Opinion ID: 2571644
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Defendant's prior conviction for sexually assaulting Dorothea H.

Text: Previously, defendant had lived with Glynnis H. and their infant son in a garage behind the home of Glynnis's mother, Dorothea H. (Mrs. H.). After defendant and Glynnis broke up and Glynnis moved away, Mrs. H. told defendant to move out of the garage. On March 29, 1985, around 6:30 a.m., Mrs. H. heard the gate to her backyard rattle and then heard a window in the bedroom nearest the garage, the bedroom Glynnis had used, break. Mrs. H. investigated and found defendant standing in her hallway. Appearing desperate, defendant asked Mrs. H. where Glynnis and the infant were. When he learned they were not there, defendant, telling her not to scream, took Mrs. H. into her bedroom. Defendant gagged Mrs. H. and bound her arms and legs. The binding permitted Mrs. H.'s legs to be separated a bit. Defendant then raped and sodomized her. After the assault, while defendant was resting on the bed, the doorbell rang. After peeking outside, defendant untied Mrs. H., told her not to say anything, and stood behind her as she opened the door. It was a delivery from the United Parcel Service  a package from Glynnis containing a photograph of Glynnis, defendant and their infant. When he saw the photograph, defendant began crying. He told Mrs. H. he was not going to kill her because Mrs. H., who was a teacher, could take care of the baby financially. Defendant then took a knife from the kitchen drawer, placed it against his stomach, and asked Mrs. H. to kill him. When Mrs. H. said she couldn't, that it would be against her religion, defendant bound her to her bed, took $40 dollars from her purse, and asked her for her neighbor's phone number, saying that after he left he would call her neighbor. Defendant did so, and the neighbor released Mrs. H. As a result of this incident, defendant was convicted of first degree burglary (§§ 459, 460, subd. (a)), residential robbery (former § 213.5, repealed by Stats.1986, ch. 1428, § 5, p. 5124; see now § 213), assault with a deadly weapon (§ 245, subd. (a)(1)), rape (§ 261, subd. (a)(2)), and sodomy (§ 286, subd. (c)(2)). In April 1986, defendant was sentenced to prison for 12 years, and he was paroled in 1991, 10 months before the murder of Mrs. Miller.
Defendant testified as follows: Around 3:00 p.m. on the day he killed Mrs. Miller, defendant, feeling depressed, bought rock cocaine and marijuana from Shamaine Love, paying $20 in cash. He went to the apartment and smoked some of the drugs, and not having used drugs for seven years, became very high and paranoid. Pam came home to the apartment around 5:30 p.m. She was also high on drugs. Giving defendant a gold chain, pearl necklace, pearl earrings, and a pearl bracelet, Pam told defendant to use the jewelry to buy drugs from Shamaine Love. Defendant had seen Pam with Mrs. Miller's jewelry before, but he did not recognize this jewelry as belonging to Mrs. Miller. After Pam spoke on the phone with her mother, defendant took the bus to Shamaine Love's house, arriving around 7:30 p.m., and bought cocaine from her, paying $125 in cash plus the jewelry. After waiting at a bus stop for 30 or 40 minutes, defendant decided to walk to the Millers' nearby home and ask Mrs. Miller for a ride back to the apartment. He did so for two reasons: He was feeling the effects of the drugs and liquor he had consumed throughout the day, and Love had told him police were patrolling the neighborhood. Mrs. Miller invited defendant into her house and agreed to give him a ride to the apartment. A few weeks earlier, defendant had broken his thumb in six places. Defendant had previously given Mrs. Miller a more innocuous explanation  that he had broken it in the course of horseplay with Pam  but now Mrs. Miller asked him how he had really broken it. Defendant admitted that when Pam had come home late one night, he had confronted her, she had walked away from him, and he had grabbed at her waist and missed, jamming his thumb into the door frame. Upon hearing this, Mrs. Miller became very angry. She told defendant she would kill him if he hurt Pam, and that she would lie to his parole officer to get him sent back to prison, a threat she had made on a previous occasion. Mrs. Miller took a knife from the kitchen drawer. Defendant pushed her. You bastard, Mrs. Miller said, My husband don't put his hands on me. As Mrs. Miller came at defendant with the knife, defendant responded by grabbing a knife out of the kitchen drawer himself. Defendant told Mrs. Miller he did not want to hurt her. Mrs. Miller swung at defendant with her knife, missing him. Defendant swung back at her, cutting her arm. Just wait until I get my gun, Mrs. Miller said, running to her bedroom. Defendant followed Mrs. Miller and as she was taking a rifle out of the bedroom closet, defendant grabbed her from behind and spun her around. Mrs. Miller lost her grip on the rifle and fell to the floor. As defendant stood over her, Mrs. Miller said, Give it to me. Defendant then kind of slipped back into [his] childhood and had a vision of walking into a room where his mother was with a man who wasn't [his] father. He picked up a knife and began stabbing Mrs. Miller. The next thing defendant knew he was curled up in a ball, crying, and Mrs. Miller was tied up on the floor with knives sticking out of her neck. Defendant remembered nothing after the first few stabs, but he admitted that he must have been the one who tied Mrs. Miller up, sexually assaulted her, and killed her. He insisted he had not come to the Miller house with the intention of robbing, raping, or killing Mrs. Miller. After the killing, defendant started experiencing things that [he] had not experienced for a while. He was hearing . . . things in [his] head telling [him] to do certain things. [He] guess[ed] you could call it paranoia, thinking someone was coming to kill [him]. He grabbed a second rifle and bullets from the bedroom closet with the intention of taking his life. Defendant drove the Millers' station wagon to the apartment and parked around the corner, leaving the rifle in the station wagon. He locked all the windows and doors in the apartment, believing someone was coming to kill him, yet he went outside later to smoke some of the drugs he had purchased from Shamaine Love. When Pam's grandparents informed her of Mrs. Miller's death, and she left with them, defendant barricaded the doors of the apartment. When defendant left the apartment he intended to drive the station wagon off a cliff and kill himself. Following the police chase, after the station wagon was disabled, a voice inside his head said, They're going to kill you. Defendant then put the rifle to his chest and pulled the trigger. He was hospitalized for three weeks, recovering from the wound, and for the first week he was unconscious and on a respirator. With regard to his prior conviction for sexually assaulting Mrs. H., defendant testified he was not denying any of that.

Mr. and Mrs. Miller were married for 30 years, and he died eight months after Mrs. Miller was murdered. In Pam's opinion, Mr. Miller grieved himself to death. Gloria Hanks, defendant's sister, testified that defendant told her he didn't give a fuck about Pam or her family. During the entire year they lived together, defendant did not tell Pam he heard voices; he did not, in Pam's opinion, act like someone who was hearing voices; and he did not display such behavior when he returned to the apartment after killing Mrs. Miller.