later with the knife. Waidla's use of the hatchet blade continued, Ipsen argued, even after Viivi was dead: `[S]he's alive, she's alive, she's alive.' Sharp end, `she's dead,' and then further blows indicating further blows were struck after she was dead, the non-hemorrhagic chop wounds to the head. Having elicited, in the Waidla trial, the opinion of Dr. James Ribe, the medical examiner, that the abrasion on Viivi's lower back was incurred postmortem, Ipsen emphasized that the initial attack in the living room was fatal: At the point that she was dragged into the back room, we know that Viivi Piirisild was already dead by the facts as the coroner testified. So, we know it was in that front room that the attack occurred, and that Viivi Piirisild was bludgeoned, chopped and stabbed until life left her body. Finally, in penalty argument, Ipsen urged a death sentence, in part because Waidla, after hitting Viivi repeatedly with the hatchet's blunt end, chose to change the angle of the blade.... Although he felt her head and her flesh against the back of his hatchet numerous times, he knew his mission wasn't accomplished, and that's when he changed and switched and used the sharp edge of the hatchet to give that death blow. In Sakarias's trial, the prosecutor asked the medical examiner, Dr. Ribe, about each stabbing, chopping, or blunt force injury shown in the autopsy photographs, in many instances asking whether the wounds were ante- or postmortem, but he did not examine Dr. Ribe about the lower back abrasion at all. He thus avoided eliciting Dr. Ribe's opinion, expressed in Waidla's earlier trial, that the abrasion had occurred after death and could have been caused by dragging Viivi's body along the carpeted hallway to the bedroom. Due to this omission, no evidence was before Sakarias's jury that Viivi Piirisild was dead by the time Sakarias, as he admitted, struck her with the hatchet in the bedroom. The prosecutor was thus able to, and did, argue that Sakarias had, in the bedroom, inflicted all three chopping injuries, including the first, antemortem one. Thus Ipsen, in his guilt phase argument, told the jury that Sakarias, in the bedroom, inflicted three ... sharp hatchet wounds to the top of Viivi's head with a tremendous force .... [¶] ... [¶] We know that there are in fact three hatchet wounds; the first penetrating the top of the skull, and I know it was the first because it was a hemorrhagic wound, the one in the hairline, the one that chopped the top of her head completely off with the exception of some of the scalp that kept it completely on. [¶] We know that when it's hemorrhagic it means that Viivi, whether conscious or not, still suffered that blow while alive, and we know that the last two in the forehead area being non-hemorrhagic were at a time when her body had ceased to live, or unfortunately actually possibly that the blood flow was not great enough to cause hemorrhage. [¶] ... [¶] Again, Mr. Sakarias indicates he believes he hit her two times with the hatchet when he used the hatchet. Again, by the evidence, he was off by only one blow. In the penalty phase argument at Sakarias's trial, the prosecutor again portrayed Sakarias as having inflicted the antemortem hatchet-blade wound, which he characterized as finally causing Viivi's death. Sakarias's participation in the crime could not be considered minor, Ipsen argued; he was as involved in the murder of Viivi Piirisild as one could ask, swinging what I suggest were the blows that actually ended her life. Referring to Sakarias in the second person, Ipsen argued that if, after the attack in the living room, you had called 911, realizing what you had done and attempted to save her life, ... perhaps you would deserve the pity, the sympathy, perhaps the scales of justice would lean in your direction. [¶] ... [¶] If, when you walked back to the back room with that hatchet and thought Viivi Piirisild is still alive, and you must have, otherwise you wouldn't have gone back there with that hatchet, and if you just simply didn't chop the top of her head off, as the evidence indicated you did in that back room, thus finally ending her life. In addition to the prosecutorial arguments just recited, petitioners also complain of inconsistency in the prosecutor's penalty phase arguments relating to domination. (See Pen.Code, § 190.3, factor (g) [substantial domination by another may be considered in mitigation].) At Waidla's trial, Ipsen argued Waidla is not one who is dominated by another, but instead the facts indicate that he was the dominate [ sic ] person between himself and Mr. Sakarias, that he was the planner, he was the one who knew of the Piirisild home and knew of the facts surrounding the burglary, the robbery of Mrs. Piirisild. At Sakarias's trial, in contrast, Ipsen argued Sakarias was in no way dominated by Waidla: They were separate individuals joined by a common plan, a common hatred, common goals. Petitioners' actions in killing Viivi and escaping were those of a partnership like a right hand and a left hand, with absolutely no evidence of domination.