People v. Yancey CA4/2

California Court of Appeal·Decided April 10, 2014·No. E056961·Unpublished

Opinion

Filed 4/10/14 P. v. Yancey CA4/2

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT DIVISION TWO

THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, E056961

v. (Super.Ct.Nos. SWF1100175 & SWF1101653)

JEFFREY LEWIS YANCEY, OPINION

Defendant and Appellant.

APPEAL from the Superior Court of Riverside County. Dennis A. McConaghy, Judge. (Retired judge of the Riverside Super. Ct. assigned by the Chief Justice pursuant to art. VI, § 6 of the Cal. Const.) Affirmed.

Elizabeth Garfinkle, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.

Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Julie L. Garland, Assistant Attorney General, Peter Quon, Jr., and Quisteen S. Shum, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

I

INTRODUCTION

In January and July 2011, defendant Jeffrey Lewis Yancey was apprehended for removing used tires and other property from two retail tire store sites. A jury convicted defendant of two counts (1 and 3) of felony burglary and two felony counts (2 and 4) of petty theft with priors. (Pen. Code, §§ 459 and 484.)1 Defendant admitted he had three prior prison term convictions. (§ 667.5, subd. (b).) The court found true a bail violation. (§ 12022.1.) The court sentenced defendant to a maximum of eight years eight months in county jail, including five years five months under mandatory supervision. (§ 12022.1.)

On appeal, defendant contends the court erred in not giving an instruction on the defense of claim of right and committed additional errors by excluding a key witness and evidence of defendant’s brain injury.2 Defendant also claims the court wrongly sentenced him to the upper term. We reject these arguments and affirm the judgment.

II

STATEMENT OF FACTS

A. January 2011 Incident – Counts 1 and 2 Richard Richardson, the owner of Best 4 Less Tires in Temecula, testified that he

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

2 Because we find no instructional or evidentiary error, the cumulative error doctrine does not apply.

stores used tires in a special container outside the store, from which certified haulers may pick up the tires for disposal as hazardous waste. The stationary container has four walls, a roof, and a padlocked door. Surveillance cameras with motion sensors are directed at the main store and the storage container.

On Friday, January 14, 2011, a customer returned four Michelin tires that were unsafe because of weather cracking on the side walls. The tires were locked in the storage container to be returned to Michelin for a refund. On Monday, when Richardson returned to work, the storage container was open and the tires were missing.

Richardson reviewed the surveillance camera footage which depicted a van, towing a trailer, parking near the storage container. A person cut off the padlock and removed the tires. The name “Jeff’s Tires” and a phone number were written on the van. The padlock was found in the trash bin.

A sheriff’s investigator, James Dickey, called the phone number from the van and made an appointment to look at 245 mm tires, the same size as those taken from Best 4 Less Tires. Dickey and another officer met defendant in a mall parking lot, with eight or 10 other officers stationed nearby. Defendant drove up in the “Jeff’s Tires” van with a trailer full of tires. After defendant displayed some size 245 mm tires, Dickey arrested him in January 2011.

After waiving his constitutional rights, defendant stated to Dickey that he had obtained tires from shops in the area. He admitted being the person in the surveillance footage who removed the tires. He claimed he knew there were video cameras because

he saw the infrared light. He thought no one would care if he took the tires and he denied stealing them.

Another investigator visited a salvage yard identified by defendant and recovered three Michelin tires that had been sold by defendant. At the police station, Richardson identified three of the missing tires based on the distinctive cracking and portions of the Department of Transportation number. B. July 2011 Incident – Counts 3 and 4 Six months later, on July 9, 2011, at around 10:30 p.m., a Murrieta police officer, Kyle Mikowski, was on patrol when he heard a high-pitched whistle and saw defendant, with blackened hands and face, walking away from the Big O Tires store in Murrieta. When Mikowski spoke to defendant, he seemed agitated and stuttered, struggling to put a sentence together. Defendant’s girlfriend, Patty Carter, then drove up in a truck, with tires stacked in the back and an orange dolly. There were no signs of a break-in at the Big O Tires.

Mikowski arrested defendant and Carter and placed them in his patrol car, where their conversation was recorded and in which they agreed to tell the police they got the tires from “Victor.” Defendant repeatedly asserted he had not done anything wrong or committed burglary.

The Murrieta police contacted the Big O Tires store in Temecula, which was missing a nonworking dolly matching the one found in the truck. The Temecula Big O Tires stored its used tires in an open-air area with a dumpster and a structure with

concrete walls, a wooden roof, and a latched door. A Big O employee identified the dolly and some used tires as being from the store. The dolly had been left outside, under the dumpster. C. Prior Incident On July 15, 2003, a deputy sheriff stopped a man leaving an auto repair shop in Rancho Cucamonga at 1:35 a.m., towing a dozen truck tires. The man gave his name as Jeffrey Yancey. Defendant pleaded guilty to a charge stemming from that stop. D. Defense Evidence Tracy Mitchell had known defendant for four years and helped him in his tire business. She had loaded used tires with him from Best 4 Less Tires and the Big O Tires in Temecula, and she knew the area was under video surveillance. She believed it was okay to take the tires because they were junk tires and stacked outside the storage container. Once, when defendant and Mitchell were collecting tires from a bin, the police stopped them but they were let go without any charges, leading her to believe they were not doing anything illegal.

III

INSTRUCTION ON THE CLAIM-OF-RIGHT DEFENSE The claim-of-right defense is set forth in CALCRIM No. 1863, which provides in part: “The defendant obtained property under a claim of right if (he/she) believed in good faith that (he/she) had a right to the specific property or a specific amount of money, and (he/she) openly took it. [¶] In deciding whether the defendant believed that

(he/she) had a right to the property and whether (he/she) held that belief in good faith, consider all the facts known to (him/her) at the time (he/she) obtained the property, along with all the other evidence in the case. The defendant may hold a belief in good faith even if the belief is mistaken or unreasonable. But if the defendant was aware of facts that made that belief completely unreasonable, you may conclude that the belief was not held in good faith. [¶] [The claim-of-right defense does not apply if the defendant attempted to conceal the taking at the time it occurred or after the taking was discovered.] [¶] . . . [¶] [The claim-of-right defense does not apply if the claim arose from an activity commonly known to be illegal or known by the defendant to be illegal.] [¶] If you have a reasonable doubt about whether the defendant had the intent required for (theft/ [or] robbery), you must find (him/her) not guilty of _________________ <insert specific theft crime>.”

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