People v. Ditto CA4/1

CourtCalifornia Court of Appeal
DecidedJune 12, 2014
DocketD062645
StatusUnpublished

This text of People v. Ditto CA4/1 (People v. Ditto CA4/1) 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. Ditto CA4/1, (Cal. Ct. App. 2014).

Opinion

Filed 6/12/14 P. v. Ditto CA4/1 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.

COURT OF APPEAL, FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION ONE

STATE OF CALIFORNIA

THE PEOPLE, D062645

Plaintiff and Respondent,

v. (Super. Ct. No. SCD233038)

DAVID PATRICK DITTO,

Defendant and Appellant.

APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of San Diego County, Kenneth

K. So, Judge. Affirmed.

Allen R. Bloom for the Defendant and Appellant.

Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Julie L. Garland, Assistant

Attorneys General, William M. Wood, Megan J. Beale, Deputy Attorneys General for the

Plaintiff and Respondent. A jury convicted David Patrick Ditto of the first degree murder of his wife, Karina

Ditto (Karina).1 (Pen. Code,2 § 187, subdivision (a).) The court sentenced him to 25

years to life in state prison.

Ditto contends: (1) it was error for the jury not to receive evidence purportedly

showing that Karina's heart was beating, and she was not cold, when paramedics arrived

at the crime scene; and (2) the trial court erroneously allowed paramedics and nurses to

opine regarding Karina's time and cause of death, and that Ditto was a liar and guilty of a

crime. We affirm the judgment.

FACTUAL BACKGROUND

Prosecution Case

Raymond McQueen, a firefighter and paramedic, testified that on March 12, 2011,

he and a team of paramedics and firefighters responded to a call at 12:35 a.m., and

arrived at the Ditto residence at 12:40 a.m.3 McQueen saw one of Ditto's arms covered

in blood. Karina was covered in blood and lying on the floor. McQueen testified Karina

felt cold to the touch: "With falls or even patients who we normally get in CPR status,

there's blood flowing throughout your body, which keeps you at a normal temperature . . .

1 We refer to the victim by her first name to avoid confusion; we mean no disrespect.

2 All statutory references are to the Penal Code unless otherwise stated.

3 On cross-examination, defense counsel questioned McQueen about more precise times mentioned in a computer aided dispatch system report (CAD) that listed the firefighters' dispatch time as 29 seconds later and the arrival time at the Ditto residence as being 55 seconds later than McQueen had testified about on direct examination. McQueen agreed that the times stated in the CAD report were more precise. 2 depending on each patient. You can feel that temperature with the back of your hand

even through the vinyl gloves that we wear. [¶] Upon my initial assessment, right when

we walked in, the skin signs is one of the main things—one of the first things that we

check for, one of the first vital signs that we can assess. And I noticed that [Karina] was

a little bit colder than what I would have expected." The prosecutor asked McQueen,

"[W]as it unusual, in your experience, to have someone that you were called for an injury

and to have them be hypothermic at their core within a half an hour?" McQueen

answered in the affirmative, and agreed with the prosecutor that a person's body

temperature generally takes "some time" to drop.

A recording device attached to a cardiac monitor captured the conversation among

the first responders as they treated Karina. The jury heard the recording, in which Ditto

was asked, "How long has she been down?" Ditto replied, "Two minutes." Asked if he

had heard Karina fall, Ditto replied, "She was here. And I came to her. And she wasn't

moving. And I was talking to her, talking to her, and then, and then she, she came to, and

she started moving around so, I (unintelligible) and then she started, she started, she

stopped. And I was trying to get her to come to and she wouldn't. She—she stopped.

And so I started doing CPR and then realized—then I realized I should call 911. So I

called 911. And then she came back and then . . . . " Fire Captain Steven Bixler asked

Ditto, "Was she talking to you?" Ditto replied that Karina was "like mumbling."

McQueen testified, "just by looking at [Karina] I could tell it was going to be more

than a fall. . . . it looked like we were going to be dealing with a CPR." McQueen

continued, "[N]ormally, with falls—or at least in my experiences with the falls I've seen,

3 the patient is usually alert and talking to us. If they're not, they may be in an altered state

where they're a little bit confused, but this is the first time I've seen a fall that resulted

directly in a patient going into CPR status." McQueen noted, "I've never seen a fall that

resulted directly in asystole. Based on that cardiac rhythm, that's a completely dead

heart. Especially with the lack of respirations, the patient is completely dead. [¶] We

don't even see that on [victims of] car accidents. For me personally that raised a red flag

with a fall from a stairs, without [the victim having] any prior heart history or prior

medical problems."

McQueen conducted a rapid trauma assessment of Karina. He testified this case

was unusual in that, "there was just blood everywhere. There was no active bleeding that

we saw, but there was a lot of blood. We couldn't tell where it was coming from, even on

the rapid exam." Another paramedic, Timothy Olson, examined Karina and concluded

based in part on her eyes, which were fixed and dilated, that she had lost oxygen to the

head for longer than six minutes. The prosecutor asked Olson, "The time frame that you

were given by Mr. Ditto, did that coincide with the . . . different factors that you noted,

being fixed pupils, the dried blood, lack of active bleeding and the coagulation of the

blood?" Olson answered in the negative, explaining: "Based on the fact that she did

have the asystole and the fixed and dilated pupils, for a heart to go into a lethal rhythm,

you're looking at six to seven minutes before you start developing brain damage. [¶] As

those pupils were dilated and she was already in asystole, where the heart was in a

nonviable rhythm, there was nothing—we couldn't even electrically change her heart rate.

We had to mechanically pump her chest and give her a medication that would increase

4 her electrical ability of the heart. [¶] So you're looking at six to seven minutes just for

the brain and the body to start going hypoxic."

Captain Bixler started to do compressions on Karina shortly upon their arrival at

the residence. Additionally, paramedics gave Karina medication intravenously and

supplied her with oxygen. After approximately nine minutes, and just as paramedics

were about to declare Karina legally and clinically dead, her heart resumed beating, but

not "to the point where it was producing a pulse with perfusion or blood." Paramedics

removed Karina from the floor and put her in an ambulance. McQueen observed that the

blood underneath her body had formed "like a wavy pattern." McQueen testified, "From

my experience, in terms of what we've seen, it would—with the swish marks, the way the

blood was, it indicated movement." Paramedics took Karina to the hospital. McQueen

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People v. Ditto CA4/1, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-ditto-ca41-calctapp-2014.