People v. Wright CA4/1

CourtCalifornia Court of Appeal
DecidedApril 15, 2022
DocketD078840
StatusUnpublished

This text of People v. Wright CA4/1 (People v. Wright 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. Wright CA4/1, (Cal. Ct. App. 2022).

Opinion

Filed 4/15/22 P. v. Wright 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NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.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, D078840

Plaintiff and Respondent,

v. (Super. Ct. No. INF1702085)

JOHN DAVIS WRIGHT, JR.,

Defendant and Appellant.

APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Riverside County, John M. Davis, Judge. Affirmed as modified with directions. Mark Alan Hart, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant. Rob Bonta, Attorney General, Lance E. Winters and Julie L. Garland, Assistant Attorneys General, Robin Urbanski and Genevieve Herbert, Deputy Attorneys General for Plaintiff and Respondent. A jury convicted John Davis Wright, Jr. of inflicting injury to Jane Doe

(Pen. Code,1 § 273.5, subd. (a); count 2), and found true an allegation that he personally inflicted great bodily injury on Doe (§ 12022.7). The jury acquitted Wright of charges of premeditated attempted murder (§§ 664/187, subd. (a)) and false imprisonment (§ 236). Wright later entered a guilty plea to making criminal threats (§ 422; count 4) after the jury was unable to return a verdict on that count. In a separate bench trial, the court found true allegations that Wright had two strike prior convictions (§§ 667, subds. (c), (e)(1); 1170.12, subd. (c)(1)), two prior convictions within the meaning of section 667, subdivision (a), and three prior prison terms (§ 667.5, subd. (b)). It sentenced Wright to 25 years to life on count 2, struck the additional punishment for the great bodily injury allegation, and imposed a four-year midterm on count 4, which it stayed under section 654. The court struck the five-year enhancements for the prior prison terms. It ordered Wright to pay various fines, fees and assessments, including a $514.58 booking fee imposed under Government Code section 29550. Wright contends the court prejudicially abused its discretion by permitting the People to present an expert—a forensic nurse examiner—who testified without sufficient foundation that Doe had been strangled. He further contends the judgment should be modified to credit him with 1284 days in custody. The People concede the latter point, and we agree that it is appropriate to modify the judgment to correct the award of custody credits. Based on changes in the law, we further vacate any portion of the booking fee that remained unpaid as of July 1, 2021. We otherwise affirm the judgment.

1 Undesignated statutory references are to the Penal Code. 2 FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND The Incident In November 2017, Doe and Wright were in a relationship and engaged to be married. Doe lived in a house with her children in Desert Hot Springs, where Wright would sometimes stay overnight. On the morning of November 27, Doe and Wright were arguing over the volume of the television when Wright got up, charged at Doe, “picked [her] up like a rag doll” and slammed the back of her head into the wall several times. Wright yelled and screamed that Doe had made him do this, while Doe asked him to stop and asked why he was acting this way. Doe’s head left three holes in the wall. She fell to the floor, where Wright kicked and stomped on her with his bare feet while she tried to protect her head. Wright paused and paced around, repeating that Doe had made him “do this” and saying, “If you’d just shut up.” Doe wanted to leave the house but could not find her cell phone. She went into the living room, when Wright started up again, “choking” her. According to Doe, “he was choking me, and I ended up on the ground, and he was choking, and choking, and, like, my head was hitting [the concrete floor].” Doe was on her back, and Wright had both hands on her neck; she remembered Wright “was sitting over me, and, like he was, like choking me, and, like while he was choking me, my head was, like, pounding on the concrete floor. And, like, I just was trying to ask him, like—or not ask him. I was screaming, like, why, like, why are you doing this? And then, like, I—he was just, like, choking, I mean bearing down as hard as he could, and I blacked out after that all.” When Doe awoke, she found she had urinated on herself. She removed her pants, put them in the wash, and went to shower. Angry, Wright came in and dragged her out. She tried to get around him but ended up cornered in

3 her bedroom, where he again banged her head into the wall. Wright slapped Doe in the face with an open hand, but then pulled his arm back and punched her “as hard as he could” in the jaw with his fist. Doe fell on the bed and slid to the floor. Wright walked away. Doe tried to leave the house, but Wright told her he was going to kill her. He pulled her back by her shirt and got her to the ground, hitting her. Wright again grabbed her neck and “kept choking [her]” “harder, and harder, and harder,” repeating that he was going to kill her. Doe believed she was going to die. She described that when Wright first choked her, “he was banging—like, while he was strangling, my head was going back and forth . . . [a]nd he was still, like, strangling me [and] yelling” but “when he was strangling me the last time, he didn’t say anything while he was doing it, but he was looking me dead in my eye.” Wright stopped when Doe’s sister rang the doorbell. Doe jumped up and ran to her sister, crying and hysterical. They eventually left in her sister’s car. Doe’s sister called police. Doe sustained a dislocated jaw, bloodshot eyes, swelling on her eyes, cheeks and lips, and bruises on her face, ribs, thighs and foot. A responding officer saw broken capillaries in her eyes, but no visible bleeding or abrasions. At the time of the attack, Doe was still healing from previous rotator cuff surgery but her rotator popped back out, necessitating another surgery. She suffered some cracked teeth, requiring dentures. Doe underwent brain surgery, and had short-term and some long-term memory loss.

4 Pretrial Motion Regarding J.M. and J.M.’s Trial Testimony

Before trial, the People moved under Evidence Code section 12502 to admit statements Doe made to a forensic nurse examiner, J.M., during an examination on the afternoon of the incident. Defense counsel argued the statements were inadmissible because they were given to a forensic nurse, not a medical provider over the course of medical treatment. The court ruled the statements were admissible after the prosecutor confirmed that he was seeking Doe’s descriptions of physical sensations, and stated that the nurse, who was employed by Eisenhower Medical Center, was asking questions for a medical, not an investigative, purpose. At trial, J.M. testified that as a certified forensic nurse examiner for Eisenhower Health, she worked with patients who have experienced assault, domestic violence, and strangulation. She had been a forensic nurse examiner for four years, after having received 40 hours of classroom training for sexual assault cases and 40 hours for domestic violence strangulation cases. J.M. was certified by the International Association of Forensic Nursing to conduct sexual assault exams and intimate partner violence and strangulation exams. She was familiar with medical literature dealing with

2 Evidence Code section 1250 codifies the state-of-mind exception to the hearsay rule. (People v. Ramirez (2006) 143 Cal.App.4th 1512, 1523, fn. 4.) Evidence Code section 1250, subdivision (a) provides in part: “Subject to [Evidence Code, s]ection 1252, evidence of a statement of the declarant’s then existing state of mind, emotion, or physical sensation . . .

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People v. Wright CA4/1, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-wright-ca41-calctapp-2022.