Opinion ID: 1179776
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Defendant's Plea Offer โ Judy N. Counts.

Text: (3) After severance had been denied, and before jury selection began, defendant renewed a motion previously withdrawn that he be allowed to plead guilty to all the charges involving Judy N. and Linda McCord (counts 5 through 15), including the related enhancements, and that the prosecution thereafter be barred from presenting evidence about those crimes. Defendant further offered not to assert the plea as a bar to Ms. N.'s sanitized testimony that on June 5, 1987, defendant told her he had killed before and would kill again. The prosecutor opposed the motion, urging as before that the circumstances of the Judy N. incident bore on consciousness of guilt and identity in the Beacon case. The prosecutor also argued that the facts surrounding defendant's threats against Ms. N. bore on his intent to kill John Waltrip. The trial court denied the motion without prejudice, stating that it could not accept defendant's conditions before hearing the prosecution evidence. The court invited defendant to renew his motion at a later time. Defendant never renewed the motion, and no guilty plea was entered. Defendant urges that the prosecutor wrongly opposed his motion and that the trial court erroneously denied it. He asserts that the conditions he offered eliminated all legitimate bases for cross-admissibility of the two incidents. Thus, he complains, the People's insistence on a trial of the Judy N. counts was intended only to cause him unfair prejudice in the Beacon case. We find no error or impropriety. In essence, defendant, having lost his bid for severance, offered to stipulate to his commission of the Judy N. crimes in order to keep them from a jury considering his guilt of the Beacon crimes. But [t]he general rule is that the prosecution in a criminal case cannot be compelled to accept a stipulation if the effect would be to deprive the state's case of its persuasiveness and forcefulness. [Citations.] ( People v. Edelbacher (1989) 47 Cal.3d 983, 1007 [254 Cal. Rptr. 586, 766 P.2d 1]; see also People v. Garceau (1993) 6 Cal.4th 140, 182 [24 Cal. Rptr.2d 664, 862 P.2d 664].) As the prosecutor argued, defendant's proposed stipulation was not an adequate substitute for trial evidence showing the relevance of the Judy N. offenses to the Beacon crimes. Defendant did not offer to admit his consciousness of guilt of the Beacon murder and robbery, or that he was John Waltrip's murderer. Had the circumstances of the Judy N. crimes been withheld from the jury, the People would have lost material circumstantial evidence on these issues. Thus, the prosecutor could not have shown that the Judy N. robbery was motivated by a need for money and transportation to escape apprehension for the earlier Beacon crimes. Moreover, defendant's boast that he had killed two weeks before was strong circumstantial evidence of his identity as Waltrip's killer. If this statement had been artificially divorced from its context, it would have lacked the weight it deserved on that issue. Without knowledge of the surrounding circumstances, the jury could not have evaluated whether defendant's statement was mere idle jest or braggadocio, entitled to little credence. But the fact that defendant repeated this murderous boast many times as a threat intended to facilitate further armed felonies was a material indication that his claim of a prior killing was true. The prosecution was entitled to present this information, and the jury was entitled to hear it. As noted above, the prosecutor also argued that defendant's threats to Judy N., and the circumstances in which they were made, were admissible as evidence that defendant intended to kill Waltrip. Defendant now contends the two incidents were not sufficiently similar to allow use of the Judy N. incident to prove intent to kill in the Beacon case. The point is immaterial, however, since as we have indicated, the challenged evidence was admissible on other grounds. (4) Defendant claims the record contains evidence that the prosecution's insistence on capital charges and a full joint trial of both incidents was in bad faith. In particular, he asserts (1) the prosecution was improperly influenced by the Judy N. crimes when deciding whether to seek the death penalty for the Beacon murder, (2) joinder of the Judy N. charges was intended to persuade the jury, even at the guilt phase, that he deserved death, and (3) use of his threats against Judy N. to prove his intent to kill Waltrip was improper because the prosecution actually did not believe he stabbed Waltrip with lethal intent. These arguments are based primarily on a pretrial telephone conversation between defendant and Assistant District Attorney Patrick Marlette, to whom defendant's case was then assigned. The call was initiated by defendant. Marlette made notes of the conversation, and his portion of the dialogue was tape-recorded. During the call, defendant sought a bargain whereby he could plead guilty to the Beacon murder, even if that meant the death penalty, but on condition that the sex charges involving Judy N. be dismissed so they would not be on his record when he was executed. Marlette cautioned that defendant should not be speaking to him, since it's my job to see that you're executed. Marlette refused to dismiss the Judy N. charges, noting that he had defendant wrapped up pretty tight and that I've got a rape victim out there [who] as much as anybody else deserves to have her crime represented. During a discussion of the Waltrip murder, Marlette remarked that it looked to me like for a split second there you were not absolutely in control of the situation. And in that split second, the first thing you just like instinctively did was reach out and cut the dude. [12] Nothing in this conversation demonstrates the bad faith defendant asserts. There is no inherent impropriety in a prosecutorial decision to join capital and noncapital charges, where, as here, joinder is otherwise proper. (See discussion, ante, at pp. 126-129.) Moreover, absent a showing of arbitrary and invidious discrimination, prosecutors have wide latitude when selecting those eligible cases in which the death penalty will actually be sought. ( People v. Keenan (1988) 46 Cal.3d 478, 505-507 [250 Cal. Rptr. 550, 758 P.2d 1081]; cf. McCleskey v. Kemp (1987) 481 U.S. 279 [95 L.Ed.2d 262, 107 S.Ct. 1756].) Among the [m]any circumstances bearing on that decision ( Keenan, supra, 46 Cal.3d at p. 506), the prosecution may consider that the charges against the accused include other serious violent crimes against different victims. Defendant implies that by telling defendant it's my job to see that you're executed, Marlette revealed a disregard for his duty, as an officer of the court, to seek a just disposition. We disagree. Marlette sought only to caution defendant that an unrepresented conversation between them was not in defendant's best interest. And his remark merely acknowledged that the prosecution had indeed decided to seek the death penalty. We must, of course, presume that this decision was `legitimately founded on the complex considerations necessary for the effective and efficient administration of law enforcement. [Citation.]' ( People v. Keenan, supra, 46 Cal.3d at p. 506, quoting People v. Haskett (1982) 30 Cal.3d 841, 860 [180 Cal. Rptr. 640, 640 P.2d 776].) Nor are we persuaded that Marlette's casual remark about an instinctive stabbing demonstrates bad faith in the prosecution's theory that defendant was death eligible because he intended to kill. The evidence supported an inference of intent to kill, and nothing in Marlette's comment was necessarily inconsistent with such a conclusion. In any event, the remark reflected at most the personal opinion of Marlette, who ultimately did not even try the case. The prosecution assured the trial court that all charging decisions were made by the district attorney himself, without regard to the conversation between defendant and Marlette. Defendant's claims must therefore be rejected.