Opinion ID: 2551468
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 14

Heading: Stabbing in Soledad Prison in 1982

Text: Alex Macugay testified that he was a trusty in a high security unit of Soledad State Prison on November 30, 1982. There was antipathy between him, a northerner, and the southern group of Mexican inmates, and he tried to avoid them. Ayala was in the southern group. Macugay paused to talk with other inmates in a cell, and Ayala started stabbing him from behind with a shank. Macugay testified in essence that he knew of no reason for Ayala to feel hostility toward him personally. The attack ended when a guard opened fire with birdshot, wounding Macugay and defendant, after which defendant slipped his shank under some bleachers. Correctional Officer Primitivo Castro and Department of Corrections Lieutenant Russell Pope confirmed Macugay's testimony. Castro testified that he had to shoot defendant in the back with birdshot to get him to stop stabbing Macugay.
Defendant did not testify at the penalty phase, but he called a large number of witnesses. In her opening statement, defense counsel conceded the validity of the felony convictions defendant had suffered, and she also conceded that he robbed the Pantry clothing store in 1972 and stabbed several inmates as alleged in the prosecution's case. Counsel denied, however, that defendant killed John Casas. As for the other crimes, she told the jury that she would place them in the context of prison life, and particularly of prison gangs' operations. (The parties had agreed at a sidebar conference that during the penalty phase they need no longer rely on euphemistic references to groups, but instead could ask witnesses explicit questions about prison gangs.) Counsel stated that in the main, the penalty phase defense would focus on defendant's character and background. Defendant was born into a world of violence, and he lived even as a young child in a world of violence. Counsel told the jurors in essence that she hoped they would see defendant as more complex than the cardboard figure the prosecution had created, and would decide his fate not based on a series of crimes, but looking at [him] squarely as a man, as a human being. Much of the defense strategy consisted of an effort to place defendant's violence in the context of the California prison system of the 1970's and 1980's. As shown by the testimony of Wallace Williams and Richard Christiansen, defendant raised this issue even before his own penalty phase case-in-chief. The defense began its presentation of evidence with the testimony of Royce Hamilton, who was a correctional officer at San Quentin Prison essentially from 1975 to 1979. Hamilton testified that San Quentin was suffused with extreme racial tension when he started his work there, and was in a state of lockdown because of recent murders. Stabbings occurred throughout 1975. The North Block management control unit defendant was confined in had an even higher rate of violence in 1977 than San Quentin's ultrahigh-security adjustment center unit. For safety reasons, inmates were segregated by race. Hamilton described the November 23, 1975, stabbing incident (see ante, 96 Cal. Rptr.2d at p. 725, 1 P.3d at p. 43) as a fracas involving defendant and other inmates who were African-American. He testified that defendant was slight of build at the time, and that he was a pleasant individual. He also testified in narrative form about the nature of prison life, and the forms of psychological pressure available to the guards to obtain information from inmates. On cross-examination, the prosecution established that Hamilton knew very little about the details of the stabbing incident. John Keith Irwin, a professor of sociology at San Francisco State University and a criminologist, testified as an expert in prison culture and conditions. (Irwin's expertise about prison drew in part from his own experiencehe had served a five-year term at Soledad State Prison for an armed robbery of which he was convicted in 1952.) In long sessions of direct and cross-examination, he provided the jury with a detailed history of California prison society over recent decadesof the informant's changing role and status, the rise and spread of prison gangs, and the creation and expansion of high security housing for inmates considered troublemakers. Irwin testified that in the 1970's inmates in high-security housing felt pressed to join gangs, and that in high security units, where race-based predation was the norm, preemptive and retaliatory violent acts were necessary to avoid being perceived as weak and thereafter preyed upon. Only the exceptional inmate would live in a high-security unit without being involved in an incident. He also testified that a federal court decision, apparently Toussaint v. McCarthy (N.D.Cal. 1984) 597 F.Supp. 1388, affirmed in part and reversed in part (9th Cir.1986) 801 F.2d 1080, concluded as a matter of law that conditions in defendant's high-security North Block unit were inhumane. (See 801 F.2d 1080, 1099, 1108.) [11] On the question of prison informants, he testified that prisoner informer information is very unreliable, though he later backtracked from that statement, acknowledging that much informant reporting is factually accurate. Similarly, Craig William Haney, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, testified as an expert regarding living conditions in prison, particularly those in San Quentin Prison during defendant's confinement there. (Apparently his expertise was not in dispute, and the trial court never made a ruling regarding the scope of it.) The essence of Haney's testimony was that defendant's incarceration in state prison amounted to a form of psychological torture. Haney testified that defendant was moved from San Quentin's adjustment center to its North Block about October 15, 1975, and thence back to the adjustment center following the November 23, 1975, fight (ante, 96 Cal.Rptr.2d at p. 725,1 P.3d at p. 43). In April of 1976 he was transferred to Chino State Prison, and in July 1976 he returned to various locations in San Quentin's high-security housing. In March of 1979 defendant received parole, and was released directly from high-security confinement. In December of that year, after violating parole, he was sent to Folsom State Prison in February of 1980 (where, according to evidence before the jury, he killed John Casas; see ante, 96 Cal.Rptr.2d at p. 725, 1 P.3d at p. 42). After the death of Casas defendant was again placed in high security housing, this time at Folsom, from which he was directly paroled in May of 1980. In March of 1981 he returned to prison for a short time, apparently was released again, and remained unconfined until early in 1982, at which point he returned to San Quentin's high-security housing again. He remained in such housing either in San Quentin or in Soledad State Prison until he was released on parole January 15, 1985, directly from San Quentin's North Block to the outside. In sum, he spent about eight of nine years in prison in especially restrictive confinement. Except for Chino's, Haney was familiar with conditions in the high-security housing units at the time of defendant's confinement in them. He had studied how these conditions of confinement were affecting the people that were confined there, ... the kinds of psychological changes that were taking place in them. Haney characterized the San Quentin North Block in which defendant lived as cavernous, odoriferous, dimly lit, oppressive, incredibly filthy, deafening, vermin infested, and racially tense. Each cell had the length and breadth of a king-sized bed, and inmates were often double-celled. They remained in their cells almost all the time. The overriding effect ... these conditions created in people was pain, which manifested itself in a tremendous amount of ... anger, frustration, even rage.... Defendant, according to Haney, spent 40 consecutive days in the San Quentin adjustment center's most severely confining subunit of quiet cells or strip cells. When given opportunities to be released from his quiet cell, he would utter insults and be kept there. Haney testified that because an inmate in a quiet cell would be totally isolated and essentially deprived of any sensory stimulus, a 40-day stint would be psychologically horrible. Haney also characterized Soledad State Prison as a school for gladiators in the early-mid 1970s, a prison whose reputation ... instilled fear in even experienced convicts. Defendant was imprisoned at Soledad from January 1974 to June 1975. On cross-examination, Haney acknowledged that he had not done any psychological testing of defendant. William Underwood, a retired California Youth Authority employee, testified as an expert in the operations of the state and local juvenile justice systems when defendant was under their supervision. It was his opinion that defendant had been treated harshly in the juvenile justice system, and that San Diego County's juvenile justice programs were tainted by inflexibility, indifference, and other forms of inadequacy. He also testified that defendant managed to obtain a high school diploma while a California Youth Authority ward, a rare accomplishment. His testimony also revealed, however, that defendant had an extensive history of alleged or established misconduct as a juvenile, including allegations of participating in an attack on a store employee. There was testimony that touched on defendant's relations with other prisoners. Raul Garcia, a Department of Corrections sergeant stationed at Avenal State Prison, testified that Glenn Albrecht (see ante, 96 Cal.Rptr.2d at p. 725, 1 P.3d at p. 42) was a leader among the northern Hispanics in that prison, and that he would naturally be hostile to southern inmates such as defendant. Correctional Officer David James Amaro testified that defendant worked for him in prison in 1981 as a tier tender, a position of responsibility, and fulfilled his duties properly. There was also testimony regarding defendant's background and character. Doris Virginia Stein, a retired teacher, taught sixth grade at Lincoln Acres Elementary School in National City in 1963. Defendant was a pupil. She testified that he was a very lovable boy, though he got into fights occasionally. He was a poor student, and was the butt of ethnic taunts from some classmates, most of whom were of Anglo background. Richard C. Cervantes, Ph.D., a licensed clinical psychologist, was designated an expert on stress experienced by Mexican-Americans. Having interviewed defendant and members of his family and reviewed his juvenile probation reports, Cervantes testified that defendant's family experienced an inordinate amount of violence and turmoil, particularly when his father, Rogelio Joe Ayala, had been drinking. Defendant's parents would physically battle each other, and he and his brother Hector would try to break up the fights. Rogelio Ayala would threaten defendant's mother, Rosa Saenz, with a knife (and she in turn once stabbed him), and would strike defendant and Hector with a stick. Rogelio Ayala's violence toward Rosa Saenz caused the parents to separate frequently. An intelligence quotient test administered when defendant was 12 years old indicated that he was of average intelligence. Cervantes further testified that in his late teens defendant began to abuse alcohol and barbiturates, and when about 17 years old he robbed a taxi driver, an offense for which he was sent to the California Youth Authority. Released about two years later, he resumed his consumption of barbiturates, though he also found work at General Dynamics Corporation. Barbara Moreno, defendant's sister, testified that defendant was a very caring brother when they were growing up. She also described their father's drunken attacks on their mother. She blamed defendant's conduct on his abuse of drugs, and testified that he has a daughter. His half sister, Marjorie Suarez, a schoolteacher in the Madera County hamlet of Coarsegold, called life in defendant's home chaotic. Ernestina Meyer, defendant's cousin, described his happy demeanor as a child. She described a knife attack by Rogelio Ayala on Rosa Saenz when defendant was about 16 years old. She ran to get help for Saenz and found defendant crying in his bedroom. Richard Raul Suarez, defendant's nephew, described him as a mentor and as compassionate. Rita Jenkins, the aunt of defendant's late wife and a veteran San Diego County probation officer, testified in essence that defendant desired the best for his young daughter, whom he had placed in the care of Jenkins and her husband. The Reverend Jackie Christopher Hilliard, a former correctional officer, had supervised defendant at San Quentin Prison. He described race-based abuse of inmates by prison staff in defendant's unit, and the harshness of life there, both for staff and inmates. He testified that defendant treated him with respect, and at one point demonstrated artistic talent with a well-rendered card congratulating him on his new baby. He testified that defendant had matured and deserved another chance at life. Geraldine Moses, a practitioner of Buddhism, testified that over the course of some three years she had become friends with defendant in the San Diego County Jail. She described him as a very caring individual who had gained self-awareness and undergone positive psychological change during the time of their acquaintance.
The prosecution read to the jury a letter that defendant sent to a friend in 1982 or 1983. He wrote that he was in the San Quentin Prison adjustment center but that it's no big thing for me, cuz I can do anytime they give me and more if I have to.... [T]his is all routine ... and after awhile it gets good.... It ain't all that bad here in the adjustment center cuz I got me a TV and radio so you [know] I'm jailing first class.
In closing argument, the prosecutor compared defendant to a lifelong terrorist and called him an executioner with a demonstrated inability to conform his conduct to moral and legal norms, in prison or outside. The death penalty was designed for the defendant. In her closing argument, defense counsel appealed to the jury for mercy, arguing that they could impose the lesser penalty even if they could not articulate a logical basis for it. But she also argued that the lesser penalty was logical and justified: that defendant would be severely punished by a life alone in a cell, and that the death penalty should be reserved for the worst murderers, a category that excluded him. She argued that his environment had limited his choices and that he had long inhabited a demimonde with different rules of conduct. She paraphrased the district court's factual findings in Toussaint v. McCarthy, supra, 597 F.Supp. 1388, regarding conditions in the high-security units of San Quentin Prison at the time of his imprisonment. She argued that the evidence suggested Alex Macugay attacked defendant at Soledad State Prison in 1982, rather than vice versa. She questioned the sufficiency of the evidence that he killed John Casas. And she argued that the presence of an unidentified fingerprint on the duct tape binding Ernesto Dominguez Mendez (ante, 96 Cal.Rptr.2d at p. 695, 1 P.3d at p. 15) created a lingering doubt about the circumstances of the three murders that justified a penalty less than death. Five days after counsel concluded her remarks the jury returned its verdict of death.