People v. Cotton CA2/5

CourtCalifornia Court of Appeal
DecidedJanuary 4, 2016
DocketB260222
StatusUnpublished

This text of People v. Cotton CA2/5 (People v. Cotton CA2/5) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering California Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Cotton CA2/5, (Cal. Ct. App. 2016).

Opinion

Filed 1/4/16 P. v. Cotton CA2/5 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.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

SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION FIVE

THE PEOPLE, B260222

Plaintiff and Respondent, (Los Angeles County Super. Ct. No. GA031646) v.

DUANE COTTON,

Defendant and Appellant.

APPEAL from an order of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, William C. Ryan, Judge. Affirmed. California Appellate Project, Jonathan B. Steiner and Richard B. Lennon for Defendant and Appellant. Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General, Gerald A. Engler, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Lance E. Winters, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Victoria B. Wilson, Supervising Deputy District Attorney General, Noah P. Hill and Garett A. Gorlitsky, Deputies Attorney General for Plaintiff and Respondent. Defendant Duane Cotton (defendant) is serving a Three Strikes life sentence following his 1998 felony conviction for eavesdropping in violation of Penal Code1 section 632. In December 2012, defendant filed a petition for recall of sentence pursuant to section 1170.126, which was enacted as part of Proposition 36. The trial court denied the petition, finding defendant ineligible for resentencing because he was armed with a deadly weapon during the commission of the underlying offense. Defendant challenges that finding, contending that the court improperly relied on portions of the trial transcripts that he argues are unconnected to the sole count on which the jury found him guilty. We consider what evidence constitutes the record of conviction for purposes of assessing an inmate’s eligibility for resentencing under section 1170.126, and whether that record supports the trial court’s finding of ineligibility in this case.

BACKGROUND I. The Offense Conduct2 An eight count amended information filed in February 1998 charged defendant with committing multiple criminal acts against his former fiancé, J.M., including stalking, forced oral copulation, assault with a taser, eavesdropping with an electronic recording device during a confidential communication, and two counts each of making terrorist threats and misdemeanor vandalism. The information alleged defendant had suffered three prior convictions for robbery within the meaning of section 1170.12, subdivision (a) and section 667, subdivisions (b) through (i) (the Three Strikes law). More relevant for our purposes, the forced oral copulation count of the information included an allegation that defendant was armed with a box cutter during the commission of the offense. (§ 12022.3 [sentence enhancement for a person armed with a firearm or deadly weapon

1 All undesignated statutory references that follow are to the Penal Code. 2 We take the following factual summary from the trial court’s memorandum of decision on defendant’s petition for recall of sentence and our opinion in defendant’s appeal from his conviction. (People v. Cotton (July 12, 1999, B121762) [nonpub. opn.].) 2 during the commission of the offense].) Defendant pled not guilty and denied the special allegations. Trial was to a jury. At trial, J.M. testified about her relationship with defendant and the events that resulted in the criminal charges against him. J.M. stated that she began dating defendant in 1994. The couple eventually moved in together, and they got engaged in 1996. According to J.M., after they decided to get married, defendant became “possessive, insecure, and jealous.” When J.M. told defendant she wanted to end the relationship, he held a knife to her throat and threatened to “beat [her] ass until [her] mother didn’t know who [she] was.” Defendant moved out of their home in November of 1996. The two continued to have confrontations, causing J.M. to obtain a restraining order against defendant; she was unable, however, to successfully serve him with the order. On December 4, 1996, defendant asked J.M. to come to his sister’s apartment to retrieve some paperwork involving their home. J.M. reluctantly agreed. J.M. testified that upon entering the living room, defendant slammed the door shut and locked it. Defendant grabbed J.M. by the neck, pulled out a box cutter, and threatened to “beat [her] ass.” Holding the box cutter to J.M.’s throat, defendant threatened to “slash [her] up.” He then ordered J.M. to remove her clothes and “wash up” in the bathroom. Defendant told J.M. he wanted her to fulfill his sexual fantasies and he had J.M. state into a voice recorder that she was acting of her own free will. J.M. complied and proceeded into the bedroom where she orally copulated him. Unbeknownst to J.M., defendant recorded the sexual encounter in the bedroom with a videocamera. J.M. eventually escaped from the apartment. She screamed for help and asked a neighbor to call the police. Monrovia Police Department Officer Manuel responded to a call regarding the foregoing incident. J.M. initially told Officer Manuel that defendant had forced her to undress and held her against her will. Later, J.M. informed the officer that defendant held a box cutter to her neck. The officer cursorily searched the apartment but did not find a box cutter. J.M. refused to answer most of the questions asked by the officer while he was

3 investigating the call, including whether she had sex with defendant in the apartment. Officer Manuel did not write a police report regarding the incident because he did not believe he was getting the whole story. W.R. Ireland, a detective with the Pasadena Police Department, testified she was assigned to investigate the case. On March 24, 1997, pursuant to a search warrant, Detective Ireland searched the apartment where the incident occurred. The detective recovered a wallet containing a box cutter from a closet shelf. The box cutter was shown to the jury and admitted into evidence during trial. Defendant testified in his defense. He admitted to surreptitiously videotaping the sexual encounter with J.M., claiming he did so in order to defend himself if J.M. later claimed the sexual interaction was not consensual. Defendant denied committing the other charged crimes and specifically denied threatening J.M. with the box cutter. Defendant also testified he carried a box cutter in his wallet because he used it to unwrap boxes while working as a truck driver for a food distribution company.

II. Defendant’s Conviction and Sentencing The jury convicted defendant of electronic eavesdropping on a confidential communication, acquitted him of vandalizing J.M.’s car tires, and hung on all the other counts charged in the information. Because the jury did not reach a verdict on the forcible oral copulation count, it did not consider the charged allegation that defendant was armed with a box cutter in the commission of that offense, and thus made no finding on that issue one way or the other. The court declared a mistrial on the counts on which the jury hung, and later dismissed those counts. At defendant’s sentencing hearing, the trial court stated, “This was not simply a videotaping of a confidential communication, but this was a videotaping that was done with a weapon. I’m going to find that Mr. Cotton did in fact use the knife in the other room of the apartment.” The court continued, “I’m aware of the fact the jury did not unanimously agree that a forcible oral copulation took place. I’m not necessarily stating

4 here that I believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the forcible oral copulation took place. But there was an act of violence committed by Mr. Cotton upon Ms. [M.]with a weapon that lead to Ms. [M.] going into the bedroom.

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Bluebook (online)
People v. Cotton CA2/5, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-cotton-ca25-calctapp-2016.