P. v. Yancy
Filed 7/23/12 P. v. Yancy CA2/7
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts
and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or
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IN
THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
SECOND
APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION
SEVEN
THE PEOPLE,
Plaintiff and Respondent,
v.
CHRISTOPHER YANCY,
Defendant and Appellant.
B228563
(Los Angeles
County
Super. Ct.
No. PA058905)
APPEAL from
a judgment of the Superior Court
of Los Angeles County,
Harvey Giss, Judge. Affirmed.
Mark Allen
Hart, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Kamala D.
Harris, Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General,
Lance E. Winters, Assistant Attorney General, Victoria B. Wilson, Supervising
Deputy Attorney General, Noah P. Hill, Deputy Attorney General, for Plaintiff
and Respondent.
_____________
A jury convicted Christopher Bernard Yancy of
allegation he had used a deadly or dangerous weapon. On appeal Yancy contends the court erred in
denying his request for a mistrial after the jury was told Yancy’s codefendant
had been convicted and was serving a life sentence. Yancy also argues the court’s instruction to
the jury on aiding and abetting in accordance with former CALCRIM No. 400
was prejudicial error. We affirm.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
1. The
Information
Yancy was
charged in an information with murder (Pen. Code, § 187, subd. (a)).
used a deadly and dangerous weapon within the meaning of section 12022,
subdivision (b)(1), in committing the offense.
Yancy pleaded not guilty and denied the special allegation.
2. The
Evidence at Trial
Beatrice Brothers lived in her
own home with her adult son, Sidney Cole, and his young children. Brothers’s childhood friend, Bobby Gates,
lived with his girlfriend, Catherine Hoskins, in a converted garage in the back
of Brothers’s house. Brothers’s
daughter, Lachelle Robinson, and Robinson’s daughter, Mimi, lived in a house
across the street.
In the
early morning of December 5, 2005, Cole woke up Robinson 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, knocked on Brothers’s door. They had come at Brothers’s request. Brothers told Robinson, Yancy and Persons
that Gates had molested one or more of her grandchildren.
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. When Yancy 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. The deputy coroner acknowledged his autopsy
report identified no damage to Gates’s anus.
However, he had not checked the area carefully because he had had no
information that Gates had been sodomized.
He also testified the body had been so badly burned it would have been
difficult to confirm that fact in any event.
The People
presented four different theories to support a charge of murder as to
Yancy: (1) Yancy himself committed the murder; (2) he
aided and abetted the murder; (3) he committed torture, a felony (§ 206)
that resulted in Gates’s death; or (4) he aided and abetted the torture,
resulting in death. Either of the last
two theories would qualify the offense as first degree felony murder.
Yancy did
not testify at trial. His defense theory
was that, at most, he was guilty of manslaughter, either voluntary manslaughter
based on heat of passion or involuntary manslaughter based on a misdemeanor
3. Jury
Instructions
The jury was instructed with
CALCRIM Nos. 520 (murder); 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);
522 (provocation reducing first degree murder to second degree or voluntary
manslaughter); and 580 (involuntary manslaughter based on misdemeanor battery). The jury was also instructed with former
CALCRIM No. 400 (general principles of aiding and abetting), which advised
the jury 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”
and CALCRIM No. 401 (aiding and abetting:
intended crimes).
4. The
Verdict and Sentence
The jury
found Yancy guilty of second degree murder and found true the special
allegation he had used a deadly weapon in committing the offense. Yancy was sentenced to an aggregate state
prison term of 16 years to life.
DISCUSSION
1. The
Trial Court Did Not Err in Denying Yancy’s Mistrial Motion
a. Relevant
proceedings
Brothers, Yancy and Persons were
tried separately for their respective roles in Gates’s homicide.
direct examination, Robinson explained she could not remember details of the
incident. After several unsuccessful
attempts at eliciting testimony from her about the killing, the court deemed
her to be a hostile witness and permitted the prosecutor to refer to her prior
testimony in Brothers’s case. The trial
court then advised the jury that Robinson was “being questioned regarding her
testimony at the trial of Beatrice Brothers.
I read to the jury already before the trial began and I’ll read it
again, the evidence will show that another person or persons may have been
involved in the commission of the crime charged against the defendant. There may be many reasons why someone who
appears to have been involved might not be a codefendant in this particular
trial. You must not speculate about
whether that person or those other persons have been or will be
prosecuted. Your duty is to decide
whether the defendant on trial here committed the crime against him.”
“Now this
is the testimony from 2010 proceedings in March of this year in the trial of
Beatrice Brothers. You are not to
concern yourself with the verdict in that particular case. It would be hearsay. It’s irrelevant to these proceedings. And there may have been different issues
connected with that case than . . . with this particular case. But so that you don’t scratch your head and
jump to conclusions that are inappropriate, I’m giving you this background information
to tell you we’ve already had one trial against one person named as a defendant
before this trial began. And that’s
where this testimony is coming from, or alleged testimony regarding this
witness’s statements made at that particular proceeding.”
After the
prosecutor asked Robinson whether she had testified at her mother’s trial six
months earlier, Robinson blurted out, “Yeah.
[T]hat’s a big shocker. Has your
mother ever been sentenced to life in prison”
Yancy immediately moved for a mistrial.
The court denied the motion and admonished the jury to disregard the
comment. The court invited Yancy’s
counsel to prepare an additional admonishment to the jury to supplement the
court’s warning if she thought it necessary.
Yancy’s counsel did not prepare an additional instruction.
Later,
during cross-examination of Paul Gliniecki, the deputy medical examiner,
defense counsel referred to Gliniecki’s prior testimony in an earlier trial
involving the attack on Gates. After the
court confirmed the testimony was from Brothers’s trial, defense counsel
questioned the court’s reference to Brothers, explaining she had thought they
were not allowed to identify the defendant in the prior trial. The court responded, “All right. [It] [c]ame out yesterday when [Robinson]
testified that her mother had been convicted in the trial as one of the
defendants in this case.” The court
reiterated its admonition that references to a defendant in a prior trial are
to have “no impact or significance in any way whatsoever upon [the jury’s]
independent determination in this case, because the defendants are different,
and testimony might be different as it relates to specific defendants in the
case.” Defense counsel resumed her
questioning of the witness.
Later that
afternoon, after the jury had been dismissed for the day, defense counsel made
a second request for mistrial based on the court’s statement that Brothers had
been convicted in the prior trial.
Defense counsel argued Robinson had said her mother was serving a life
sentence, but had never stated she had been convicted for Gates’s death. The court denied the motion, once again
inviting defense counsel to prepare her own curative statement if she felt the
several the court had already given were inadequate. Defense counsel did not prepare any additional
statement.
b. The
challenged comments were cured by the court’s careful admonitions to the jury
The trial court should grant a
mistrial “only when a party’s chances of receiving a fair trial have been
irreparably damaged.” (
555; accord, People v. Gonzalez (2011)
52 Cal.4th 254, 291 [“we have stated that a trial court should grant a mistrial
only if the defendant will suffer prejudice that is incurable by admonition or
instruction”].) We review the trial court’s
ruling denying a mistrial for abuse of discretion. (Bolden,
at p. 555; People v. Ayala (2000)
23 Cal.4th 225, 282.)
Yancy
contends the court should have granted a mistrial after it told the jury
Brothers had been convicted in her earlier trial based on the same attack. Evidence regarding the disposition of a
codefendant’s case is not admissible to prove the guilt of a defendant. (People
v. Cummings (2009) 4 Cal.4th 1233, 1322; People v. Leonard (1983) 34 Cal.3d 183, 188-189; see
787, 795 [“[t]he rationale for this rule is that a guilty plea or conviction of
a participant is irrelevant to whether another person was positively and
correctly identified as a coparticipant, and merely invites the inference by
association”].)
Here,
Robinson’s outburst and the court’s mistaken reference to it as having informed
the jury Brothers had been convicted were each followed by detailed admonitions
to the jury not to consider any disposition in Brothers’ trial in considering
Yancy’s guilt. The court carefully
explained to the jury there may have been different issues connected with
Brothers’s case and the evidence in the two trials could be different. We presume the jury followed those
admonitions and find no error. (See
p. 292 [“Here the trial court struck Berber’s testimony and properly admonished
the jury. Although Soliz asserts the
admonitions were inadequate, we see no basis for the assertion and presume, as
always, that the jury followed the court’s instructions. [Citation.]
We therefore conclude the trial court did not err in denying Soliz’s
motion for mistrial.”]; see generally People
v. Waidla (2000) 22 Cal.4th 690, 725 [jury presumed to follow court’s
instructions and admonitions].)
2. Instructing
the Jury with Former CALCRIM No. 400, While Erroneous, Was Not Prejudicial
Yancy contends the trial court
erred when it instructed the jury with a former version of CALCRIM No. 400,
which told the jury a person is “equally guilty of the crime whether he or she
committed it personally or aided and abetted the perpetrator who committed it.”
were tried together on murder charges, that instructing an aider and abettor
and a perpetrator are “equally guilty” is error when the degree of the homicide
depends on the defendant’s mental state.
In such a case “an aider and abettor may be guilty of greater
homicide-related offenses than those the actual perpetrator committed” if the
aider and abettor had a more culpable mens rea than the perpetrator. (Id. at
p. 1114 [recognizing a scenario in which the perpetrator could have committed
voluntary manslaughter in the heat of passion with the assistance of his
coparticipant, who, rather than acting in the heat of passion, harbored implied
malice].)
Extending
the Supreme Court’s analysis, Division Two of this court in
Cal.App.4th 1148 and Division Three in People
v. Nero (2010) 181 Cal.App.4th 504 held instructing that an aider and
abettor and a perpetrator are “equally guilty” was also improper in a homicide
case to the extent it did not recognize an aider and abettor could be guilty
not only of a greater, but also a lesser homicide offense than the
perpetrator. (Samaniego, at p. 1165; Nero, at
p. 510.)
We agree
the instruction is erroneous to the extent it suggests a defendant can 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.
each of the defendants—he, Persons and Brothers—had become enraged after
hearing accusations Gates had sexually abused Brothers’s grandchildren. It was Yancy’s theory that each had acted
under the influence of that passion during the sustained attack on Gates.
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. Accordingly, any
error in instructing with former CALCRIM No. 400 in this case was harmless
beyond a reasonable doubt. (See
779, 797 [an instruction that “omits or misdescribes an element of a charged
offense” is reversible constitutional error unless it is harmless beyond a
reasonable doubt]; People v. Samaniego,
supra, 172 Cal.App.4th 1148, 1165.)
DISPOSITION
The
judgment is affirmed.
PERLUSS,
P. J.
We
concur:
WOODS,
J.
JACKSON,
J.
references are to the Penal Code unless otherwise indicated.
was convicted of first degree murder in a trial that concluded prior to Yancy’s
trial. This court reversed Brothers’s
first degree murder conviction in People
v. Brothers (Dec. 12, 2011, B225376) [nonpub. opn.]) based on instructional
error and remanded the case for a new trial.
