Opinion ID: 2545831
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Murder of Geraldine Sapp

Text: Included in the prosecution's penalty phase case in aggravation was evidence that defendant had committed the unadjudicated murder of his mother, Geraldine Sapp. (ง 190.3, factor (b) [allowing jury consideration of criminal activity by the defendant that involved the use or attempted use of force or violence].) Defendant unsuccessfully sought to have the evidence excluded as legally insufficient. He renews that contention here, asserting that the evidence failed to support a finding by a rational trier of fact as to the existence of such activity beyond a reasonable doubt. ( People v. Clair (1992) 2 Cal.4th 629, 672-673, 7 Cal.Rptr.2d 564, 828 P.2d 705.) He also argues that introduction of the evidence rendered the death verdict unreliable in violation of the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the federal Constitution. We disagree. In 1984 and 1985, defendant's mother Geraldine Sapp was living near Oroville in Butte County. In October 1984, she withdrew $5,000 from her savings account at the First Interstate Bank in Oroville. In February and March 1985, Geraldine, accompanied by defendant, went to the First Interstate Bank to cash certificates of deposit totaling $58,000, which the bank paid to her in $20, $50, and $100 bills. She told bank personnel she needed the money for a business venture with her son John. In June 1985, defendant was living with Geraldine. A neighbor, Carmella Borchard, kept livestock on Geraldine's property. Borchard saw Geraldine on June 4 or 5, but never saw her again. Borchard recalled that defendant left in his van during the afternoon of June 5 and returned two days later. She deduced that while defendant was away no one else was at Geraldine's place because the water trough for Geraldine's livestock was empty and one of Geraldine's horses was trying to eat the feed Borchard provided for her own horse. On June 7, around 4:00 p.m., defendant inquired of another neighbor, Margarita Richards, whether she had seen Geraldine. Defendant told Richards that he had just returned home, that his mother was not at the house and but that none of her things appeared to be missing. Defendant then notified the Butte County Sheriffs Department that his mother was missing. Deputy Sheriff Donald Houghton came to the house and spoke with defendant. Defendant said that he had been in the Bay Area fishing for two days and when he returned home, the house was locked but his mother was not there. Her clothes, checkbook, purse, and wallet were in the house and her car was in the garage. Defendant also told Deputy Houghton that when he got back from fishing he found a couple of days' mail in the mailbox and newspapers in front. Defendant had checked with friends and relatives but no one knew Geraldine's whereabouts. Defendant told Houghton that he suspected his mother had been kidnapped by Gene and Carlene Aughe, members of an outlaw motorcycle gang. The next day, June 8, defendant telephoned Tony Koester, an investigator for the Butte County District Attorney's Office and said the Aughes had kidnapped Geraldine because she had testified against them in 1983. After defendant's April 26, 1986, arrest in Nevada County on an outstanding warrant, he again spoke with investigator Koester about his mother's disappearance. This time defendant said that when he returned to his mother's house on June 7, 1985, he knew within five seconds who was responsible for her disappearance. Defendant described the person only as a 42year-old White male, who lived in Concord and dealt in large quantities of drugs. According to defendant, his mother had nosed into the drug dealer's business, so the man killed her. Defendant added that he had found the man, taken him at gun-point by boat to an area in the San Francisco Bay between Alcatraz and Angel Islands, and extracted from him a confession and the location of Geraldine's body. Defendant then killed the man and dumped his body in the bay. On April 27, 1986, defendant directed Butte County law enforcement officers to a remote area near the town of Gridley. Defendant walked to a dried-up pond, and said this was the location where the killer said he had left Geraldine's body. On May 1, 1986, no more than 30 feet from the area pointed out by defendant, a search team found Geraldine's skeletal remains. Her death was likely the result of a powerful blow to the skull, which drove the mandible into the cranium, severing the artery. Contra Costa County's missing persons records for the dates June 1,1985, through June 1, 1986, showed the filing of 38 missing person's reports. All of those were ultimately accounted for; there was no open case in that period involving a missing White male in his early 40's (allegedly killed by defendant for killing defendant's mother, Geraldine). From this evidence, the jury could reasonably conclude that defendant on either June 4 or 5, 1985, killed his mother and deposited her body in the remote area near Gridley. Over the next few days, he traveled to the Bay Area to establish an alibi, reported his mother missing and, to deflect attention from himself, suggested that an outlaw couple, the Aughes, had kidnapped her, and that he later falsely claimed that an unnamed White male in his early 40's was the killer.
We reject defendant's contention that the penalty phase judgment must be reversed for prosecutorial misconduct in eliciting on cross-examination a comment from a defense expert witness, Dr. Donald Lunde, that defendant's siblings did not visit him in jail because they believed he had killed their mother. Defendant also asserts that defense counsel was ineffective in failing to object, particularly because the topic had been earlier ruled inadmissible when raised in connection with evidence that defendant's brother Mike thought defendant was their mother's killer. Both claims fail for want of prejudice. It is neither reasonably possible ( People v. Jackson (1996) 13 Cal.4th 1164, 1232, 56 Cal.Rptr.2d 49, 920 P.2d 1254) nor reasonably probable ( Strickland v. Washington, supra, 466 U.S. at p. 669, 104 S.Ct. 2052) that the jury would have reached a different verdict at the penalty phase had it not heard Dr. Lunde's brief comment.
Jeanne Aplington was defendant's girlfriend for about three years, including the summer of 1985 when his mother disappeared. On June 12, 1985, a few days after defendant reported his mother missing, Butte County District Attorney investigator Tony Koester interviewed Aplington and prepared a report. On November 18, 1985, the Butte County District Attorney's Office deposed Aplington. The prosecution subpoenaed Aplington to testify at the penalty phase of defendant's capital trial. She appeared with counsel, but refused to talk to the prosecutor. The trial court held a hearing outside the jury's presence to decide whether the prosecutor could use prior statements by Aplington from her June 12, 1985, interview by investigator Koester and her November 18, 1985, deposition to impeach her before the jury. At that hearing, Aplington claimed she could not remember the statements she made to investigator Koester and in her deposition. The trial court ruled that Aplington had given a series of evasive answers and her stated lapse of memories are in effect denials, and therefore, over defense objection, allowed the prosecutor to use Aplington's Prior statements to impeach her. The statements included (1) claims by Aplington that she spoke by telephone with Geraldine Sapp on June 4 and 5, 1985, and that defendant spent the night of June 5, 1985, at Aplington's home in Contra Costa County, and (2) recitations by Aplington of defendant's comments implicating himself in Geraldine's disappearance. Defendant now contends that these prior statements by Aplington were inadmissible hearsay (Evid.Code, ง 1200) whose admission denied him the right of confrontation under the Sixth Amendment to the federal Constitution. Because defendant concedes that defense counsel did not raise a Sixth Amendment objection in the trial court, that issue is not properly before us. In any event, we reject the contention. A statement by a witness that is inconsistent with his or her trial testimony is admissible to establish the truth of the matter asserted in the statement under the conditions set forth in Evidence Code sections 1235 and 770. ( People v. Johnson (1992) 3 Cal.4th 1183, 1219, 14 Cal. Rptr.2d 702, 842 P.2d 1.) Those statutes, as relevant here, provide for the admission against a hearsay challenge of a prior statement by a witness if the statement is inconsistent with his testimony at the hearing and is offered in compliance with Section 770. (Evid.Code, ง 1235.) Under Evidence Code section 770, prior inconsistent statements are admissible only if: (a) The witness was so examined while testifying as to give him an opportunity to explain or to deny the statement; or [A] (b) The witness has not been excused from giving further testimony in the action. Defendant does not deny that the conditions of Evidence Code section 770 were satisfied here. Rather, he asserts that Aplington's trial testimony was not inconsistent with her former statements because she testified that she could not recall either the specific events in 1985 regarding the disappearance of defendant's mother or what she had said about those events at that time. We spoke to this exact issue in People v. Johnson, supra, 3 Cal.4th at page 1219, 14 Cal. Rptr.2d 702, 842 P.2d 1: Normally, the testimony of a witness that he or she does not remember an event is not inconsistent with that witness's prior statement describing the event. [Citation.] However, courts do not apply this rule mechanically. `Inconsistency in effect, rather than contradiction in express terms, is the test for admitting a witness' prior statement [citation], and the same principle governs the case of the forgetful witness.' [Citation.] When a witness's claim of lack of memory amounts to deliberate evasion, inconsistency is implied. [Citation.] As long as there is a reasonable basis in the record for concluding that the witness's `I don't remember' statements are evasive and untruthful, admission of his or her prior statements is proper. (Italics added.) That is the situation here. Ample evidence supports the trial court's determination that Aplington's lack of memory amounted to deliberate evasion. Thus, there was no state law error. Furthermore, admission of Aplington's prior statements under one of this state's traditional hearsay rule exceptions did not implicate defendant's Sixth Amendment right to confront and cross-examine her because she testified and thus was subject to defendant's cross-examination. ( People v. Zapien (1993) 4 Cal.4th 929, 955, 17 Cal. Rptr.2d 122, 846 P.2d 704.) Because there was no confrontation clause violation, we reject on the merits defendant's claim that his trial counsel was ineffective in failing to object to the admission of Aplington's prior inconsistent statements on that ground.
Defendant raises another claim arising from Aplington's trial testimony. The prosecutor sought to elicit evidence that defendant made incriminating statements before and after he took a polygraph test on June 11, 1985, in Sacramento for the Butte County District Attorney investigators. To do so, the prosecutor questioned Aplington using the transcript of her November 18, 1985, deposition and, in an effort to refresh her recollection, had her look at the transcript. Earlier, at the hearing without the jury present (see pt. VI. B.3, ante ), the prosecutor had mentioned the polygraph when questioning Aplington about defendant's incriminating statements, but she denied any recollection of those statements. At trial, when the prosecutor began his questioning of Aplington about defendant's statements before and after the polygraph test, he tried to avoid mentioning the polygraph test itself by asking Aplington if she recalled defendant having an appointment in Sacramento that he was going to keep. Aplington replied that she did not understand what you're asking, and then asked, What appointment would that be? The prosecutor then requested a sidebar conference. The trial court suggested that to avoid the witness blurt[ing] something out that's inappropriate ... something to do with a ... polygraph, the parties should stipulate to a sanitized phrase to substitute for the word polygraph in the deposition transcript. Defense Counsel Houghton responded: I have no problems stipulating that the deposition [transcript] indicates that [defendant] had an appointment in Sacramento. But Defense Counsel Young disagreed, suggesting that the sanitized stipulation, in which the phrase appointment in Sacramento would be substituted in the transcript for the word polygraph would have no relevance ... to the D.A.'s burden of proof. The trial court then stated: I suppose [the prosecutor] could plunge into it. Under the circumstances, somebody mentions polygraph, I will tell [the jurors] they can't pay any attention to it. Thereafter, to lay a foundation for introducing Aplington's prior statements describing defendant's incriminating comments, the prosecutor questioned her about defendant's having a meeting in Sacramento. During this questioning, the prosecutor referred the witness to the deposition transcript. This exchange took place: Prosecutor: Now, do you remember the appointment that [defendant] had in Sacramento? Aplington: Well, I have read [the transcript]. I'm sure I said it. But at this point in time I don't remember those days. Prosecutor: Do you remember the appointment in Sacramento? Aplington: I won't have any reason to lie, but to this date I do not remember it. The questioning continued: Prosecutor: Well, last week, for example, when you testified [outside the jury's presence], you indicated that you didn't remember and then all of a sudden you later recalled. Aplington: That I talked to [defendant]? Prosecutor: About that appointment in Sacramento. Didn't you? Aplington: I think I felt pressured into it pretty much. Because I really don't recollect it. Prosecutor: Didn't last week you say in this Court, I don't recall, and then suddenly remembered the appointment in Sacramento? Responding to this question, Aplington blurted out: The polygraph? Defense counsel objected, and the trial court instructed the jury: Ladies and Gentlemen, there's been a mention of a polygraph. This is something that under no circumstances should enter into your considerations in this case. Whether there was or was not is not something that's permitted into your considerations. That's one of those things that you have to completely and totally strike from your memories and from any use in this trial. Certainly if somebody does think during your deliberations that that is something you should speculate about, then the rest of you are going to have to say, no, that can't be done. Is that okay with everybody? Anybody have any questions about that? No speculation. No use of it under any circumstances whatsoever? Thereafter, the prosecutor continued to question Aplington about defendant's incriminating statements and used as a point of reference the meeting in Sacramento. For example, the prosecutor asked: Before [defendant] left the meeting in Sacramento, did he tell you that if you did not hear from him you're to call the [Butte County] Sheriffs Department and `see what my bail is'? Defendant now contends the prosecutor badgered Aplington into revealing that defendant had taken a polygraph examination regarding his mother's disappearance and then exploited the error in a way that allowed the jury to infer that defendant had failed the test. According to defendant, this rendered the penalty trial fundamentally unfair in violation of the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the federal Constitution. Defendant's theory seems to be that the prosecutor was to blame for Aplington's mention of the polygraph, and that his continued questioning of her thereafter about defendant's meeting in Sacramento would have suggested to the jury that defendant took a polygraph test and flunked it. Defendant also accuses his trial counsel of incompetence for not asking the trial court to order the prosecutor to replace the phrase meeting in Sacramento with some less specific reference, such as sometime in the week after Mrs. Sapp's disappearance. We reject these contentions. Evidence Code section 351.1 provides that the results of a polygraph examination `shall not be admitted into evidence in any criminal proceeding ... unless all parties stipulate to the admission of such results.' The statute also excludes evidence of `an offer to take' or the `failure to take' such a test. ( People v. Espinoza (1992) 3 Cal.4th 806, 816, 12 Cal.Rptr.2d 682, 838 P.2d 204.) Thus, evidence that a defendant took a polygraph test would violate California statutory law. No such evidence was introduced in this case, however. Rather, the prosecutor and the trial judge, both mindful that Aplington might blurt out something about defendant's taking a polygraph examination, sought to sanitize the language in the transcript the prosecutor was using when questioning Aplington. Although Attorney Houghton offered to enter into a stipulation that would have eliminated the word polygraph from the transcript, Attorney Young disagreed on the ground that such a stipulation would lighten the prosecution's burden of proof. While defense counsel had no obligation to enter into the stipulation suggested by the trial court, under the circumstances here, when the witness, as the trial court predicted, blurted out the word polygraph, defendant cannot fault the court or the prosecutor. (See People v. Cooper, supra, 53 Cal.3d at p. 827, 281 Cal.Rptr. 90, 809 P.2d 865.) In any event, Aplington's comment was brief and did not directly tell the jury whether or not defendant had taken a polygraph test or inform it of the subject matter or results of any such test. The trial court immediately admonished the jury not to consider anything about a polygraph examination. We assume the jury complied with that admonition. ( People v. Pride (1992) 3 Cal.4th 195, 240, 10 Cal. Rptr.2d 636, 833 P.2d 643.) Moreover, in light of the very strong, if not overwhelming, evidence that defendant killed his mother, the witness's blurting out the word polygraph resulted in no possible prejudice.
At trial, the prosecutor presented evidence that in 1985 and 1986, defendant made various threats to Aplington, and she was afraid of him. The trial court ruled such evidence relevant to Aplington's credibility, specifically on the issue of the validity of her claimed inability to recall pertinent incidents surrounding the disappearance of defendant's mother, Geraldine. Thus, the prosecutor elicited Aplington's testimony that defendant threatened to put Aplington and her two young daughters in the pond behind Geraldine's house. Aplington stressed, however, that defendant didn't say kill, because putting us in the pond, underneath the pond is obviously not living, but he did not use the word kill. The prosecutor also brought out that at Aplington's deposition, when asked if she believe[d] defendant might kill her, she replied, I know that after this, adding, you guys get to go home to your normal houses and stuff and you won't have [defendant] coming after you. (Italics added.) Shortly after June 8, 1985, when defendant reported his mother missing, Aplington moved with her children from her Contra Costa County home to a women's shelter in Monterey County. On July 15, 1985, Aplington telephoned District Attorney investigator Tony Koester and told him she was very frightened of defendant, who was call[ing] around, trying to find out where she was hiding. But when cross-examined in this case, Aplington attributed her tearfulness not to anything defendant had done but to the authorities who threatened to take her children away and send her to jail if she failed to cooperate, and who were telling her she would be defendant's next victim. Defendant now contends that the trial court erred by admitting evidence of Aplington's fear of him, and that the prosecutor's comments on this evidence during closing argument were misconduct. He further contends that the trial court should on its own initiative have instructed the jury it could consider this evidence only in assessing Aplington's credibility and not as showing defendant's intent to harm Aplington, and that trial counsel was ineffective for not requesting such a limiting instruction. According to defendant, the treatment of the evidence of Aplington's fear violated not only California law but also the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the federal Constitution, thus compelling reversal of the death judgment. We disagree. Generally, evidence that a witness is afraid to testify is admissible as relevant to the witness's credibility. (Evid.Code, ง 780; People v. Warren (1988) 45 Cal.3d 471, 481, 247 Cal.Rptr. 172, 754 P.2d 218.) Assuming that evidence of Aplington's fear of defendant in 1985 and 1986 shortly after defendant's mother disappeared would have somewhat less bearing on Aplington's apparent unwillingness to testify for the prosecution in 1991 at defendant's capital trial, we discern no possible prejudice. We have considered the evidence, the prosecutor's treatment of it during closing argument, and trial counsel's failure to request a limiting instruction that the court had no obligation to give without request ( People v. Padilla (1995) 11 Cal.4th 891, 950, 47 Cal.Rptr.2d 426, 906 P.2d 388). We are satisfied that it is neither reasonably possible ( People v. Jackson, supra, 13 Cal.4th at p. 1232, 56 Cal.Rptr.2d 49, 920 P.2d 1254) nor reasonably probable ( Strickland v. Washington, supra, 466 U.S. at p. 669, 104 S.Ct. 2052) that the evidence or its treatment altered the penalty phase outcome at defendant's capital trial.