Opinion ID: 1801741
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Loretta Peer Incident

Text: Loretta Peer was in the process of getting a divorce when she met defendant in January 1993. Defendant was interested in Peer, and asked for her telephone number. He called her, had cards delivered to her work address, and left chalk or pencil messages on her car windows. When Peer testified that defendant left a note inside of my car on my steering wheel when the car was totally sealed, defendant objected on grounds of relevance. The court overruled the objection, and the prosecutor elicited Peer's testimony that defendant must have broken into her locked car, but she did not see any damage. On appeal, defendant contends the court erroneously overruled his relevance objection and admitted prejudicial evidence that he had committed an uncharged criminal act. (11) Evidence of a defendant's prior criminal act generally is inadmissible when offered to prove the defendant's conduct on a specified occasion. (Evid. Code, ง 1101, subd. (a).) Such evidence is admissible, however, when relevant to prove some fact in issue (such as motive, intent, knowledge, identity, or the existence of a common design or plan), other than a disposition to commit such an act. (Evid. Code, ง 1101, subd. (b).) At trial, the prosecution was not asked to explain the relevance of the challenged testimony. In this court, respondent observes that, in light of the circumstance that Peer initially did not respond to defendant's calls, cards, and messages, it was reasonable to infer that defendant's motive for the break-in was to exercise control over Peer by leaving a message inside her locked car. In respondent's view, [t]his tended to establish [defendant's] method of solving problems by controlling the situation and being the individual in charge. While acknowledging that breaking into a car to leave a note is not committing murder, respondent argues it is reasonable to infer [defendant's] motive to kill resulted from the seriousness of the problems the victims[] presented for [defendant] and the closer relationship between [defendant] and the three murder victims. We need not decide whether the trial court ruled erroneously, because any error was harmless. Peer's reference to the break-in incident was very brief, and she expressed no fear or negative feelings about the incident. To the contrary, Peer testified she subsequently became friends with defendant and went to dinners, movies, and shows with him. The prosecution made no mention of the break-in incident during its closing argument. At the same time, the circumstantial and physical evidence pointing to defendant's guilt was overwhelming. Defendant was close to all three murder victims and had both the motive and the opportunity to kill each one. With regard to Ron Stadt, the prosecution's case against defendant included evidence that Stadt had intended to use evidence of defendant's affair with Stadt's estranged wife Debra in his child custody dispute with Debra. Debra last saw Stadt in the alley at defendant's apartment complex on June 24, 1993, when defendant told Debra in an urgent tone of voice to leave the area. Stadt was never seen again. Defendant spoke of Stadt's disappearance to friends, saying at various times that Stadt was killed in a fight, that he drove off into the sunset, that he would not be bothering Debra anymore, and that he was mountain lion food. After Stadt vanished, defendant was in possession of Stadt's radar detector and car key, and he made calls to unlisted telephone numbers that had not been shared with him but had been given to Stadt. On the Rose Albano murder count, the case included evidence that defendant wanted Albano, who was pregnant, to get an abortion and move out of his apartment. He did not want to marry Albano or be responsible for her children. Defendant reported Albano missing in two suspicious calls to the San Diego Police Department. In the first call, defendant stated Albano lived at 7007 Saranac, apartment 209 (defendant's address) and claimed he last saw her on December 12, 1993, at around 1:00 p.m. In the second call, he gave a different address for Albano, and said he last saw her on December 21, 1993, at 7:00 a.m. Defendant never showed any concern over Albano's disappearance and, as with Stadt, defendant gave different explanations as to where she went. On December 29, 1993, the day Albano's partial remains were found, defendant told his sister that Albano's mother told him Albano's body parts had been found, even though the authorities did not inform the Albano family concerning identification of the remains until January 27, 1994. After Albano had been found murdered and the police had interrogated defendant, he gave Kimberly Skolte his money, his airline ticket to Poland, his ATM card with his PIN, his mailbox keys, and his passport, because he was concerned he was a suspect. The case against defendant on the Beatrice Toronczak murder count was especially strong. Defendant did not care for the way Toronczak was raising their son, Nicholas. When Toronczak returned from Poland in February 1996, she moved into defendant's apartment and displaced defendant's then live-in girlfriend, Rose McKinney, who had to move out. As with the previous two victims, defendant told friends different things about Toronczak's disappearance, e.g., that she ran off with a Mexican man to the Mexican border, that she probably went to Germany, and that she probably went to Las Vegas or to Poland. Defendant was not concerned that his child's mother had vanished without a word, and he refused Toronczak's mother's request to file a missing person report. On March 11, 1996, Toronczak's jaw parts and ten severed fingers, as well as bloodstained tools including a handsaw, a butcher knife, and a hammer that apparently had been used to dismember her body, were found in the third storage room underneath defendant's apartment. Only defendant had the keys to the storage room, and his fingerprints were found inside latex surgical gloves, which apparently had been inside other gloves stained with Toronczak's blood. McKinney later claimed defendant told her that he did it for them. Results of the autopsies also linked the murders to defendant. Specifically, Albano's severed arm and leg showed cuts that could have been made with the same handsaw found in the storage room, and a mark on her wrist indicated binding, perhaps by black nylon rope or by a plastic tie similar to those found stained with Toronczak's blood. Moreover, the jawbones of both Albano and Toronczak were found separated from their bodies, and both were missing teeth. When Debra Stadt told defendant that her estranged husband had extensive dental records and could be identified by his teeth, defendant remarked that was the only thing that he forgot and [i]t was the only mistake he made. As the prosecution argued, it was reasonable to construe the circumstances as indicating that, although defendant forgot to remove Stadt's teeth to hinder identification of his body, he remembered this detail when he later killed Albano and Toronczak. In sum, a reversal is unwarranted. Given the strength of the prosecution's case, which included significant physical evidence, a mountain of circumstantial evidence, and defendant's own inconsistent and self-incriminating statements, it is not reasonably probable that a different result would have been obtained absent Peer's brief mention that defendant broke into her car to leave a note. ( People v. Lindberg (2008) 45 Cal.4th 1, 26 [82 Cal.Rptr.3d 323, 190 P.3d 664]; People v. Watson (1956) 46 Cal.2d 818, 836-837 [299 P.2d 243].) [17] For the same reasons, any erroneous admission of the testimony was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. ( Chapman v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 18, 24 [17 L.Ed.2d 705, 87 S.Ct. 824]; see People v. Lindberg, supra, at p. 26.)