Opinion ID: 844140
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Murder of Kenneth McDavid

Text: In September 2002, defendant Golay leased, and paid for, an apartment for Kenneth McDavid, who had been homeless and living outside a church in Hollywood. In the spring of 2004, McDavid invited two friends, Patrick Lamay and Amy Matte, to stay in the apartment. McDavid told Lamay that at the request of Golay and codefendant Rutterschmidt, he had signed an insurance policy on his life. Between November 2002 and March 2003, Golay and Rutterschmidt submitted 17 applications for insurance policies on McDavid‟s life. Thirteen policies were issued by various insurance companies. As had occurred with murder victim Vados, most of the policy applications described Golay as McDavid‟s fiancée and Rutterschmidt as his cousin, and some policies listed either Golay or Rutterschmidt as a beneficiary, while others listed both. In January 2004, codefendant Rutterschmidt, accompanied by another elderly woman, bought a used Mercury Sable station wagon from a car dealer. Rutterschmidt said she was buying the car for a friend named Hilary Adler, whose driver‟s license Rutterschmidt showed to the dealer. Rutterschmidt asked that the car be registered in Adler‟s name, with an address on South Croft Avenue in Los Angeles. This, however, was not the address shown on Adler‟s driver‟s license. Adler testified that she did not know Rutterschmidt and had never lived on South Croft Avenue. Allen‟s purse, containing her driver‟s license, had (before Rutterschmidt‟s purchase of the car) been stolen from the Spectrum Club in Santa Monica; defendant Golay‟s daughter Kecia was a member of that club. On October 30, 2004, codefendant Rutterschmidt came to McDavid‟s apartment with a hired, armed security guard. She told McDavid to leave, and told the guard to stay in the apartment for a week to prevent anyone from entering. Defendant Golay paid a portion of the guard‟s fee. 4 At approximately 1:00 a.m. on June 22, 2005, nine months after McDavid‟s eviction from the apartment, his dead body was found lying in an alley near the corner of Westwood Boulevard and Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles. Los Angeles Police Officer Michael McGann came to the scene, as did Kelli Blanchard, an investigator with the Los Angeles County coroner‟s office. According to Officer McGann, abrasion marks on McDavid‟s body indicated that he had been dragged, and investigator Blanchard saw a “possible tire imprint” on the front of McDavid‟s jeans, but the site had no skid marks, no pieces of glass, and no other parts belonging to a car, which Blanchard would have expected if McDavid had been accidentally struck by a car. Near the body, McGann and Blanchard found an undamaged bicycle and bicycle helmet. As was the case with murder victim Vados, grease was on McDavid‟s clothing and his legs were not fractured. Two businesses near the scene had video surveillance cameras. Images from one camera, which took photographs every one to two seconds, showed a car driving through the alley shortly before midnight and stopping close to the spot where McDavid‟s body was later found; after the car‟s lights went off for about five minutes, the car backed up, its headlights came on, and it continued down the alley, stopping about 75 feet beyond the place where McDavid‟s body was discovered. The other camera‟s video images showed that the car was either a Mercury Sable station wagon or a Ford Taurus. Around 11:55 on the night of McDavid‟s death, an emergency road service received a call on a cellphone (registered to defendant Golay‟s daughter Kecia) from a woman giving her name as Golay. She said she was at the corner of Westwood Boulevard and Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles and needed towing of her car, a 1999 Mercury Sable. The car was towed, at Golay‟s request, to a location near Golay‟s home in Santa Monica. At 1:00 a.m., a call was made 5 from Kecia‟s cellphone to codefendant Rutterschmidt‟s cellphone. Two minutes later, a call was made from Rutterschmidt‟s cellphone to Kecia‟s cellphone. In August 2005, Rutterschmidt, claiming to be McDavid‟s cousin, asked the police for a copy of the report on McDavid‟s death in the alley. Rutterschmidt and Golay then filed claims under the insurance policies on McDavid‟s life. Golay collected $1,540,767.05, and Rutterschmidt $674,571.89. In May 2006, the police arrested Golay and Rutterschmidt. Shortly thereafter, the police surreptitiously recorded a conversation between the two in a police interview room. In the conversation, Rutterschmidt blamed Golay for buying too many insurance policies, Golay responded: “[Y]ou better be quiet. You better not know anything.” In Golay‟s house, police found a pill container bearing a prescription label for Ambien (a sleeping pill), but containing a crushed powder that later was determined to have Vicodin (a pain killer), Venlafaxine (an antidepressant that causes drowsiness), and Temazepam (an anti-anxiety drug that causes drowsiness). Also found were two pill containers with prescription labels for Vicodin (prescribed for Golay), and pill containers with prescription labels for Venlafaxine and Temazepam (prescribed for Golay‟s daughter, Kecia). The Mercury Sable station wagon that codefendant Rutterschmidt had bought in 2004 was impounded and sold at a lien sale after it was found abandoned. In May 2006, the Los Angeles Police Department repurchased the car. When criminalist Cheryl Hill examined the car‟s undercarriage, she found human blood, hair, and tissue samples. The tissue samples matched murder victim McDavid‟s DNA profile; the probability that a randomly selected person would have the same profile was one in 10 quadrillion. 6 C. Toxicology Analysis of Murder Victim McDavid’s Blood The prosecution‟s theory was that defendant Golay had drugged McDavid before killing him. To prove this, the prosecution presented the testimony of Joseph Muto, a toxicologist and a certified blood-alcohol analyst. Muto said he was the laboratory director of the Los Angeles County Department of the Coroner, and that four laboratory analysts working under Muto‟s supervision had tested samples of McDavid‟s blood in July of 2005, two weeks after his death. The tests showed that McDavid‟s blood contained alcohol, zolpidem (the generic form of sleep aid Ambien) and hydrocodone (the generic form of painkiller Vicodin). (As mentioned earlier on p. 6, after arresting Golay and Rutterschmidt the police found prescription drug containers for Ambien and Vicodin in Golay‟s house.) Laboratory director Muto explained that after the testing the four analysts gave the data generated by their equipment to clerical staff, who then prepared a report reflecting the test results. After the report was “peer reviewed,” the clerical staff entered the data into a computer, which generated a final report. Muto then reviewed the report to correct clerical errors or inaccuracies, to ensure staff members had used the proper procedures, and to ensure that the information had been peer reviewed. After that review, Muto signed the laboratory report. His signature, Muto said, indicated that he had gone “through every step of the procedure [just described] and found that the analyses were done in the normal course of business and were accurate . . . .” Additional testing of McDavid‟s blood occurred in July 2006, a year after his death. That laboratory report too was reviewed by laboratory director Muto. He testified that according to the report, murder victim McDavid‟s blood showed the additional presence of topiramate, an anticonvulsant with side effects of sedation and dizziness. 7 Golay objected to Muto‟s testimony, contending that it violated her Sixth Amendment right to confront at trial the laboratory analysts who had tested murder victim McDavid‟s blood samples. The trial court overruled the objection. (The prosecution did not introduce the laboratory reports into evidence.) Another prosecution witness, forensic toxicologist Vina Spiehler, testified that the combination of drugs found in murder victim McDavid‟s body would cause a person who did not regularly use those drugs to fall asleep, and would cause a regular user who had developed a tolerance for them to become drowsy and confused. D. Verdict and Appeal The jury found both Golay and Rutterschmidt guilty of two counts of first degree murder and two counts of conspiracy to commit murder; it also found special circumstances of multiple murder and murder for financial gain. The trial court sentenced both defendants to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. The Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment. As relevant here, the Court of Appeal rejected Golay‟s contention that laboratory director Muto‟s testimony regarding two reports prepared by the laboratory (which stated that laboratory tests showed the presence of drugs and alcohol in murder victim McDavid‟s blood samples) violated Golay‟s Sixth Amendment right to confront and cross-examine the analysts who performed the tests described in the reports. Moreover, the Court of Appeal stated, even if there was a confrontation right violation, the error was not prejudicial. We granted Golay‟s petition for review. II. BRIEF SUMMARY OF FOUR HIGH COURT DECISIONS RELEVANT HERE As mentioned earlier on page 1, this case is a companion to two other cases. All three involve a criminal defendant‟s federal constitutional right to confront 8 adverse witnesses. Pertinent are four recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court, which we have discussed in detail in the other two cases. A brief summary follows. The first in the high court‟s quartet of cases is Crawford v. Washington (2004) 541 U.S. 36 (Crawford), which held that admission of an out-of-court statement against a defendant does not violate the Sixth Amendment‟s confrontation clause unless the statement is “testimonial” (id. at pp. 53-56). Crawford did not define the term “testimonial,” but it mentioned several possible definitions, by several sources, of statements that are testimonial in nature, including “ „extrajudicial statements . . . contained in formalized testimonial materials, such as affidavits, depositions, prior testimony, or confessions,‟ [citation]; [and] „statements that were made under circumstances which would lead an objective witness reasonably to believe that the statement would be available for use at a later trial . . .‟ [citation].” (Id. at pp. 51-52.) The prosecution‟s use of a testimonial out-of-court statement against a defendant, Crawford said, ordinarily violates the defendant‟s confrontation right unless the person who made the statement is unavailable as a witness and the defendant has had a previous opportunity for cross-examination. (Id. at p. 59.) Five years later, the high court decided Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts (2009) 557 U.S. 305 (Melendez-Diaz). In that case, which involved charges of cocaine distribution and trafficking, the prosecution at trial introduced into evidence “certificates of analysis,” which had been prepared by nontestifying laboratory analysts and stated that a substance found in plastic bags in the defendant‟s car was determined to be cocaine. The high court held that the laboratory certificates fell “within the „core class of testimonial statements‟ ” (id. at p. 310) and thus, under Crawford, supra, 541 U.S. 36, their use at trial violated the defendant‟s right to confront the analysts who prepared them. As Melendez- 9 Diaz explained, each of the laboratory certificates by the nontestifying analysts was (1) “a „ “solemn declaration or affirmation made for the purpose of establishing or proving some fact” ‟ ” (Melendez-Diaz, supra, at p. 310), (2) “functionally identical to live, in-court testimony” (id. at pp. 310-311), (3) “ „made under circumstances which would lead an objective witness reasonably to believe that [it] would be available for use at a later trial‟ ” (id. at p. 311), and (4) created “to provide „prima facie evidence of the composition, quality, and the net weight‟ ” (ibid.) of the substance found in the plastic bags seized from the defendant‟s car. Two years later, in 2011, the high court decided Bullcoming v. New Mexico (2011) 564 U.S. ___ [131 S.Ct. 2705], which involved a charge of driving while intoxicated. At trial, the prosecution introduced into evidence a report by laboratory analyst Curtis Caylor. The report included Caylor‟s “certificate of analyst” (Bullcoming, supra, 564 U.S. at p. ___ [131 S.Ct. at p. 2710]) stating the correctness of his report‟s conclusion that a blood sample taken at the defendant‟s arrest had an illegally high level of alcohol. Caylor did not testify; a colleague did. Although the testifying colleague was familiar with the laboratory‟s testing procedures, he had neither participated in nor observed the testing by Caylor. The high court held that the admission at trial of nontestifying analyst Caylor‟s laboratory report violated the defendant‟s right to confront Caylor as an adverse witness. The court noted that unlike the laboratory certificates in Melendez-Diaz, supra, 557 U.S. 305, which were statements sworn before a notary public attesting to the truth of the reported test results, Caylor‟s certificate was not a sworn declaration. Nevertheless, the high court pointed out, “Caylor‟s certificate [was] „formalized‟ in a signed document” (Bullcoming, supra, 564 U.S. at p. ___ [131 S.Ct. at p. 2717]) — the laboratory report — and the report made reference to New Mexico court rules that “provide for the admission of certificate blood-alcohol 10 analyses” (ibid.). These “formalities” (ibid.) the high court concluded, were “more than adequate” (ibid.) to qualify Caylor‟s laboratory report as testimonial in nature and therefore inadmissible. In June of this year, 12 days after we heard oral argument in this matter and while it was pending before us, the high court decided Williams v. Illinois (2012) 567 U.S. ___ [132 S.Ct. 2221] (Williams). At issue in Williams was testimony by Illinois State Police forensic biologist Sandra Lambatos that a DNA profile (derived from semen on vaginal swabs taken from a rape victim) produced by a Maryland laboratory matched a DNA profile (derived from a sample of the defendant‟s blood) produced by the Illinois State Police Laboratory. The plurality opinion by Justice Alito was signed by the Chief Justice as