Court Opinion

ID: 9900962
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-20 21:03:26.79309+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:21:23.054816
License: Public Domain

Filed 11/20/23 P. v. Lenard CA2/1
   NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS

California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions
not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion
has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

                         SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT

                                        DIVISION ONE

 THE PEOPLE,                                                  B324751

           Plaintiff and Respondent,                         (Los Angeles County
                                                             Super. Ct. No. MA081299)
           v.

 ROBERT ERIC LENARD,

           Defendant and Appellant.

      APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los
Angeles County, Robert G. Chu, Judge. Affirmed.
      Christine M. Aros, 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, Idan Ivri and Gabriel Bradley,
Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
              __________________________________
      In September 2022, appellant Robert Eric Lenard was
convicted by a jury of the 1995 murders of Jerek Armstrong and
Tyrone Overstreet in Lancaster, California. In May 2021, Lenard
had called the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department to confess to
these murders. This confession was played for the jury.
      Lenard’s sole contention on appeal is that the trial court
erred in excluding expert testimony he wanted to present
regarding the effects of methamphetamine use and sleep-
deprivation, which testimony he contends would have supported
his argument that he had made a false confession. Because
Lenard failed to present to the jury any evidence that he had
used methamphetamines or was sleep-deprived at the time of the
confession, we hold the court did not err in excluding the
evidence. We therefore affirm.1

      FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND2

      A.     Confession
        On May 5, 2021, Lenard left his son a voicemail, stating he
was drinking and smoking and was “going to hide in the
mountains for a couple of days.” On May 8, 2021, Lenard left his
son another voicemail, claiming that a woman named Shannon
Johnson and her daughter were conspiring to kill him for “capital
gain,” after which they would “take that money and murder
y’all”; Lenard was “not gonna let that happen.”

      1 The parties also dispute whether the exclusion of the

expert testimony was harmless. Because we find the court did
not err, we do not address this issue.
      2 We limit our summary to the facts and procedural history

relevant to the issues raised on appeal.

                                 2
       Also on May 8, Lenard texted the following message to the
North Port Police Department in Florida: “I want to use this as
official evidence in the event of my demise[.] Shannon [middle
name omitted] Johnson [street address omitted] North Port FL[,]
dob [date of birth omitted] and her oldest daughter Kiara
Johnson age [age omitted] conspired for Capitol gain [sic] to have
me murder[ed]. North Port has precedence because that[’s]
where the[y] paid for the contract although the attempts were
made on my life in Ba[]ton Rouge [L]ouisiana[,] Beaumont[,]
Texas and Lake Charles[,] Louisiana[.] The contractors put a
substance in my heater core that makes you fall asleep[.] It hits
the air in a gas form but immediately sticks in cold air which
driving at night does [sic] . I had property of substantial
amounts that needed the paperwork corrected and asked
Shannon Johnson to help me[.] She claimed the property as her
own and put a contract on me[.] [T]he rest of the contract is to be
paid out of the claiming of this estate so she needs a death
certificate with my name on it.”3 Thirteen minutes later, he sent
another text message to the North Port Police Department
claiming he had bloodwork done to prove Kiara was not his
daughter, that he was headed to North Port to file a complaint
against Johnson and her daughter for “fraud conspiracy to
commit murder for Capitol gain [sic] bank theft and stalking,”
and that he was currently in Lake Charles, Louisiana where
“Kiara[’]s real dad call[s] the shots on who gets killed” and “she
plans to kill my heirs as well” and “say I left all that to Kiara
Johnson.”

      3 We omit certain identifying details in this text message

because they are irrelevant to this appeal.

                                 3
        The next day, Lenard called the Los Angeles County
Sheriff’s Department and confessed to the 1995 murders of Jerek
Armstrong and “Polar Bear.”4 He explained that, on the day of
the murders, someone had told him Armstrong was going to kill
his little brother, and so he walked up to Armstrong and, when
Armstrong said, “Hey, PB,”5 Lenard shot Armstrong, and then
shot Polar Bear. Lenard continued that, after the murders, he
was picked up by his girlfriend, Shannon Johnson, and Shannon’s
brother, Kevin. Lenard claimed that Johnson was now trying to
kill him. When asked why he was confessing, Lenard first stated
it was because he “wasn’t with killing no kid, and then they owe
me, because I ain’t one to follow the track.”6 He also agreed that
he was “just trying to get this off [his] chest to clean [him]self a
little bit,” adding that he had stopped smoking cigarettes and
“don’t get high no more.” He additionally said he was “trying to
have my conscience clean before God call me home” and that “[i]f
I don’t make it to y’all, at least I come clean.”7
        Later that night, after Louisiana law enforcement detained
him, Lenard called a woman and explained that because he had
“told the law everything,” including “her involvement in a double
murder,” law enforcement would “probably . . . come pick her

      4 During trial, a witness testified that “Polar Bear” was the

moniker for Tyrone Overstreet, one of the two victims in this
case.
      5 Presumably PB stands for Polar Bear.

      6 Earlier in his call to the Sheriff’s Department, he had

explained that Johnson was trying to kill him because “I started
getting high. And Shannon had ordered a hit on a kid, and I
wasn’t with that shit” and “[t]hey’ve been mad at me ever since.”
      7 Lenard was in Louisiana when he confessed.

                                 4
up.”8 He explained to the woman on the phone: “I got to save you
all” and “I can’t let this shit happen to you all.” He also told her
that “it’s time I get right with god.”

      B.     Pre-Trial
      In December 2021, after a preliminary hearing, Lenard was
held to answer for the murders of Armstrong and Overstreet. In
January 2022, he was charged by information with two counts of
murder; Lenard pled not guilty.
      In September 2022, before trial commenced, Lenard moved
to exclude evidence of the confession he made to the Los Angeles
County Sheriff’s Department, contending it was involuntary.
Specifically, Lenard argued that when he made his statements to
the Sheriff’s Department, he “was under auditory hallucinations
or delusions or paranoia based on the fact that he was under the
influence of meth and lack of sleep.” In support of his motion,
Lenard submitted a document containing questions posed to Dr.
George Elias, a psychiatrist, regarding the effects of
methamphetamine use and lack of sleep, and Elias’s answers
thereto. The parties stipulated that if Elias were called to testify,
he would testify consistently with the answers provided to the
court. The document included a question of what “the

      8 Lenard told the woman he was speaking with that “she”

was likely to be booked because he had “told of her involvement.
Her and Kevin’s.” He also stated that he “told them that she was
[an] accomplice” and an “accessory after the fact.” From the
context of the conversation, and Lenard’s earlier statements to
the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department that Shannon and her
brother Kevin had picked him up after the murders, the “she”
and “her” in this conversation appear to refer to Shannon
Johnson, not the woman Lenard was speaking with.

                                 5
combination of meth use and lack of sleep [would] do to a person’s
ability to make rational decisions” and Elias’s answer that “Meth
use itself can induce psychosis. Meth use + sleep deprivation can
accelerate and enhance the problem.” The document also
included a question about whether “the use of meth and lack of
sleep [could] cause a person to believe that they did something
even though in reality they didn’t” and Elias’s answer that
“Individuals can hold various false beliefs in the context of a
psychotic state, including believing they did something they did
not do.” No one asserted, and there is no evidence in the record
showing, that Elias ever examined Lenard.
       Lenard testified at the hearing that, before he called the
Sheriff’s Department on May 9, 2021, he had used
methamphetamines “for approximately seven or eight days” and
that he had not slept between April 31 and May 7, at 3:00 a.m.,
when he slept for three hours.9 Lenard admitted to using
methamphetamines “three times a week” since 2000. The court
did not find Lenard’s confession to be involuntary, and denied the
motion.
       Lenard’s counsel then asked that statements he made to
law enforcement regarding other, uncharged murders be
excluded; the court agreed “unless the defendant testifies.”

      9 Lenard’s counsel then asked, “So, essentially, from May

7th to May 9th of 2021, total hours of sleep you had was three
hours?” Lenard responded, “Yes, sir. Correct.” It is unclear from
the record whether counsel intended to ask whether Lenard had
slept for three hours from May 1 to May 9, or whether this was a
new area of inquiry as to how much Lenard slept from May 7 to
May 9 (when he made the phone call to the Sheriff’s
Department).

                                6
Lenard’s counsel stated he was unsure whether Lenard would
testify but, if he did, the defense intended to call Elias. The court
responded that if Lenard testified, “Dr. Elias’s testimony would
become relevant at that time, and the court would allow” him to
testify in that case.

      C.     Trial
      A five-day jury trial took place between September 13 and
September 19, 2022. Seven witnesses testified for the
prosecution; one witness testified for the defense.
      Of relevance to this appeal, the police officer who detained
Lenard in Louisiana testified that he had been a police officer for
ten or eleven years at the time of detention, had been trained on
the behavior of individuals under the influence of drugs, and
observed nothing in Lenard’s behavior to cause him to believe
Lenard was under the influence of methamphetamines when
detained. A search of Lenard’s person at that time also revealed
no methamphetamines.
      Additionally, one of the police officers who listened to
Lenard confess telephonically testified he had been trained to
recognize the effects of methamphetamines, had spoken with
people high on methamphetamines “several hundred times” in
his career, and had never had such a person “just come out of the
blue and confess to a murder.”
      Finally, Lenard’s 24-year-old son testified that he received
two voicemails from his father on May 5 and May 8, 2021, in
which his father sounded “intoxicated,” although he did not know
on what substance his father may have been intoxicated.
Lenard’s son testified that he had previously spoken to his father
when he was under the influence of “hard drugs,” “like
methamphetamine, crack cocaine, [or] heroin,” and when he

                                  7
heard the two voicemails, he believed his father was under the
influence of drugs. When asked what made him believe this, he
testified it was because his father said “he was going to hide in
the mountains” and because his father “was paranoid.” Lenard’s
son did not otherwise testify about his father’s
methamphetamine use, and did not testify about his father being
sleep-deprived. There was no other testimony from anyone
regarding Lenard’s methamphetamine use, and no testimony
about any sleep-deprivation that Lenard was allegedly suffering
from.
       Though Lenard chose not to testify, his counsel
nevertheless asked the court to permit Elias to testify about
“what meth use . . . and lack of sleep does to [a] person’s state of
mind.” Lenard’s counsel explained that he intended to use that
testimony “to argue that, at the time of the phone call [Lenard
made confessing to the murders], Mr. Lenard was under the
influence of meth and hadn’t slept for eight straight days; and
that because of that, he was not acting rationally.” The court
denied the request, finding Elias’s testimony irrelevant because
“there’s been no evidence presented to the jury that the
defendant didn’t have any sleep or was using meth for the past
eight straight days.” After the admission into evidence of the two
text messages Lenard sent to the North Port Police Department,
the defense rested.
       In closing, Lenard’s counsel argued that his confession was
fabricated, stemming from Lenard’s “irrational belief that his life
was in danger” and, “with this irrational belief, he thinks that by
confessing to things he didn’t do, and if he got in police custody,
[that] would mean he and his family are safe.” His counsel
explained that Lenard was “trying to implicate Shannon

                                 8
Johnson,” and “trying to get her arrested, taken into custody so
that, in his mind, she can’t kill his family, his heirs, as he talks
about in his text[] messages and in his voicemails.” His counsel
highlighted perceived discrepancies between Lenard’s confession
and the physical evidence and suggested alternative channels
through which Lenard could have learned how the murders were
committed. His counsel pointed out that no physical evidence
tied Lenard to the murders and “the only thing that we have is
this false confession from a man who was going through
something at the time, whether he was under the influence of
some kind of a substance, whether he was having a mental
breakdown, we don’t know.”
       After the jury began deliberating on the morning of
September 19, 2022, they requested a laptop to “listen to the
CDs.”10 The court provided them with the requested laptop.
Soon thereafter, they reached a verdict, finding Lenard guilty of
both counts of first degree murder, and finding true that he used
a handgun in the crimes. In October 2022, the court sentenced
Lenard to fifty years to life, plus another eight years (for use of a
firearm in two felonies), to run consecutively. Lenard timely
appealed.

                          DISCUSSION
      “No evidence is admissible except relevant evidence.”
(Evid. Code, § 350.) “ ‘The trial court has broad discretion in
deciding whether to admit or exclude expert testimony [citation],
and its decision as to whether expert testimony meets the

      10 All the audio clips presented during trial were on CDs.

                                  9
standard for admissibility is subject to review for abuse of
discretion.’ ” (People v. Brown (2014) 59 Cal.4th 86, 101.)11
       The Evidence Code defines “proffered evidence” as
“evidence, the admissibility or inadmissibility of which is
dependent upon the existence or nonexistence of a preliminary
fact,” and provides that “[t]he proponent of the proffered evidence
has the burden of producing evidence as to the existence of the
preliminary fact, and the proffered evidence is inadmissible
unless the court finds that there is evidence sufficient to sustain
a finding of the existence of the preliminary fact, when [¶] . . .
[t]he relevance of the proffered evidence depends on the existence
of the preliminary fact.” (Evid. Code, §§ 401, 403, subd. (a)(1).)
       Elias’s testimony regarding the effects of
methamphetamine use and sleep-deprivation was relevant only if
Lenard had presented evidence that he had used
methamphetamine and was sleep-deprived. Lenard claims he
presented such evidence, citing to: (1) his son’s testimony that he
had spoken with his father when his father was under the
influence of “hard drugs,” “like methamphetamine, crack cocaine,
[or] heroin,” and that in his father’s voicemails to him on May 5
and May 8, 2021, his son thought he sounded intoxicated; (2)
Lenard’s text messages to the North Port Police Department that
a substance had been put in his heater core that would make
someone fall asleep; and (3) his statement to the Los Angeles

      11 Lenard claims that “where a defendant’s constitutional

rights are affected by the exclusion of relevant evidence, an
appellate court applies a de novo standard of review, according
the trial court no deference.” Because, as discussed herein, we
hold the trial court did not exclude relevant evidence, we need
not address Lenard’s contention.

                                10
Sheriff’s Department that Johnson was trying to kill him because
he “started getting high.”12 We are unpersuaded. At most, this
evidence may have supported an inference that Lenard was
under the influence of some unknown substance and was
experiencing paranoid delusions when he left the voicemails for
his son and texted the North Port Police Department. But this
evidence did not support an inference that he had been using
methamphetamines or was sleep-deprived at all, let alone that he
had used methamphetamines or was sleep-deprived in any
significant amount. Therefore, Lenard failed to establish the
preliminary facts necessary to make relevant Elias’s testimony
regarding the effects of methamphetamine use and sleep-
deprivation, and the trial court did not err in excluding that
testimony.13

      12 We note that in the same call, he also told the Sheriff’s

Department that he had stopped getting high.
      13 Thus, we find misplaced Lenard’s reliance on People v.

Caparaz (2022) 80 Cal.App.5th 669. In Caparaz, the appellate
court found the trial court had erred in excluding expert
testimony that the defendant was a “highly suggestible
individual” and “highly susceptible to giving a false confession
under the stress of police interrogation” because such testimony
was relevant to whether the defendant’s statements to police
were reliable. (Id. at pp. 681, 684–685.) But in Caparaz, there
was no dispute that the expert had examined the defendant to
determine whether he was “especially susceptible to giving a
false confession” and that the defendant had in fact made
statements to police. (Id. at p. 681.) Here, by contrast, there was
no evidence presented to the jury that Lenard was using
methamphetamines or was sleep-deprived at the time of his
confession.

                                 11
                       DISPOSITION
     The judgment is affirmed.
     NOT TO BE PUBLISHED

                                     CHANEY, J.

We concur:

             ROTHSCHILD, P. J.

             WEINGART, J.

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