PEOPLE v. TATE



















Filed 7/8/10











IN THE SUPREME
COURT OF CALIFORNIA







THE PEOPLE, )

)

Plaintiff
and Respondent, )

) S031641

v. )

)

GREGORY O. TATE, )

) Alameda
County

Defendant
and Appellant. ) Super.
Ct. No. 93308

__________________________________ )

A jury found defendant Gregory O. Tate
guilty of the first degree murder of
Sarah LaChapelle. (Pen. Code,
§§ 187, 189.)[1] The jury also found that defendant personally
used a dangerous and deadly weapon, a knife (§ 12022), and that
robbery-murder and burglary-murder special circumstances were true
(§ 190.2, subd. (a)(17)).
Defendant was sentenced to death.
This appeal is automatic. We will
affirm the judgment in its entirety.

I.
FACTS

A. Guilt trial.

1. Prosecution case.

Around
8:00 p.m. on Monday, April 18, 1988, Tanya DeLaHoussaye paid a
brief visit to Sarah LaChappelle in Sarah's home on Hesket
Road in Oakland.[2] Sarah's burgundy Oldsmobile Cutlass was
parked in her driveway. Sarah was
wearing a nightgown and said she planned to lie down because she had a cold.

At
11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, April 19, 1988, Anthony LaChapelle,
Sarah's son, went to her home and noticed her Cutlass was not in the
driveway. The front door was open,
though the outer screen door was closed.
Anthony went in and found his mother dead on the living room floor,
dressed in a nightgown. Her body had
been impaled with a butcher knife and a barbecue fork. Her ring finger had been cut off and was
lying near her body. A chair had been
turned over, items had been tossed about, and the room was in disarray. There was a hole in the back door. Anthony called 911.

An
autopsy confirmed that a knife was embedded in the victim's back, and a
barbecue fork was stuck in the side of her neck. She had multiple stab wounds on her back,
buttocks, and neck, some inflicted by a knife different from the one lodged in
her back. There also were incised, or slicing, wounds on
her left shoulder, right index finger, and right thumb. Her back and face exhibited numerous puncture
wounds, caused by something small and sharp entering the body, including one
such wound that had penetrated her eye.
In all, her body had 24 stab wounds and 28 puncture wounds. These wounds had caused damage to her ribs,
voice box, pericardial sac, heart, torso, neck, back, right jugular vein, right
chest cavity, right lung, vertebral column, left kidney, abdominal cavity, and
left buttock, and well as the tendons and muscles of her right hand. As noted, her ring finger had been detached
from her hand, and she had damage to the adjacent third and fifth fingers. She had also suffered multiple blunt force
injuries, including defensive wounds, to her head, face, arms, and torso. Her upper jaw was fractured, and teeth had
been knocked out. The examining
pathologist opined that the victim was alive, though not necessarily conscious,
at the time these injuries were inflicted.

The
victim had a telephone cord wrapped around her wrists and torso. There was a 10-inch tear on the front of her
nightgown, which had been lifted above her waist. The evidence indicated that the assailant had
made a forced entry through the back door, that a bloody struggle had occurred
in the living room, that the assailant thereafter left bloody traces, including
bloody footprints, throughout the house while looking for items to steal, and
that the murder weapons were knives and tools found in the victim's home.

Defendant's
grandmother lived across the street and three houses down from the victim's
residence. Also living in the
grandmother's house were defendant's mother, his brother, his aunt, and several
other relatives. According to defendant's
aunt, he sometimes lived with the family at his grandmother's house, but he was
not living there on the day of Sarah's murder.

Around
6:00 p.m. on April 19, 1988, Oakland
patrol officers Sullivan and Boyovich were parked on Kingsland
Avenue.
They spotted a burgundy Oldsmobile Cutlass that was on the stolen
vehicle list. They stopped the vehicle,
which was the victim's car. Defendant
was driving. He was arrested. The interior of the Cutlass contained a small
carving knife and a pair of red pants, as well as a radio-television and a
videocassette recorder (VCR) that had been taken from the victim's home.

After
initial resistance, defendant was handcuffed and placed in the police car. Once seated in the police vehicle, he
volunteered that he had gotten the Cutlass from â€