Court Opinion

ID: 9851384
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:11:40.186366+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:54.786960
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J.
I concur in affirming the judgment as to guilt, but dissent from reversal of the special circumstance finding.
*308I
The majority go astray at the outset of their analysis by assuming that “The only possible exception” to the Carlos rule of reversal “which might possibly apply” is the so-called Cantrell-Thomton exception. (Ante, p. 306.) This mistaken premise leads the majority into the tangled thicket of factual questions that must be answered in every Cantrell-Thomton inquiry, e.g., whether defendant presented all the evidence at his command to negate intent to kill, and whether his evidence was “worthy of consideration.” Yet as the majority concede, in this case the intent issue is raised “in a perverse fashion” (ante, p. 306). In all our previous Carlos-Garcia cases—including the pair cited by the majority (People v. Anderson (1985) 38 Cal.3d 58 [210 Cal.Rptr. 777, 694 P.2d 1149], and People v. Ramos (1984) 37 Cal.3d 136 [207 Cal.Rptr. 800, 689 P.2d 430])-the defendant presented at least some evidence to support his claim that he did not have an intent to kill; here, by contrast, defendant presented no exculpatory evidence and strenuously argued the exact opposite, i.e., that he did intend to kill his victim. In these circumstances it is not surprising that the majority have much difficulty and little success in applying a Cantrell-Thomton analysis to the facts at hand.
The effort is unnecessary, moreover, because the case fits easily into a different exception to the Carlos rule. I refer of course to the exception that the United States Supreme Court recognized in Connecticut v. Johnson (1983) 460 U.S. 73, 87 [74 L.Ed.2d 823, 834, 103 S.Ct. 969] (plur. opn.)- and we reiterated in People v. Garcia (1984) 36 Cal.3d 539, 554 [205 Cal.Rptr. 265, 684 P.2d 826]—for cases in which the defendant conceded the issue of intent. The majority acknowledge but brush aside this exception with the remark, “Obviously, however, the court was not addressing a situation where the ‘concession’ is triggered by an erroneous perception that it costs nothing and may, indeed, be to the defendant’s advantage.” (Ante, p. 306, fn. 12.) With respect, the remark misses the point. It is true that in pre-Carlos cases the defendant’s perception of a concession of intent may have been “erroneous” in the narrow sense that he did not actually know he could defend against a charge of felony-murder special circumstance by contesting the intent issue. But it was not erroneous in a larger, objective sense: since our decision in People v. Green (1980) 27 Cal.3d 1 [164 Cal.Rptr. 1, 609 P.2d 468], the question whether such a concession “costs nothing” or—more important—may “be to the defendant’s advantage” depends entirely on the state of the evidence. As I shall show, on the record of this case the concession was to defendant’s advantage.
I begin by recalling an important point that our recent decisions seemed to have lost from view: in administering the first two exceptions to the Carlos rule of reversal recognized in Garcia, we are applying federal law, *309not state law. We made this plain in Garcia when we stressed that “To avoid possible misunderstanding, we reiterate that we decide the present case on the basis of federal precedent” (36 Cal.3d at p. 554, fn. 10), and expressly took no position on what we would do in the absence of such “controlling federal authority” (ibid.). That authority, of course, is primarily Connecticut v. Johnson, supra, where we found the two exceptions in question. It therefore behooves us to reread what that opinion said on the subject. After declaring the general principle that the error “may be harmless if the defendant conceded the issue of intent” (460 U.S. at p. 87 [74 L.Ed.2d at p. 834]), the high court went on to explain with some care: “In presenting a defense such as alibi, insanity, or self-defense, a defendant may in some cases admit that the act alleged by the prosecution was intentional, thereby sufficiently reducing the likelihood that the jury applied the erroneous instruction as to permit the appellate court to consider the error harmless. [Citation.] We leave it to the lower courts to determine whether, by raising a particular defense or by his other actions, a defendant himself has taken the issue of intent away from the jury.” (Ibid.)
In this passage the Supreme Court makes no new law; it simply recognizes a fact of trial life, i.e., that in certain cases a defendant may find it necessary or expedient to concede one element of the crime in order to make his defense to the charge as a whole. For example, when the prosecution evidence tends to show an intentional killing and the defense is self-defense, the defendant may choose to lend credibility to his claim that “it was either him or me” by expressly conceding that he intentionally killed in order to save his life. In that event, as the Supreme Court reasons, the likelihood that the jury actually applied an erroneous instruction withdrawing the element of intent from the case is so small that an appellate court can hold the error harmless.
Contrary to the majority here, the Supreme Court does not condition the validity of the defendant’s concession of intent on his knowing the instruction was in fact erroneous. Indeed, to impose that condition would nullify the exception: in all cases tried before the decision declaring the instruction erroneous (here, Carlos), defendants could plausibly claim on appeal that they conceded intent solely or even partly because they did not know of the error; if that lack of knowledge were dispositive, the exception would always be inapplicable. Thus the result of the majority’s approach in the case at bar is to impute to the Supreme Court—and to this court in Garcia—an intent to erect an exception that would never be applied.
This anomaly may be avoided by simply taking the Supreme Court at its word: we should review the record “to determine whether, by raising a particular defense or by his other actions, [the] defendant himself has taken *310the issue of intent away from the jury.” (460 U.S. at p. 87 [74 L.Ed.2d at pp. 834-835].) In this case the task is not difficult.
From the majority’s own recital of the facts it is clear the prosecution introduced ample evidence that defendant intended to kill Randy Watkins. Defendant’s strong feelings of jealousy towards his wife’s lover, and his consequent desire for revenge, supplied the motive. The method was his plan to accost and kill Randy as he was making the night deposit near the store where he worked. It is incredible to believe that defendant and his wife travelled the 226 miles from Reno to Modesto for the purpose of robbing a small convenience store, or that it was purely coincidental defendant’s sworn enemy worked at that particular store and was the person who carried its receipts to the bank. If robbery had been defendant’s intent, there were hundreds of potential and more affluent victims on the long route from Reno to Modesto. Yet all were overlooked in order to get to this store and this victim.
In addition, numerous eyewitnesses testified to admissions by defendant of his intent to kill Randy. Defendant’s wife recounted that before arriving on the scene of the shooting he said, “Tonight is the night I am going to get even with you for what you have done to me.” He told her he was going to get into Randy’s car, make him drive someplace else, and kill him. Defendant in fact entered Randy’s car and shot him in the face at close range. A week later defendant told Danny Haggerman that he had gone to Modesto “to blow someone away”; that he jumped into a parked car, and before the person inside could say anything he pulled the trigger and shot him in the head; and that he would kill anyone if he had a grudge against them. Still later defendant told Beverly Deeter that he had gone to Modesto to kill someone named Randy; that he did so because Randy had raped his wife Donna; that Donna had told him about the rape; and that he killed Randy at the bank and took the money to make it look like a robbery rather than a murder.
On this state of the evidence, defendant’s best if not only hope of dissuading the jury from finding true the charged robbery-murder special circumstance—thus exposing him to the death penalty—was to rely on our decision in People v. Green, supra, 27 Cal.3d 1, 59-62. In Green we held (at p. 61) that a robbery-murder special circumstance is impermissible under the statute “when the defendant’s intent is not to steal but to kill and the robbery is merely incidental to the murder . . . because its sole object is to facilitate or conceal the primary crime.”
As the majority acknowledge, defendant’s decision to present a Green defense was apparent throughout the trial. In his opening statement his coun*311sel admitted defendant killed Randy and told the jurors their task would be “to decide whether or not this was a killing that occurred during the course of a robbery or, in the alternative, was this a murder in which during the course of that murder, at the end of that murder, a theft was committed.” During the taking of evidence counsel refrained from challenging on cross-examination any of the prosecution testimony recounting defendant’s admissions of intent to kill. And in his closing argument, as the majority quote at length {ante, p. 305), he repeatedly relied on that testimony as proof that defendant’s “intent was to kill Randy Watkins.” From this premise counsel argued vigorously that although his client was guilty of murder, it was not a murder intended to facilitate or conceal a primary crime of robbery, and hence would not support a finding of robbery-murder special circumstance.
This was an eminently rational defense. Its legal basis was our decision in Green; its factual basis was prosecution testimony from which, if it had chosen to do so, the jury could reasonably have inferred that the robbery in this case was merely incidental to the killing and hence would not support the only special circumstance alleged. For good and sufficient reasons, therefore, defendant chose to concede the issue of intent in order to make his most plausible defense on the facts as they unfolded. This is precisely the scenario contemplated by the Supreme Court in Connecticut v. Johnson, and in the words of that opinion, defendant’s express concession of intent “thereby sufficiently reduc[es] the likelihood that the jury applied the erroneous instruction as to permit [this] court to consider the error harmless.” (460 U.S. at p. 87 [74 L.Ed.2d at p. 834].) (Accord, People v. Allen (1985) 165 Cal.App.3d 616, 628-629 [211 Cal.Rptr. 837].)
To invoke this exception when it is plainly warranted will, like the Cantrell-Thomton exception, “avoid a meaningless retrial.” (Garcia, supra, at p. 556 of 36 Cal.3d.) Here retrial would be an aimless exercise: even though defendant now knows of his right to contest the issue of intent to kill, he would still have no reason to do so if a retrial were ordered. This is so because in such a proceeding the jury would be given the now-standard instruction to find the robbery-murder special circumstance allegation to be true only if the murder occurred during the commission of a robbery and both the following are proved: (1) defendant intended to kill (Carlos) and (2) the murder was committed for the purpose of facilitating or concealing the robbery (Green). (CALJIC No. 8.81.17 (1984 rev.).) Defendant could contest either of the latter elements of the People’s case, but he could not plausibly contest both: he could not plausibly tell the jury that he did not intend to kill at all and that he killed for the purpose of (i.e., with the intent of) facilitating or concealing the robbery. Under a correct statement of the law, therefore, defendant would still have to choose between a Carlos de*312fense and a Green defense; nothing we say or do here can relieve him from having to make that tactical decision. And because the prosecution would put on the same evidence of his intent to kill, defendant’s best chance of success would still be the Green defense. It is sheer fantasy to speculate that he might abandon that defense in favor of a desperate assault on the credibility of each of the numerous prosecution witnesses who testified to his admissions of intent to kill, supported by strong circumstantial evidence.
II
The majority also err by considering on this guilt issue defendant’s testimony at the penalty phase. (Ante, pp. 306-307, fn. 13.) For the right to do so they rely exclusively on People v. Ramos, supra, 37 Cal.3d at page 148. But the opinion in Ramos gives neither statutory nor case authority, nor reasoned analysis, to justify this step: it merely refers to Ramos’s penalty phase testimony in its Garcia analysis without explaining why it was proper to do so. The issue was simply not addressed in the opinion, and it is settled that “Cases are not authority for propositions not considered.” (In re Tartar (1959) 52 Cal.2d 250, 258 [339 P.2d 553], and cases cited.)
Before the nonauthority of Ramos on this point is elevated into a precedent by an unthinking repetition of the procedure in this case, we should stop and inquire whether we are making good law.1 I know of no other serious instructional error in the guilt phase of a capital trial that can be cured by relying on testimony given later at the penalty phase. And the reason is plain: when an appellate court holds such an error harmless, it is expressing its opinion that even if the correct instruction had been given it is reasonably probable (or probable beyond a reasonable doubt, etc.) that the jury would have reached the same verdict because of the other evidence and instructions before the jury—ox more precisely, that a rational trier of fact would have reached the same verdict if it had known what this jury knew. But in its deliberations in the guilt phase of a capital trial no jury knows what evidence or instructions will be given in the penalty phase, if it in fact reaches that phase. Indeed, much of the latter evidence would be highly prejudicial to the defendant at the guilt phase; it is therefore inadmissible at that phase, and the whole apparatus of trying a capital case in separate stages is designed precisely to prevent the jury from considering such evidence on the issue of guilt. Yet even though the jury would not have heard this evidence in the guilt phase, the majority nevertheless consider it in determining what *313the jury would have done if it could have heard it. This is not reasoning, but guesswork.
Not only is the procedure inconsistent with the whole theory of the harmless error rule, it is unfair to defendants facing the supreme penalty. In the guilt phase of their trials such defendants have the constitutional right to stand mute and require the state to prove its case without their help. By contrast, if they are found guilty of a potentially capital crime, it is often their best hope in the penalty phase to admit the offense and express their remorse; any lack of that emotion will usually be exploited to the full by the prosecutor. Under the majority’s new rule, however, defendants who exercised their right not to testify in the guilt phase might be reluctant to admit that intent in the penalty phase and express remorse, for fear that the admission will be used against them by this court if we find the intent instruction erroneous. The same chilling effect would be felt by those who, in the exercise of their right to put on the defense of their choice, chose to deny intent to kill in the guilt phase. We would never think of using this procedure for other errors: for example, we would never hold that an error in a guilt-phase alibi instruction can be cured by the defendant’s admission in the penalty phase that in fact he was at the scene of the crime, or that an error in a guilt-phase self-defense instruction can be cured by his admission in the penalty phase that he did initiate the combat. How then can we justify a different rule when the error is in the crucial instruction on intent?
For the reasons stated in Part I, I would uphold the special circumstance finding in this case.

I address the point not so much for this case as for future automatic appeals that raise the Carlos-Garcia error, a number of which are pending before us; the point relates particularly to the Cantrell-Ihornton analysis, a frequent issue in such appeals. As explained in Part I, however, we need not reach that analysis in this case.