P. v. Hall
Filed 11/7/13 P. v. Hall CA3
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
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opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for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
THIRD APPELLATE
DISTRICT
(Sacramento)
----
THE PEOPLE,
Plaintiff and Respondent,
v.
RICARDO LYNN HALL,
Defendant and Appellant.
C072558
(Super. Ct. No. 10F00911)
In the
early morning of January 23, 2010,
in Del Paso Heights, 18-year-old defendant Ricardo Lynn Hall shot victim Mathew
Maurizzio twice from three to four feet away, including fatally in the heart. The circumstances of the shooting were
these: Maurizzio had about $1,000 on him
and wanted to buy drugs. When defendant
learned about the money, he and two friends talked about robbing the
victim. Defendant, with a gun in hand,
demanded money from the victim. The
victim pushed past defendant. Defendant
said the victim had disrespected him, and defendant’s friend yelled at
defendant, “ ‘don’t do that.’ †Defendant shot the victim anyway.
About eight
months before defendant shot the victim,
defendant told a friend, “he wanted to know what it felt like to kill
somebody,†just after he had unsuccessfully tried to choke a cat.
At trial in
this case, defendant testified on his own behalf that there had been some
discussion about a drug swap between one of his friends and the victim. The victim walked past defendant but then
stopped. Defendant had a gun in his
pocket “in case something happened.†Defendant’s
friend told defendant to give him the gun, and as defendant pulled it out, he
noticed the victim staring at him. The
victim started coming at defendant. Defendant
earlier had been told that the victim had a knife, so defendant thought the
victim was going to stab him. Defendant
had been stabbed in the past.
A jury
found defendant guilty of first degree
murder with the special circumstance that it was committed during an
attempted robbery and found him guilty of attempted robbery. The jury also found true that defendant
committed both crimes by personally discharging a firearm. The trial court sentenced him to life without
the possibility of parole for the special circumstance murder.
Defendant
appeals, raising two evidentiary issues and two sentencing issues. We will strike the parole revocation fine and
affirm the judgment as modified.
DISCUSSION
I
Admitting Evidence Defendant Told His Friend That He Wanted To Know What It
Felt Like To Kill Somebody
Defendant
contends the court violated his federal constitutional
that eight months before the murder, defendant told his friend “he wanted to
know what it felt like to kill somebody,†just after he had unsuccessfully
tried to choke a cat. The court admitted
the evidence as relevant to show defendant’s intent to kill in this case. We find no abuse of discretion. (See People
v. Coffman and Marlow (2004) 34 Cal.4th 1, 76 [routine application of state
evidentiary law does not implicate a defendant’s constitutional rights];
337 [a trial court’s rulings on admission of evidence are subject to review for
abuse of discretion].)
Defendant’s
statement was “relevant evidence†because it had a “tendency in reason to prove
or disprove any disputed fact that is of consequence to the determination of
the action.†(Evid. Code, §210.) The fact of consequence was defendant’s
intent to kill the victim, because intent to kill was an element of the murder
committed here. That fact of consequence
was disputed because in closing argument, defense counsel argued there were
many reasons to believe defendant was not guilty of murder, among them that defendant
did not intend to kill the victim. Defense
counsel acknowledged the existence of defendant’s statement in his closing, but
he argued to the jury the evidence was introduced to evoke “passion against
[defendant].â€
Not so,
because the trial court’s decision to admit the evidence was also not an abuse
of discretion under Evidence Code section 352.
That code section allows a trial court to “exclude evidence if its
probative value is substantially outweighed by the probability that its
admission will . . . create substantial danger of undue prejudice, of confusing
the issues, or of misleading the jury.â€
Here, the evidence that defendant tried to choke a cat to death was
mitigated by the relatively benign description of the act at trial. Namely, defendant’s friend testified only
that defendant “caught the cat, he grabbed the cat and he tried to choke it,
and the cat’s stretching his hand and stuff, and he dropped it. And that’s when the conversation started
talking about it.†He added that the cat
scratched defendant, which was when defendant dropped the cat. Without a description of the context in which
defendant’s statement was made, the statement would have made little sense. The trial court therefore did not abuse its
discretion in admitting this evidence at trial.
II
Discretion To Exclude
Drug Addict In The Past
Defendant
contends the court violated his federal constitutional right to a fair trial
when it excluded state-of-mind evidence that six or seven months prior to the
murder, defendant had been stabbed by a crack addict in the same area where the
murder occurred. The trial court sustained
the People’s relevancy objection, stating the following: “[T]he Court rejects the defense desire to
say that since there’s testimony that the victim was using drugs, that
everybody who is associated with drug use is in that category and that third
party threats or violence directed towards the defendant are admissible in
front of the jury.†The trial court was
well within its discretion to exclude this evidence. (See People
v. Coffman and Marlow, supra, 34
Cal.4th at p. 76; People v. Harris,
The case on
which defendant relies, People v.
the defendant (Minifie) had shot a member of the Knight family in self-defense.
He was not prosecuted for the killing. Several years later, he encountered Tino, an
associate of the Knight family and a pallbearer at the deceased’s funeral, in a
bar. Tino challenged Minifie, asking, “ ‘So
it was you?’ †(Id. at p. 1060.) Tino then
punched Minifie, knocking him down, and threatened to hit him with a crutch. Minifie fired shots at Tino, wounding him and
another man. At trial, Minifie claimed
he acted in self-defense. (
Knight family and their associates had an extensive reputation for violence,
that Minifie and his wife had been repeatedly threatened by friends of the
Knights, and that associates of the Knight family killed Minifie’s friend. (Id.
at pp. 1061-1063.) On appeal, the
California Supreme Court concluded exclusion of the evidence was prejudicial
error. (Id. at pp. 1060, 1071.) The
reputation of the “ ‘Knight crowd’ †was offered to explain Minifie’s state of
mind and exclusion of the threats to Minifie limited his essential right to
argue that his actions were justified. (
This case
is distinguishable from Minifie. Here, there was no evidence the past stabbing
involved the victim or any of his associates.
As the trial court correctly noted, the fact that defendant has been
stabbed previously by a drug addict in the same neighborhood did not make all
drug addicts in that neighborhood (including the victim) part of a category of
people who stab others. The trial court
was well within its discretion to limit the details of the stabbing.
III
Unusual
Defendant
contends, as he did in the trial court, that his life-without-parole sentence
was cruel and/or unusual punishment under the federal and state Constitutions. He notes that he was 18 years and three
months old at the time of the shooting, and while an adult, he was still
relatively youthful and came from a broken home and had his own substance abuse
problems and untreated mental health issues.
The Eighth
Amendment to the United States Constitution proscribes “cruel
v. California (2003) 538 U.S. 11, 20 [155 L.Ed.2d 108, 117], italics added.) Article I, section 17 of the California
Constitution proscribes “cruel or unusual punishment.†Although this language is construed separately
from the federal constitutional ban on “cruel and unusual punishment†(People
v. Carmony (2005) 127 Cal.App.4th 1066, 1085), the method of analysis is
similar: the reviewing court considers “the
nature of the offense and/or the offender, with particular regard to the degree
of danger both present to societyâ€; the comparison of “the challenged penalty
with the punishments prescribed in the same jurisdiction for different
offensesâ€; and the comparison of “the challenged penalty with the punishments
prescribed for the same offense in other jurisdictions . . . .†(In re
Lynch (1972) 8 Cal.3d 410, 425-427, italics omitted.) We are not required by state or federal law to
engage in the second and third prongs of the analysis. (People
v. Weddle (1991) 1 Cal.App.4th 1190, 1196-1198.) The purpose of this analysis is to determine
whether the punishment is “so disproportionate to the crime for which it is
inflicted that it shocks the conscience and offends fundamental notions of
human dignity.†(Lynch, at p. 424, fn. omitted.)
Here, the
trial court found the sentence of life without parole appropriate, given that the
crime “involve[d] great violence†of shooting the victim “right in the heart,â€
the use of a gun that was taken to the scene by defendant, and a defendant who
was on juvenile probation and who had prior juvenile adjudications. The record showed the following with respect
to defendant’s juvenile adjudications: Defendant
had misdemeanor adjudications for unlawfully causing a fire that caused great
bodily injury and for repeatedly falsely identifying himself to police officers. He had felony adjudications for stealing
items from Sears and a grocery store.
He had repeated violations of probation.
All of this evidence militates against a finding that defendant’s sentence
was cruel and/or unusual. Added to these
facts were additional ones before the court, including that since his
incarceration on this case, defendant had been involved in 31 incidents, with
19 classified as major, including hiding shanks in jail, and three separate
assaults on inmates, one which included a gang-related sexual assault.
Under these
circumstances, we cannot say that a sentence of life without the possibility of
parole for a senseless murder at close range committed by an 18-year-old who
had a prior juvenile record and was on juvenile probation at the time was “so
disproportionate to the crime for which it is inflicted that it shocks the
conscience and offends fundamental notions of human dignity.†(In re Lynch,
supra, 8 Cal.3d at p. 424.)
IV
Defendant
argues, and the People concede, that the judgment must be modified to strike a
$10,000 parole revocation fine that was imposed and suspended pursuant to Penal
Code section 1202.45. “When there is no
parole eligibility, the [parole revocation] fine is clearly not applicable.†(People
v. Samaniego (2009) 172 Cal.App.4th 1148, 1184.) Because defendant was sentenced to life in
prison without parole, he is not eligible for parole, and the parole revocation
fine must be stricken. (
318, 380.)
DISPOSITION
The
judgment is modified to strike the parole revocation fine. The clerk of the superior court is directed to
prepare an amended abstract of judgment and forward a copy to the
As modified, the judgment is affirmed.
ROBIE , J.
We concur:
NICHOLSON , Acting P. J.
DUARTE , J.
name="_ftn1" title="">[1]
Defendant’s parents were
unmarried and his father is incarcerated for murder. Both his mother’s and father’s parental
rights have been terminated, and defendant spent much of his childhood in and
out of group homes. He smoked marijuana
and cocaine daily. At the time of
sentencing, defendant had a two-year-old son.
Since his incarceration, defendant has been taking medication for
depression.
