People v. Anderson

78 Cal.App.5th 81

293 Cal.Rptr.3d 217

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent,

v.Ronald Ray ANDERSON, Defendant and Appellant.

A162633

Court of Appeal, First District, Division 4, California.

Filed April 28, 2022

Matthew Alger, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.

Rob Bonta, Attorney General, Lance Winters and Jeffrey M. Laurence, Assistant Attorneys General, René A. Chacón and Juliet B. Haley, Deputy Attorneys General for Plaintiff and Respondent.

BROWN, J.

In 1979, defendant Ronald Ray Anderson was tried for the murders and robberies of Phillip and Kathryn Ranzo, as well as for burglarizing their home. In the same trial, Anderson was also tried for the separate robbery of Leonard Luna. With respect to the Ranzos, the jury convicted Anderson of two counts of first degree murder, two counts of robbery, and one count of burglary, and his convictions were affirmed on appeal. In this appeal from the denial of Anderson's Penal Code ¹ section 1170.95 petition, Anderson argues that the trial court prejudicially erred by admitting in his section 1170.95 evidentiary hearing testimony from Anderson's parole suitability hearings, when that testimony should have been excluded under the reasoning of People v. Coleman (1975) 13 Cal.3d 867, 120 Cal.Rptr. 384, 533 P.2d 1024 ( Coleman ). We affirm the trial court's order denying Anderson's section 1170.95 petition because we conclude that Anderson has not established that the trial court erred in considering testimony from his parole suitability hearings.²

BACKGROUND

We set forth below the factual recitation from the 1982 unpublished appellate opinion affirming Anderson's convictions.

Leonard Luna was taking care of the home of Bernard Marks, his employer, who was out of town on Sunday, June 24, 1979. The home was located at 3307 West Stuhr Road, Newman.

Between 11:30 p.m. and midnight on June 24, two young men came to the door and asked Luna if he could sell them some gasoline because their car was empty. The two left after Luna provided them with some gasoline, but returned about 15 minutes later and asked if they could use the telephone. As they appeared to be leaving, one of the men turned round with a pistol in his hand and told Luna to hit the floor and close his eyes. Luna complied and then heard a car drive up in front of the house and some more people enter it. He did not know exactly how many.

After being hit on his head, Luna was taken into the den where he was placed on a couch and "hog-tied." His hands were tied behind his back and also tied to his feet. On two occasions a person he later identified as Marty Jackson, also known as Marty Spears, said he wanted to "blast" Luna because Luna had seen Jackson's face. Luna was later able to identify Marty Jackson (Spears) and Daniel Geysler as the two who had first come to the door. A large safe on wheels, several guns, a switchblade knife and two watches were missing from the Marks home and it showed signs of having been ransacked.

On June 26, 1979, the bodies of Phillip and Kathryn Ranzo were found at their residence at 1404 Fernview Drive in Modesto. They had failed to appear at their respective places of employment and James Blomquist, Phillip's boss at the pharmacy where he worked, and Carolyn Shaffer, an employee of the beauty salon owned by Kathryn, went to the Ranzo residence. Carolyn Shaffer had called the police because of her concern before going to the Ranzo residence. Blomquist, having found the front door locked, looked in the garage and found Phillip's body lying on the floor. The police arrived about five minutes later.

Officer Hamilton, who had responded to the prior call for a security check of the Ranzo residence, was shown the body of Phillip Ranzo [by] Bloomquist and they then sought to gain entrance to the house. The officer finally had to force a third level door. In the upstairs bathroom the nude body of Kathryn Ranzo was found lying on the floor.

The bodies of both victims had been tied with hands behind the back and also tied to the feet. The cause of death for each was bleeding from multiple stab wounds and the severing of arteries. Phillip had also been hit over the head with a blunt instrument at least six times, causing severe fragmentation of his skull. His wife had also been struck on the head several times with the back of an axe found in the hall next to the bathroom.

The rope used to tie the Ranzos appeared to be identical to that used on Luna in the Newman robbery. The knife wounds sustained by Kathryn Ranzo were of a different kind than those sustained by her husband. Dr. Ernoehazy, Stanislaus County pathologist, testified that her wounds could have been caused by the switchblade knife taken in the Newman robbery.

Officer Hamilton arrived at the Ranzo residence at about 2:15 p.m. of June 26, 1979. Dr. Ernoehazy was summoned and arrived there about 4 p.m. It was his opinion that the time of the death of each of the victims was about 16 hours prior to his first examination of the bodies. He fixed the time of their deaths at between 11 p.m. June 25 and 1 a.m. June 26.

The office area and the master bedroom of the Ranzo residence had been ransacked, with drawers pulled out and money, checks, papers and jewelry on the floor. Some money, a Browning automatic shotgun and two pendants, one with diamonds, were found missing by Sam Ranzo, father of the victim Phillip.

On the evening of June 25, 1979, Kathryn and Phillip Ranzo had had dinner at their home with their 10-year-old son, Mark, Phillip's parents, Sam and Marie Ranzo, Mark's friend, Michele Hermann and two of Mark's cousins, Mike and Michele Narzano. Later in the evening the four children and the grandparents went to the grandparents’ home, about one block away and around the corner from the victims’ home. Mark spent the night with his grandparents.

The children played outside the grandparents’ home after dinner. They recalled, in substance, that they had seen an old blue vehicle, with a pickup body, drive by very slowly several times. There were four young male passengers, three in front and one in the pickup portion in the back. The back also contained some boxes and a trash can. They first saw it around 9:45 p.m. They told grandmother Marie about it and she observed it stopping and backing up at the end of their lot. It was last seen by them about 11:15 p.m. and was then going quite fast.

One neighbor had seen the older model blue El Camino Chevrolet cruising at low speed in front of his house at 1416 Fernview Drive on the afternoon of June 25 between 3 and 5 p.m. His attention was attracted to it because it sounded like "an inboard motorboat" and he thought it had a blown muffler. There were two young men in it, one of whom had hair of the same color as [Anderson]. The occupants were "kind of looking around at the houses."

Another neighbor who lived at 1413 Fernview Drive, across the street from the Ranzo residence, was walking his dog along that street on the evening of June 25. He saw Phillip Ranzo working on one of his autos in the garage at about 10:30 to 11 p.m. He later went to bed and was awakened around midnight by the sound of screeching tires. He got up and looked out the window and saw what looked like a 1959 bluish green El Camino pickup driving at a faster speed than normal along the street in front of his house. It had a noisy muffler. There were two people in the vehicle. He identified a slide picture, 16-G in evidence, as that of the vehicle which he had seen that night.

In addition to the facts set forth above from the appellate opinion, the record before us in this appeal contains evidence from trial establishing that Anderson lived with Jackson, and Jackson, Anderson, and two others, D.L. and J.M.—all teenagers—went to the Ranzos’ home to commit burglary and robbery. They targeted the Ranzos’ home because they believed large amounts of cash were kept therein, and Anderson admitted to Jackson's brother after the robbery that they had committed the robbery. Anderson drove with Jackson around the Ranzos’ neighborhood in Jackson's El Camino multiple times in the hours before the robbery. Anderson knew at least one of his confederates was armed with a pistol when he went into the Ranzos’ house because Anderson told detectives that he saw a pistol in J.M.’s waistband, and he also said that Jackson grabbed rope from the vehicle and carried it away from the car.

According to trial transcripts, Anderson told police that, before leaving Jackson's house to execute the robbery of the Ranzos, he "overheard" Jackson and the others discussing the possibility of killing the Ranzos, although Anderson claimed he was not involved in the discussion. A police detective testified at trial that Anderson said once they arrived at, and were about to enter the Ranzos’ house, Jackson for the second time talked to the others about killing the Ranzos. Anderson told police that he "didn't enter into the conversation." The jury heard evidence that Anderson's then-girlfriend told investigators that Anderson said his role was to wait outside in the El Camino and, if necessary, signal his confederates by driving around and honking if anyone came. Anderson also told investigators he "considered himself as the watchman."

When Anderson's three confederates went into the Ranzos’ home, Anderson remained with the truck. According to Anderson, D.L. and J.M. returned to the truck about 20 minutes later with a manila envelope, leaving Jackson inside the house. D.L. and J.M. came running back and were excited. Anderson, who had the keys to the truck, took D.L. and J.M. to a nearby apartment building and then returned to the same parking spot. After Anderson picked Jackson up, they went in search for J.M. and D.L. They found J.M.’s brother, D.M., at Lisa Swenson's house in the early morning hours of June 26, 1979. Swenson testified that Jackson admitted killing two people because they had seen him. D.M. testified that Jackson said that...