Court Opinion

ID: 9840614
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-19 17:05:27.853371+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:38:10.562961
License: Public Domain

Filed 9/19/23 P. v. Yancy CA2/7
   NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS

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IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

                         SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT

                                      DIVISION SEVEN

 THE PEOPLE,                                              B320666

           Plaintiff and Respondent,                      (Los Angeles County
                                                          Super. Ct. No. PA058905-01)
           v.

 CHRISTOPHER BERNARD
 YANCY,

           Defendant and Appellant.

         APPEAL from a postjudgment order of the Superior Court
of Los Angeles County, David W. Stuart, Judge. Affirmed.
         Corey J. Robins, under appointment by the Court of
Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
         Rob Bonta, Attorney General, Lance E. Winters, Chief
Assistant Attorney General, Susan Sullivan Pithey, Senior
Assistant Attorney General, Noah P. Hill, Supervising Deputy
Attorney General, and Thomas C. Hsieh, Deputy Attorney
General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
                      ____________________
       A jury convicted Cristopher Bernard Yancy in October 2010
of the second degree murder of Bobby Ray Gates. We affirmed
the judgment on direct appeal, holding, in part, the trial court’s
instruction that an aider and abettor was equally guilty of the
crime as the perpetrator who committed it was harmless error
under the circumstances of Yancy’s case. (People v. Yancy
(July 23, 2012, B228563) [nonpub. opn.].)
       In May 2022, after appointing counsel for Yancy and
receiving memoranda from the prosecutor and Yancy’s counsel,
the superior court denied Yancy’s petition for resentencing under
Penal Code section 1172.6 (former section 1170.95),1 finding,
although the jury had received torture-felony-murder
instructions, the record of conviction established as a matter of
law that Yancy was ineligible for resentencing relief. We affirm.
      FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
      1. Yancy’s Murder Conviction
         a. The evidence at trial
      In the early morning of December 5, 2005 Sidney Cole,
Beatrice Brothers’s adult son, woke up Lachelle Robinson,
Brothers’s daughter, at her home and told her to go to Brothers’s
residence immediately. Soon after Robinson arrived, Yancy and
his uncle, Sam Persons, Brothers’s boyfriend, came to the home
at Brothers’s request. Brothers told Robinson, Yancy and
Persons that Gates, who lived with his girlfriend in a converted

1     Statutory references are to this code.

                                 2
garage in the back of Brothers’s house, had molested one or more
of Brothers’s grandchildren.2
       Gates, who had been called into the house by Brothers, was
taken to the garage, where Brothers, Persons and Yancy took
turns beating him with a stick while he was confined to a chair.
Yancy told police, “It wasn’t just me killing that man. . . .
Everybody took part in this shit.” Yancy explained in his
interview with police that he, Persons and Brothers were all
“outraged” and wanted to beat Gates for “raping kids.” According
to Yancy, Brothers sodomized Gates with a rod during the attack.
At some point, Yancy claimed, he had had enough and left while
the others continued to beat Gates. According to Yancy, when he
left, Gates was still alive, and nothing had been stuffed down his
throat.
       Gates’s body was found on December 6, 2005 near a
freeway in Lakeview Terrace. The body was wrapped in a blue
tarp that had been lit on fire. Gates’s wrists were bound behind
his back with a shoestring and a braided cord. A shirt or cloth
had been stuffed in Gates’s mouth, and his eyes were covered
with a blindfold. Gates had suffered bruising to his face, chest,
abdomen, back, arms and legs, with lacerations on his forehead
and face. The Los Angeles County deputy coroner who performed
the autopsy opined Gates died primarily from asphyxiation
caused by a cloth stuffed down his throat although blunt force
trauma was also a contributing cause of death.
       Yancy did not testify or present any defense witnesses.

2     The description of the events leading to the death of Gates
was based primarily on Yancy’s and Robinson’s recorded police
interviews.

                                3
         b. The instructions
       The People presented three theories to support the charge
of murder: (1) Yancy directly committed (was the perpetrator of)
Gates’s murder (acting with express or implied malice); (2) Yancy
aided and abetted the perpetrator of the murder; (3) Yancy
committed, or aided and abetted, torture, a serious felony that
resulted in Gates’s death (first degree felony murder). The
defense theory was that Yancy was at most guilty of
manslaughter, either voluntary manslaughter based on heat of
passion or involuntary manslaughter based on a misdemeanor
battery resulting in death.
       As pertinent to Yancy’s current appeal, the court defined
express and implied malice pursuant to CALCRIM No. 520
(murder with malice aforethought): “The defendant acted with
express malice if he unlawfully intended to kill. The defendant
acted with implied malice if: 1. He intentionally committed an
act; 2. The natural consequences of the act were dangerous to
human life; 3. At the time he acted, he knew his act was
dangerous to human life; and 4. He deliberately acted with
conscious disregard for human life.”3 The court also instructed
with CALCRIM Nos. 521 (degrees of murder); 540A and 540B
(first degree felony murder based on torture or aiding and
abetting torture); 810 (elements of torture); 570 (voluntary
manslaughter based on killing in heat of passion); and 522

3      When quoting this and other instructions given at Yancy’s
trial, we have omitted unnecessary paragraphing, italics and
capitalization.

                                4
(provocation reducing first degree murder to second degree or
voluntary manslaughter).4
       In light of Yancy’s defense the court also gave CALCRIM
No. 580 (involuntary manslaughter based on misdemeanor
battery): “When a person commits an unlawful killing but does
not intend to kill and does not act with conscious disregard for
human life, then the crime is involuntary manslaughter. The
difference between other homicide offenses and involuntary
manslaughter depends on whether the person was aware of the
risk to life that his or her actions created and consciously
disregarded that risk. An unlawful killing caused by a willful act
done with full knowledge and awareness that the person is
endangering the life of another, and done in conscious disregard
of that risk, is voluntary manslaughter or murder. An unlawful
killing resulting from a willful act committed without intent to
kill and without conscious disregard of the risk to human life is
involuntary manslaughter. The defendant committed
involuntary manslaughter if: 1. The defendant committed a
misdemeanor crime that posed a high risk of death or great
bodily injury because of the way in which it was committed; and
2. The defendant’s acts unlawfully caused the death of another
person.” The court added to the pattern instruction, “Depending
on your point of view, the facts in this case could be construed to
suggest that the defendant committed an uncharged
misdemeanor battery. The definition of misdemeanor battery

4     The court’s instruction on provocation, after stating
provocation may reduce a murder from first degree to
second degree and may reduce a murder to manslaughter,
included the explanation, “Provocation does not apply to a
prosecution under a theory of felony murder.”

                                 5
will be provided in the very next instruction.[5] . . . . In order to
prove murder or voluntary manslaughter, the People have the
burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant
acted with intent to kill or with conscious disregard for life. If the
People have not met either of these burdens, you must find the
defendant not guilty of murder and not guilty of voluntary
manslaughter.”
       The jury was also instructed on aiding and abetting with
CALCRIM former No. 400 (general principles of aiding and
abetting): “A person may be guilty of a crime in two ways. One,
he or she may have directly committed the crime. I will call that
person the perpetrator. Two, he or she may have aided and
abetted a perpetrator, who directly committed the crime. A
person is equally guilty of the crime whether he or she committed
it personally or aided and abetted the perpetrator who committed
it.”
       In addition, the court gave CALCRIM No. 401 (aiding and
abetting: intended crimes): “To prove that the defendant is guilty
of a crime based on aiding and abetting that crime, the People
must prove that: 1. The perpetrator committed the crime; 2. The
defendant knew that the perpetrator intended to commit the
crime; 3. Before or during the commission of the crime, the
defendant intended to aid and abet the perpetrator in committing
the crime; and 4. The defendant’s words or conduct did in fact aid
and abet the perpetrator’s commission of the crime. Someone
aids and abets a crime if he or she knows of the perpetrator’s
unlawful purpose and he or she specifically intends to, and does
in fact, aid, facilitate, promote, encourage, or instigate the

5     The court defined simple battery using CALCRIM No. 960.

                                  6
perpetrator’s commission of that crime. If all of these
requirements are proved, the defendant does not need to actually
have been present when the crime was committed to be guilty as
an aider and abettor.”
         c. Verdict and sentence
      The jury convicted Yancy of second degree murder and
found true an enhancement allegation he had personally used a
deadly or dangerous weapon when committing the offense. The
court sentenced Yancy to an aggregate indeterminate state
prison term of 16 years to life.
      2. Yancy’s Direct Appeal
      We affirmed Yancy’s murder conviction on appeal (People v.
Yancy, supra, B228563), rejecting both his arguments for
reversal. First, we held the trial court had not erred in denying
Yancy’s motions for mistrial based on improper comments during
Yancy’s trial indicating that Brothers had previously been
charged and convicted for her role in Gates’s homicide.6 On each
occasion the trial court had admonished the jury to disregard the
remark. We held the court’s prompt and careful admonitions
cured any error.

6      Brothers, Yancy and Persons were tried separately.
Brothers was initially tried before Yancy, convicted of first degree
murder and sentenced to 26 years to life in prison. After Yancy’s
trial had concluded, we reversed Brothers’s conviction based on
instructional error and remanded the case for a new trial.
(People v. Brothers (Dec. 12, 2011, B225376) [nonpub. opn.].)
When she was retried, Brothers, who testified at her new trial,
was convicted of voluntary manslaughter. We affirmed that
conviction. (People v. Brothers (2015) 236 Cal.App.4th 24.)

                                 7
       Second, we agreed with Yancy that the court erred in
instructing the jury pursuant to CALCRIM former No. 400 that a
person is “equally guilty of the crime whether he or she
committed it personally or aided and abetted the perpetrator who
committed it” because it suggested a defendant could be guilty of
murder, even if he or she acted in the heat of passion, based
solely on the greater culpable mental state of his or her
coparticipants. But we held under the circumstances of his case
the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. We
explained, “For the erroneous instruction to have had any effect
in this case, the jury would have had to have found that Yancy
had acted in the heat of passion while one or more of his
coparticipants had acted with express or implied malice. It is
simply not conceivable on this record that the jury could have
found the children’s grandmother and/or her boyfriend had not
acted in the heat of passion, but that Yancy, who, by his own
admission, did not know Brothers or any of her grandchildren,
had.”
       3. Yancy’s Petition for Resentencing
       On April 19, 2019 Yancy, representing himself, filed a
petition for resentencing pursuant to former section 1170.95. The
superior court appointed counsel to represent Yancy during the
proceedings. The prosecutor filed two memoranda in response;
and Yancy’s counsel filed a reply memorandum, arguing, because
the jury had been instructed on the felony-murder rule and
aiding and abetting a felony murder, it was unclear whether
Yancy had been convicted on a now-invalid theory of imputed
malice. After argument of counsel at a hearing on May 25, 2022
to determine whether to issue an order to show cause, the

                                8
superior court denied the petition, finding the record of conviction
conclusively established Yancy was ineligible for relief.
      Explaining its ruling at the hearing the court stated, based
on the instructions given at Yancy’s trial and the jury’s verdict,
the only possible conclusion was that “the jury found [Yancy]
either actually killed the victim—with intent, with express
malice or implied malice—or aided and abetted his cohorts with
intent to kill. If the jury had found that [Yancy] participated in
torture without intent to kill and the victim had died, they would
have found [him] guilty of first degree felony murder. But that
didn’t happen. . . . And there is no instruction or suggestion that
any intent to kill was imputed to him based on any legal theory
or any codefendant’s state of mind.”
      Yancy filed a timely notice of appeal.
                          DISCUSSION
      1. Section 1172.6 Petitions for Resentencing
      Under the ameliorative changes to the law relating to
accomplice liability for murder effected by Senate Bill No. 1437
(Stats. 2018, ch. 1015), malice must be proved to convict a
principal of murder except under the narrowed felony-murder
rule set forth in revised section 189, subdivision (e), and may not
be imputed based solely on an individual’s participation in a
crime (§ 188, subd. (a)(3)), thereby eliminating the natural and
probable consequences doctrine as a basis for finding a defendant
guilty of murder (People v. Gentile (2020) 10 Cal.5th 830, 842-
843; see People v. Reyes (2023) 14 Cal.5th 981, 984). As amended
by Senate Bill No. 775 (Stats. 2021, ch. 551, § 2), effective
January 1, 2022, Senate Bill No. 1437’s changes to the law of
murder expressly apply to individuals convicted of attempted
murder and voluntary manslaughter.

                                 9
       Section 1172.6 authorizes an individual convicted of
murder under the felony-murder rule or murder or attempted
murder based on the natural and probable consequences doctrine
or any other theory under which malice is imputed based solely
on that person’s participation in a crime to petition the
sentencing court to vacate the conviction and be resentenced on
any remaining counts if he or she could not now be convicted of
murder or attempted murder under revised sections 188 and 189.
The superior court may not engage in judicial factfinding or make
credibility decisions before issuing an order to show cause
pursuant to section 1172.6, subdivision (c), and conducting an
evidentiary hearing pursuant to section 1172.6, subdivision (d), to
determine whether the People have proved the petitioner is
guilty of murder or attempted murder under current law. (People
v. Lewis (2021) 11 Cal.5th 952, 970-971.) However, when first
evaluating whether the petitioner has carried the burden of
making a prima facie showing of entitlement to relief, the
superior court properly examines the record of conviction,
“allowing the court to distinguish petitions with potential merit
from those that are clearly meritless.” (Id. at p. 971; accord,
People v. Williams (2022) 86 Cal.App.5th 1244, 1251.) “[I]f the
record, including the court’s own documents, contain[s] facts
refuting the allegations made in the petition, then the court is
justified in making a credibility determination adverse to the
petitioner.” (Lewis, at p. 971, internal quotation marks omitted.)
       We review de novo whether the superior court conducted a
proper prima facie inquiry under section 1172.6, subdivision (c).
(People v. Williams, supra, 86 Cal.App.5th at p. 1251; People v.
Lopez (2022) 78 Cal.App.5th 1, 14; People v. Harrison (2021)
73 Cal.App.5th 429, 437.)

                                10
      2. Yancy Is Ineligible for Relief Under Section 1172.6
        Yancy does not challenge the superior court’s finding that
his second degree murder conviction could not have been based
on the felony-murder rule. And it is undisputed the jury was not
instructed on the natural and probable consequences doctrine.
Thus, Yancy’s murder conviction was necessarily based on a jury
finding that he was an actual killer of Gates or he directly aided
and abetted the actual killer. Although the record of conviction
does not disclose which theory the jury applied, it does establish
the guilty verdict was not based on a theory of imputed malice.
        As Yancy contends, the prosecutor stated in his closing
argument he could not prove it was Yancy who put the gag in
Gates’s mouth, which the coroner testified was the primary cause
of death. But, as discussed, the coroner also testified blunt force
trauma was a contributing factor in Gates’s death; and the trial
court instructed the jury pursuant to CALCRIM No. 620 there
could be more than one cause of death and an act causes death if
it is a substantial factor in causing the death.7 Thus, the jury
could have convicted Yancy as one of Gates’s actual killers
because it concluded he viciously beat Gates with a stick with the
intent to kill (express malice) or with conscious disregard for
human life (implied malice) without imputing malice to Yancy.
(See People v. Carney (2023) 14 Cal.5th 1130, 1146-1147 [finding

7     The court also instructed with language taken from
CALCRIM No. 240 (causation): “When there are multiple
concurrent causes of death, you are not required to decide
whether the defendant’s conduct was the primary cause of death,
but need only decide whether the defendant’s conduct was a
substantial factor in causing death.”

                                11
a defendant guilty of murder under a substantial concurrent
cause analysis does not involve imputing malice].)
      Similarly, if, pursuant to CALCRIM No. 401, the jury
concluded the actual killer (Brothers or Persons) acted with the
intent to kill Gates and, with knowledge of the perpetrator’s
intent, Yancy specifically intended to, and did in fact, aid in the
commission of the murder, Yancy’s conviction of second degree
murder would not be predicated on an invalid theory of imputed
malice. (See People v. Johnson (2016) 62 Cal.4th 600, 641.) But
the jury might also have convicted Yancy of second degree
murder as the aider and abettor of the perpetrator acting with
implied, not express, malice. Relying on People v. Maldonado
(2023) 87 Cal.App.5th 1257 (Maldonado), People v. Langi (2022)
73 Cal.App.5th 972 (Langi) and People v. Powell (2021)
63 Cal.App.5th 689 (Powell), Yancy contends an ambiguity in
CALCRIM No. 401 discussed in those cases, particularly when
coupled with the “equally guilty” language in CALCRIM former
No. 400, would have permitted the jury to convict him of
second degree murder by imputing the implied malice of one of
the other participants in the beating of Gates without finding
that he personally acted with an intent to kill or conscious
disregard for life, thereby precluding a determination at the
prima facie stage that he is ineligible for resentencing relief as a
matter of law.8 The record of conviction does not support Yancy’s
argument.

8     The Attorney General argues Yancy forfeited this claim
because he argued in the superior court only that the instructions
and prosecutor’s argument invited the jury to convict him for
aiding and abetting a felony murder, not that CALCRIM former
No. 400 and No. 401 allowed the jury to convict him under a

                                 12
      The Supreme Court in People v. Reyes, supra, 14 Cal.5th at
page 990 confirmed that aiding and abetting an implied malice
murder remains a valid theory of murder liability notwithstanding
Senate Bill No. 1437’s amendments to sections 188 and 189.
Quoting from Powell, supra, 63 Cal.App.5th at pages 712 to 713
(footnote omitted), the Court explained, “‘[D]irect aiding and
abetting is based on the combined actus reus of the participants
and the aider and abettor’s own mens rea. [Citation.] In the
context of implied malice, the actus reus required of the
perpetrator is the commission of a life-endangering act. For the
direct aider and abettor, the actus reus includes whatever acts
constitute aiding the commission of the life-endangering act.

theory of imputed malice. Yancy responds by citing section 1259,
which provides the appellate court may review any instruction
that affects the substantial rights of the defendant even if no
objection was made in the trial court. Section 1259 is
inapplicable. Yancy is not arguing the superior court erred in
giving CALCRIM No. 401 but that, because CALCRIM No. 401
was given and is ambiguous, the superior court erred in
concluding the record of conviction demonstrated his ineligibility
for resentencing relief as a matter of law—an entirely different
proposition. Nonetheless, because we review de novo the
superior court’s determination a petitioner failed to make a
prima facie showing of entitlement to resentencing relief under
section 1172.6, we exercise our discretion to address the issue
even though not previously raised. (See Waller v. Truck Ins.
Exchange, Inc. (1995) 11 Cal.4th 1, 24 [appellate courts have
discretion to consider questions of law based on undisputed facts
even though not raised in the trial court]; Ward v. Taggart (1959)
51 Cal.2d 736, 742 [new theory pertaining to question of law on
facts appearing in the record may be raised for the first time on
appeal]; Meridian Financial Services, Inc. v. Phan (2021)
67 Cal.App.5th 657, 699 [same].)

                                13
Thus, to be liable for an implied malice murder, the direct aider
and abettor must, by words or conduct, aid the commission of the
life-endangering act, not the result of that act. The mens rea,
which must be personally harbored by the direct aider and abettor,
is knowledge that the perpetrator intended to commit the act,
intent to aid the perpetrator in the commission of the act,
knowledge that the act is dangerous to human life, and acting in
conscious disregard for human life.’” (Reyes, at pp. 990-991.)
        Yancy does not contest the validity of a conviction for
second degree murder based on aiding and abetting an implied
malice murder, but contends, as the courts held in Maldonado,
supra, 87 Cal.App.5th at pages 1265 to 1266, Langi, supra,
73 Cal.App.5th at pages 982 to 983, and Powell, supra,
63 Cal.App.5th at page 714, that CALCRIM No. 401 (and the
substantially similar CALJIC No. 3.01), is flawed because the
instruction refers to the aider and abettor’s knowledge of the
perpetrator’s purpose, which in an implied malice case does not
include an intent to kill, and an intent to facilitate the commission
of the crime by the perpetrator without stating aiders and abettors
must themselves have known the act being aided was life-
threatening or that they must themselves have acted with
indifference to human life. Accordingly, as the Maldonado court
explained in reversing the superior court’s order finding the
petitioner had failed to make a prima facie case for resentencing
relief, although the jury “could have construed the instructions as
requiring the aider and abettor know the perpetrator intended to
commit the act and know the perpetrator acted with implied
malice—in other words, know the perpetrator knew the act was
dangerous to human life and deliberately disregarded the risk to
life,” it also could have reasonably construed the instructions to

                                14
convict the petitioner as an aider and abettor based on his intent
to encourage the perpetrator’s act whether or not he personally
knew of and disregarded the risk of death—“a theory of imputed
malice.” (Maldonado, at pp. 1266-1267.)
       Applying the reasoning of these cases, Yancy argues the jury
could have found he aided and abetted the implied malice murder
of Gates by Brothers or Persons without himself acting with
indifference to human life or intending to encourage not only the
act that caused Gates’s death but also the perpetrator’s deliberate
disregard that the act was dangerous to human life—thereby
impermissibly imputing the perpetrator’s implied malice to him.
Whatever we may think of the Powell-Maldonado line of cases,
Yancy’s analysis fails to consider his trial theory of involuntary
manslaughter and CALCRIM No. 580. As discussed, the jury was
instructed, if it found Yancy did not intend to kill Gates and did
not act with conscious disregard for human life, he was guilty, at
most, of involuntary manslaughter, not murder. The jury’s
rejection of that theory necessarily means it found he acted with
express or implied malice, even if CALCRIM No. 401, considered
in isolation, might have permitted a guilty verdict on a now-
prohibited basis.
       The equally guilty language in CALCRIM former No. 400,
even when considered in conjunction with the purported ambiguity
in CALCRIM No. 401, does not further Yancy’s argument the
superior court erred in concluding the record of conviction
established he was ineligible for resentencing as a matter of law.
The problem with the former version of CALCRIM No. 400, as
discussed in People v. Nero (2010) 181 Cal.App.4th 504, and People
v. Samaniego (2009) 172 Cal.App.4th 1148, the cases upon which
Yancy relies, is that an aider and abettor of a homicide could be

                               15
guilty of a lesser homicide offense than the perpetrator if the aider
and abettor had a less culpable mens rea. Thus, as Yancy
unsuccessfully argued in his direct appeal, the jury might have
believed Yancy participated in the attack on Gates in the heat of
passion after hearing that Gates had raped Brothers’s grandchild
but found him guilty of second degree murder because the actual
killer was not similarly provoked. The jury’s rejection of the
defense’s involuntary manslaughter theory, however, refutes
Yancy’s contention on appeal that he might have been convicted of
murder for his role in Gates’s homicide without a finding he acted
with either an intent to kill or conscious disregard for life.
       In addition, the potentially misleading language in
CALCRIM former No. 400 created, at most, a question of trial
error. It did not transform Yancy’s case into a prosecution based
on a theory “under which malice was imputed to a person solely on
that person’s participation in a crime.” (§ 1172.6, subd. (a).) To
reiterate, aiding and abetting implied malice murder was and
remains a valid theory of murder liability. Yancy’s remedy for an
erroneous instruction given during a trial for murder on theories
unaffected by Senate Bill Nos. 1437 and 775 was a direct appeal
(which he took and lost) or a petition for writ of habeas corpus, not
a petition for resentencing under section 1172.6.
       Finally, putting aside that the jury had been instructed to
disregard the references to Brothers’s conviction and life sentence
for her role in Gates’s death and that we presume the jury followed
the court’s instruction to disregard those comments (see, e.g.,
People v. Schultz (2020) 10 Cal.5th 623, 674), the jury never
learned that Brothers had been convicted of first degree murder,
whether she had been convicted on a felony-murder theory without
any finding of malice, or even that her conviction was for murder,

                                16
rather than manslaughter. Even if the jury considered CALCRIM
former No. 400’s equally guilty language, therefore, its finding
that Yancy was guilty of second degree murder could not have
been influenced by its knowledge that Brothers had been convicted
of something, let alone the basis for imputing malice from
Brothers to Yancy.
                        DISPOSITION
      The postjudgment order denying Yancy’s petition for
resentencing is affirmed.

                                    PERLUSS, P. J.

     We concur: :

           FEUER, J.

           MARTINEZ, J.

                               17