Court Opinion

ID: 9785897
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 22:45:47.243734+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:35.676326
License: Public Domain

CHIN, J., Concurring and Dissenting.
I concur in the majority’s initial holding that the trial court erred in refusing to permit a defense presence at the jury revisit of the crime scene. Generally, given the potential for confhsing the jurors or exposing them to new or misleading evidence, the defendant and his or her counsel should be allowed to accompany the jury to visit or even revisit a crime scene. But only sheer speculation supports the majority’s additional holding that the error was prejudicial and requires overturning defendant’s murder conviction. As I explain, the evidence against defendant was extremely strong—and there were no other suspects. Only defendant had the proven motive, means, and opportunity to kill Deborah Gregg. Equally important, defendant fails to show how he or his counsel could have done anything significant to help the defense obtain a more favorable verdict had they been present at the jury revisit. The initial jury visit occurred nearly a year and a half after Gregg’s murder, and even defense counsel admitted it was impossible satisfactorily to reconstruct the scene.
No trials are perfect—evidentiary or procedural errors are bound to occur. But the California Constitution requires us to affirm all convictions, despite such errors, in the absence of a miscarriage of justice, i.e., if no reasonable probability exists that the error affected the judgment. (See Cal. Const., art. VI, § 13; People v. Watson (1956) 46 Cal.2d 818, 837 [299 P.2d 243].) Where is the miscarriage of justice here? How probable is it under the facts in this case that defendant or his counsel could have obtained a more favorable verdict had they been invited to accompany the jury on its revisit of the crime scene?
The majority adequately states the facts, but here are the highlights of the strong case against defendant:
*8091. The ongoing dispute—Defendant had a long-standing dispute with Gregg concerning the possible encroachment of Gregg’s trailer, well, and fence on his property. Despite a survey seeming to confirm Gregg’s ownership of the disputed property, defendant continued to believe she was encroaching. Gregg and defendant each filed complaints against the other relating to the other’s property and the uses being made of it. Gregg complained defendant was doing illegal work on the creekside property; defendant asserted Gregg’s trailer and well encroached on his property, preventing him from fencing it.
Eventually, defendant sued Gregg for trespass and encroachment. The parties seemed to settle the suit amicably by selecting an agreed boundary, but Gregg filed complaints with a game warden and a state inspector regarding defendant’s various activities, and the conflict heated to the point where Gregg filed a cross-complaint alleging defendant’s encroachment, nuisance, trespass, and slander of title. This bitter and prolonged dispute of course provides significant evidence of defendant’s motive to kill Gregg.
2. Defendant’s threats—Defendant threatened to harm Gregg, whom he described to one witness as a “bitch.” At a meeting between various landowners in the neighborhood, including Gregg and defendant, some neighbors heard defendant threaten to make Gregg “disappear,” calling her his “enemy,” and saying that any enemy of his regretted it. Mumaw, a construction worker, related that defendant, evidently referring to Gregg, told him a “lady in a trailer” was causing him legal problems and “they don’t know who they’re messing with.” Snapping his fingers, defendant also told Mumaw that for $500 he “could make someone disappear like that.”
Gregg was well aware of defendant’s animosity toward her, once asking a neighbor to accompany her when she went to speak with him. Her cross-complaint alleged that defendant had threatened her by bragging that he “used to be a street fighter” and that “anyone who becomes my enemy will regret it.”
3. Gregg murdered while standing on defendant’s property—A week after Gregg filed her cross-complaint, sheriff’s deputies found her body lying on defendant’s side of the fence located on the disputed boundary that divided their properties. Gregg was killed by shotgun blasts, evidently while working on or repairing the fence. The deputies found two shotguns and scores of shotgun shells at defendant’s home, although these shells were not *810of the type found at the crime scene. According to inmate Villalba, defendant told him that the deputies took the wrong shotgun and “would never find the gun” used to kill Gregg because defendant “had gotten rid of it.”
4. Defendant’s feigned surprise and disinterest—Although defendant was informed of Gregg’s death three days earlier, he nonetheless feigned surprise when sheriff’s deputies told him that her body had been found on his own property. Also, defendant expressed no curiosity about where Gregg’s body was found or how she had been killed. He later explained that such matters were of no concern to him.
5. No other suspects—Defendant failed to present evidence of any other persons who might have a motive, means, or opportunity to kill Gregg. As the majority acknowledge, “Gregg’s neighbors knew of no one else with whom Gregg had had a disagreement.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 805.) The majority refer to “a substantial limitation” on a defendant’s right to introduce evidence of a third party’s culpability (id. at p. 805), but certainly defendant had the right to implicate anyone linked by “direct or circumstantial evidence” to Gregg’s murder. (E.g., People v. Sandoval (1992) 4 Cal.4th 155, 176 [14 Cal.Rptr.2d 342, 841 P.2d 862].) Yet he introduced no such evidence.
In short, no evidence was presented that anyone but defendant had the motive (the heated ongoing dispute, accompanied by threats), the means (possession of, and familiarity with, several shotguns), and the opportunity (the murder occurred on defendant’s own property) to kill Gregg. Given the foregoing facts pointing exclusively to defendant as Gregg’s killer, I ask again, how probable is it under the facts in this case that defendant or his counsel could have obtained a more favorable verdict had they been invited to accompany the jury on its revisit of the crime scene?
At the initial jury visit to the crime scene, defendant was not personally present, and defense counsel evidently raised no objection to the status of the scene at that time and made no requests to limit the jury’s conduct or observations of the scene. What would he or his client have done differently at the jury revisit? The majority speculates that defense counsel might have objected to any “improper experiments” the jurors may have conducted, or any faulty reconstruction of the crime scene, but of course no evidence exists of any material experiments or scene reconstructions that might have actually prejudiced defendant.
*811Under the facts of this case, it is simply inconceivable the jury would have reached a different verdict had counsel or his client been present at the jury revisit. Accordingly, I would affirm the judgment.
Werdegar, J., concurred.