Opinion ID: 2633509
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: Admission of Evidence of Crimes Against Clarence Wissel

Text: Defendant contends the admission of evidence of his uncharged assault on Clarence Wissel, his ransacking of Wissel's house, and his theft of Wissel's property violated Evidence Code sections 352 and 1101 and deprived him of due process in violation of the United States and California Constitutions. We conclude the court did not err in admitting the evidence. On defendant's in limine motion to exclude the Wissel evidence, the trial court ruled the similarities between the charged homicide of Robert Miller and the uncharged assault on Wissel were not sufficiently distinctive to make the Wissel evidence admissible on the identity of Miller's killer, but that the Wissel evidence was admissible to show intent, motive, common design or plan. Before the evidence was presented, defendant renewed his objection in part, arguing that at the least the evidence should be in some manner sanitize[d] of inflammatory details. In the discussion that followed, the prosecutor agreed not to introduce evidence that a Medicare card was found inserted into Wissel's rectum (that evidence was ultimately introduced at the penalty phase) and that among defendant's identification cards found in his wallet at Wissel's house was one from the Department of Corrections. No other details discovered at the Wissel crime scene were excluded. The court instructed the jury twice on the limited admissibility of the Wissel evidence, once at its introduction and once in the overall guilt phase instructions. On both occasions, the court instructed that the evidence if believed was not to be considered as showing defendant's bad character or disposition to commit crimes, but only for the limited purpose of determining if it tends to show a characteristic method, plan or scheme similar to that used in the charged crime, the intent which is a necessary element of the crime charged, or a motive for the commission of the crime charged. Defendant argues the Wissel evidence was relevant only as character evidence, i.e., to show his propensity for crime, and hence was inadmissible under Evidence Code section 1101, subdivision (a), which generally bars admission of character evidence to prove conduct on a specific occasion. We disagree. The evidence was relevant for nonpropensity purposes, in particular to show defendant's motive and intent in attacking Miller, uses expressly permitted by Evidence Code section 1101, subdivision (b). (See People v. Kipp (1998) 18 Cal.4th 349, 369, 75 Cal.Rptr.2d 716, 956 P.2d 1169; People v. Ewoldt (1994) 7 Cal.4th 380, 393, 27 Cal.Rptr.2d 646, 867 P.2d 757.) Evidence of other crimes is admissible only if relevant to prove a material fact at issue, separate from criminal propensity. ( People v. Daniels (1991) 52 Cal.3d 815, 856, 277 Cal.Rptr. 122, 802 P.2d 906.) Motive, though not itself an ultimate fact put at issue by the charges or the defense in this case, was probative of two ultimate facts, intent and lack of justification. Viewed as motive evidence, the Wissel assault and robbery tended to prove both that defendant had the intent to rob Miller when he attacked him, an element of the charged robbery-murder special circumstance, and that defendant did not act in real or perceived self-defense. Both issues were central to the anticipated defense and were already in active dispute at the time the court ruled in limine on the Wissel evidence, for at the hearing on that motion defense counsel stated his expectation the trial evidence would put into question whether defendant went to the Mar Mac Manor with the intent of robbing Miller or only responded to Miller's attack on him. Similarly, in his opening statement, made before the prosecution put on its case-in-chief, defense counsel explained at length how the evidence would show his client stabbed Miller in self-defense, rather than in an attempt to rob him. Defendant's motive was thus important to two disputed material issues. As to motive, the Wissel evidence tended to show defendant felt a strong need for Wissel's money and property on the night in question and acted out of that motive rather than merely to defend himself against Wissel. A trier of fact could rationally infer that defendant had also felt a strong need for money a short time earlier on the same night, when he confronted Miller, and therefore that he stabbed Miller in order to take his money rather than to defend himself against Miller. As defendant concedes, the probativeness of other-crimes evidence on the issue of motive does not necessarily depend on similarities between the charged and uncharged crimes, so long as the offenses have a direct logical nexus. ( People v. Daniels, supra, 52 Cal.3d at p. 857, 277 Cal.Rptr. 122, 802 P.2d 906; People v. Pertsoni (1985) 172 Cal.App.3d 369, 374, 218 Cal.Rptr. 350.) In Pertsoni, the defendant, charged with the shooting murder of a man who was thought to be an agent for the Yugoslav secret police, claimed he had acted in self-defense. Evidence was admitted of an uncharged prior violent act: the defendant's having shot at a man he believed to be the Yugoslav Ambassador. ( Pertsoni, at pp. 372-373, 218 Cal.Rptr. 350.) Though the acts were dissimilar in the circumstances of their commission, the other-crimes evidence was held admissible to show the defendant's motive of passionate hatred towards anyone connected with the Yugoslav government. ( Id. at p. 374, 218 Cal.Rptr. 350.) This motive was in turn relevant to show the defendant acted to kill an agent of the detested government, rather than to protect himself against a perceived danger. ( Id. at p. 375, 218 Cal.Rptr. 350.) Here, similarly, evidence of defendant's motives for robbing and assaulting Wissel tended to show he had had the same motives earlier the same night when he stabbed Miller, and thus acted with the intent to rob, rather than in self-defense. Defendant relies on People v. Bigelow (1984) 37 Cal.3d 731, 209 Cal.Rptr. 328, 691 P.2d 994, in which evidence of prior robberies and thefts was held inadmissible to show the defendant's motive in his trial for murder, robbery, and kidnapping. But in that case, the defendant's motivehis desire to take the victim's propertywas not seriously contested; there was no question but that, whoever shot [the victim], the robbery, kidnapping and murder were done as part of a plan to steal [the victim's] car. ( Id. at p. 748, 209 Cal.Rptr. 328, 691 P.2d 994.) For that reason, proof the defendant had previously committed thefts or robberies to get the victims' property adds little to this case. ( Ibid. ) The opposite was true here: defendant admitted having stabbed Miller, but denied having tried to rob him and claimed he acted in self-defense. Here, the identity of the killer was not seriously contested, but defendant's motive in attacking and killing Miller most certainly was. Bigelow's reasoning is simply inapplicable to the present case. We also conclude the Wissel incident was similar enough to the Miller incident to bear directly on defendant's intent in stabbing Miller. To satisfy this theory of relevance, charged and uncharged crimes need only be sufficiently similar to support the inference that the defendant `probably harbor[ed] the same intent in each instance. [Citations.]' ( People v. Ewoldt, supra, 7 Cal.4th at p. 402, 27 Cal.Rptr.2d 646, 867 P.2d 757.) The incidents need not have the greater degree of similarity required to show the existence of a common plan or the shared distinctive pattern required to show identity. ( Id. at pp. 402-403, 27 Cal.Rptr.2d 646, 867 P.2d 757.) Twice in one evening, defendant entered an older man's home, confronted the man alone, and stabbed the man several times hard enough to inflict very serious wounds, including in both cases stab wounds to the chest. Both times he claimed the other man had attacked or threatened him first and that he had acted in self-defense. As we have previously explained, quoting from Wigmore: `[T]he recurrence of a similar result ... tends (increasingly with each instance) to negative accident or inadvertence or self-defense or good faith or other innocent mental state, and tends to establish (provisionally, at least, though not certainly) the presence of the normal, i.e., criminal, intent accompanying such an act....' ( People v. Ewoldt, supra, 7 Cal.4th at p. 402, 27 Cal.Rptr.2d 646, 867 P.2d 757, italics added.) The jury could rationally find it unlikely that defendant had the extremely bad luck to be attacked within a short period of time by two older solitary men in ways that required him to use potentially deadly force against the older men to repel the attacks. Especially given the evidence that defendant's assault on Wissel went far beyond any conceivable need for self-defense and that defendant then ransacked Wissel's house and stole from him, the jury could rationally infer instead that defendant probably attacked both men with the same criminal intentrobbery. Defendant points to several factual differences between the two incidents, some of which we acknowledge were shown by the evidence: though both victims were older than defendant, Wissel was significantly older than Miller; Wissel lived in a single-family house, Miller in a boarding house; whereas defendant stayed at Wissel's house for hours, ransacked it, and stole Wissel's property, the evidence he took anything from Miller was weak at best, and no evidence showed he disturbed Miller's furnishings before fleeing, which he did immediately after stabbing Miller; defendant, in the words of his brief, degraded Wissel in a bizarre crime, while he simply stabbed Miller several times with a knife. Especially in light of the close proximity in place and time between the two incidents, we disagree that these dissimilarities vitiated the inference that defendant had the same intent in each incident. Given the evidence that immediately after his fatal stabbing of Miller, defendant walked or ran less than a mile to Wissel's house, where he stabbed and otherwise assaulted that victim, and given the other similarities outlined above, a jury could rationally reject the coincidental explanation for the two eventsthat defendant just happened to have assaulted somewhat similar victims in somewhat similar ways on the same nightand conclude instead that he harbored the same criminal intent in both cases. [W]hen the other crime evidence is admitted solely for its relevance to the defendant's intent, a distinctive similarity between the two crimes is often unnecessary for the other crime to be relevant. Rather, if the other crime sheds great light on the defendant's intent at the time he committed that offense it may lead to a logical inference of his intent at the time he committed the charged offense if the circumstances of the two crimes are substantially similar even though not distinctive. ( People v. Nible (1988) 200 Cal.App.3d 838, 848-849, 247 Cal.Rptr. 396.) The decisions defendant cites as illustrating insufficient similarity between charged and uncharged crimes to establish relevance on intent are each distinguishable. In People v. Williams (1988) 44 Cal.3d 883, 907-908, 245 Cal.Rptr. 336, 751 P.2d 395, the People argued that evidence of prior thefts, committed some days or weeks before the charged robbery murders, tended to negate the defendant's diminished capacity defense, which was based partly on drug and alcohol intoxication. We rejected this theory of relevance because of the complete lack of evidence the defendant had used drugs or alcohol at the time of the prior thefts, a crucial dissimilarity that fatally undermined the logical connection the People had attempted to draw between the charged and uncharged crimes. ( Id. at pp. 908-909, 245 Cal.Rptr. 336, 751 P.2d 395.) Defendant points to no such crucial dissimilarity in the present case. Though the victims and their circumstances differed in some ways, the crimesstabbing assaults on older men alone in their homes, committed very close together in time and placewere sufficiently alike to support an inference that if defendant acted with an intent to rob rather than in self-defense in the Wissel case, he did so as well in stabbing Miller. In People v. Guerrero (1976) 16 Cal.3d 719, 727-728, 129 Cal.Rptr. 166, 548 P.2d 366, we rejected the use of a prior rape to show that the charged murder was committed in the course of an attempted rape, i.e., to show the defendant's intent in engaging in sexual activity with the victim. The fatal flaw in this theory, we explained, was the lack of any evidence that in the charged killing the defendant had engaged in any sexual activity with the victim. The prior rape was thus improperly being used both to establish that the charged incident involved sexual activity and to explain the intent with which the defendant engaged in that sexual activity. ( Id. at p. 728, 129 Cal.Rptr. 166, 548 P.2d 366.) In short, the People may not conjure up an attempted rape in this instance in order to introduce evidence of another rape. ( Ibid. ) In the case at bench, of course, there was independent evidence defendant was robbing or trying to rob Miller when he killed him: the testimony of two boarding house residents that they heard the assailant demand, Give me your wallet or Give me your money. Unlike Guerrero, the prosecution here did not use the Wissel evidence to conjure up an intent to rob in the charged Miller homicide. Finally, in People v. Harvey (1984) 163 Cal.App.3d 90, 104-105, 208 Cal.Rptr. 910, the appellate court found a prior robbery the defendant had committed in the same area six months earlier insufficiently similar to the charged homicide to show an intent to rob in the charged incident. The appellate court's reasoning on this point is neither clear nor persuasive; the court simply referred ( id. at p. 105, 208 Cal. Rptr. 910) to its earlier discussion regarding proof of identity, without explicitly considering whether the lack of `distinctive' similarities that made the prior crime irrelevant on identity ( id. at p. 103, 208 Cal.Rptr. 910) also precluded an inference that the assailant in the two incidents acted with the same criminal intent. As noted, this court later clarified that the distinctiveness needed to prove identity is not required to make an uncharged crime relevant on intent. ( People v. Ewoldt, supra, 7 Cal.4th at pp. 402-403, 27 Cal.Rptr.2d 646, 867 P.2d 757.) In any event, the six-month passage of time between the uncharged and charged crimes in Harvey distinguishes it from this case. As explained above, the closeness of time between the incidents herea matter of minutes, rather than days or monthsprovides, together with the other similarities already noted, a significant basis for an inference that defendant acted with the same criminal intent in the two incidents. Because the Wissel evidence was relevant on motive and intent, we need not decide whether it bore the somewhat greater similarity to the Miller attack required to be relevant on the existence of a common design or plan (see People v. Ewoldt, supra, 7 Cal.4th at pp. 402-403, 27 Cal.Rptr.2d 646, 867 P.2d 757). The court's instruction that the jury could also consider the evidence for whether it showed a common design or plan could not, under the circumstances, have been prejudicial. The jury was properly permitted to consider the Wissel evidence on the hotly disputed issue of whether defendant stabbed Miller in self-defense or with the intent to rob him. Not surprisingly, as this was the crucial factual question of the trial, the prosecutor's discussion of the Wissel evidence in his argument to the jury focused largely on this question. Though the prosecutor referred to a similar pattern of conduct in the two incidents, he did not argue for the existence of a common design or plan as such. That the jury, which was properly permitted to consider the Wissel evidence on the central questions of self-defense and intent to rob, would have reached a different result had it not been told it could also consider the evidence on whether defendant had a common design or plan in the two incidentsa peripheral question at mostis not reasonably probable. ( People v. Welch (1999) 20 Cal.4th 701, 749-750, 85 Cal.Rptr.2d 203, 976 P.2d 754.) [2] Nor do we agree with defendant that the probative value of the Wissel evidence was outweighed by its potential for prejudice. The evidence was strongly probative on the central issue at trial, whether defendant stabbed Miller in self-defense or with the intent of robbing him. Though the evidence's probative value was attenuated to some extent by dissimilarities between the incidents, [t]he close proximity in time of the uncharged offenses to the charged offenses increases the probative value of this evidence. ( People v. Balcom (1994) 7 Cal.4th 414, 427, 27 Cal.Rptr.2d 666, 867 P.2d 777.) Some aspects of the Wissel evidence were potentially inflammatory, but at the same time the ferocity and extent of defendant's attack on Wissel was probative of his criminal intent and lack of need for self-defense. The jury was twice instructed not to consider the Wissel evidence as showing bad character, minimizing the potential for improper use ( People v. Barnett (1998) 17 Cal.4th 1044, 1119, 74 Cal.Rptr.2d 121, 954 P.2d 384), and the prosecutor did not suggest to the jury that it consider the Wissel evidence for any improper purpose. The Wissel incident involved an assault, albeit a very serious one, rather than a homicide like the charged attack on Miller. The jury, moreover, was informed through defendant's testimony that he had pled guilty to assault and robbery and was serving a sentence for the Wissel crimes. This greatly reduced the likelihood, if any existed, that the jury would convict defendant of capital murder of Miller in order to punish him for the assault on Wissel. ( Balcom, at p. 427, 27 Cal.Rptr.2d 666, 867 P.2d 777.) Under these circumstances, the trial court did not abuse its discretion under Evidence Code section 352 in admitting the Wissel evidence, nor did that ruling infringe upon defendant's constitutional right to a fair trial. [3]