People v. Pineda

222 Cal. Rptr. 3d 269, 14 Cal. App. 5th 469, 2017 WL 3474811, 2017 Cal. App. LEXIS 706
CourtCalifornia Court of Appeal, 5th District
DecidedAugust 14, 2017
DocketB267885
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 222 Cal. Rptr. 3d 269 (People v. Pineda) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering California Court of Appeal, 5th District primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Pineda, 222 Cal. Rptr. 3d 269, 14 Cal. App. 5th 469, 2017 WL 3474811, 2017 Cal. App. LEXIS 706 (Cal. Ct. App. 2017).

Opinions

BAKER, J.

*471A jury found defendant Armando Pineda, Jr. (defendant) guilty of second degree murder for shooting the patriarch of a neighboring family, *472Rogelio Islas (Rogelio).1 Defendant was 17 years old at the time of the crime, and the Los Angeles *271County District Attorney directly filed the charge against him in a court of criminal jurisdiction, rather than a juvenile court. Owing to that filing decision and the subsequent repeal of "direct file" procedures effected by Section 4 of the Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act of 2016 (Proposition 57), we must decide an issue pending on our Supreme Court's docket: whether the changes worked by Section 4 apply to defendant because his conviction is not yet final. In the unpublished portion of our opinion, we also consider defendant's additional assignments of error: the trial court abused its discretion by denying his motion to continue the trial, the court should have instructed the jury on third party flight as consciousness of guilt (both defendant and his father fled the scene of the crime, and the defense at trial was that the father was the shooter), and the court should have given defendant's proposed pinpoint instruction on provocation as relevant to voluntary manslaughter.

I. BACKGROUND

A. The Offense Conduct

On several occasions during the two years that preceded Rogelio's killing, members of the Pineda family (i.e., defendant's family) and the Islas family (i.e., Rogelio's family) argued and, at times, engaged in fisticuffs. Both families lived on the same street in Compton (one house apart), and naturally, each family believed it was in the right and the other family was responsible for the ongoing trouble.

On the day defendant shot Rogelio in June 2014,2 trouble began around 2:30 in the afternoon. Defendant, his girlfriend Katherine Bautista (Bautista), and his sister Connie had plans to visit another of defendant's sisters. They were preparing to leave for the visit in an SUV parked between the Pineda and Islas family homes. Defendant's father, Armando Pineda, Senior (Senior), had arrived home at about the same time, and he drove past Rogelio standing outside his home without incident.

According to Connie and others in the Pineda family, defendant was in the process of putting his child into a car seat in the SUV when Rogelio insulted defendant and both men then began arguing. Connie and Bautista attempted *473to convince defendant to stop arguing and get in the SUV-physically holding defendant back at one point. While defendant and Rogelio were arguing, Senior came outside.

The only eyewitnesses to what happened next were defendant and members of his family; they would later claim Senior pulled a gun on Rogelio and shot him multiple times. But there were several witnesses not associated with either family who heard what happened.

Oscar Ibarra (Ibarra) lived in the house between the Pineda and Islas homes, and he heard a woman say in a scared voice, "No, Junior. Don't do it," followed by multiple gunshots two or three seconds later. (Because defendant and his father shared the same name, defendant was often called "Junior." Defendant's mother also referred to defendant as "Papa.") Maria Soto, an off-duty police officer who was visiting the home next to the Islas family's house, heard a woman scream "no, poppy, no" in Spanish and then the sound of shots fired.

Another neighbor who lived two houses down from the Islas family home, Gustavo Silva (Silva), heard the gunshots and *272looked out his window. Seconds later, Silva heard Connie frantically say, "No, Junior. No. You don't do that. Why did you do that?" Silva then saw someone (he could not see who) pushed into a waiting SUV, which then "burned rubber" driving away from the scene. In the meantime, the other neighbor, Ibarra, had seen defendant run toward the SUV. Although Ibarra could not see defendant enter the vehicle, defendant was no longer in the area after the SUV drove off at high speed.

When the SUV raced away, defendant, Senior, and Bautista (and defendant's infant daughter) were inside; Connie was left behind. Silva saw Connie get on her cell phone and heard her say: "Mom, he killed him. He killed him. What do I do?"; and then, "Junior. Junior. Junior. Junior killed him. What do I do?"3 This, however, was not Connie's own account of the phone call. She said she called her mother a minute or two after the shooting and said, "Mom, my dad just shot the neighbor." Connie's mother remembered the phone call in the same way, i.e., with Connie identifying her father, not defendant, as the killer.

Connie also sent text messages after the shooting, including a 3:02 p.m. message to her then-boyfriend. (The content of that text message was not offered into evidence at trial-a topic we will return to momentarily.)

*474Connie's boyfriend called her back after receiving the text message and she told him "her dad just shot the neighbor."4

Law enforcement investigation following the shooting determined Rogelio had been shot five times, including two shots that were fatal (one to the back of the head and another to the lower back). Initially, Connie, Bautista, and defendant's mother did not tell the police that Senior was the culprit in Rogelio's murder. They advised the police that Senior was the shooter only later, during interviews approximately seven months after the killing.

B. The District Attorney Charges Defendant With Murder, and the Trial Court Denies a Defense Motion to Continue the Trial

At the time of Rogelio's murder, California law allowed prosecutors to file murder charges against a defendant over 16 years old directly in a court of criminal jurisdiction, meaning a court assigned responsibility for adjudicating charges against adult offenders rather than a juvenile court. (Former Welf. & Inst. Code, § 707, subds. (b)(1), (d)(1), added by Stats. 1975, ch. 1266, § 4, as amended by Prop. 21, § 26, approved March 7, 2000.) Using this "direct file" procedure, the Los Angeles County District Attorney in October 2014 charged defendant with Rogelio's murder in a court of criminal jurisdiction.

During the proceedings that ensued, defendant was initially represented by retained counsel. At a court appearance in December 2014, the trial court relieved retained counsel at defendant's request and appointed the public defender to represent defendant. The court advised defendant that his new attorney would need time to get up to speed on the case, and defendant agreed to continue the trial date to allow counsel to do so.

*273At a pretrial conference in March 2015, the trial court set May 5, 2015, as the trial date. The court also scheduled a discovery compliance hearing on April 2, 2015, and a pretrial conference on April 17, 2015.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
222 Cal. Rptr. 3d 269, 14 Cal. App. 5th 469, 2017 WL 3474811, 2017 Cal. App. LEXIS 706, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-pineda-calctapp5d-2017.