People v. Edwards

34 Cal.App.5th 183

246 Cal.Rptr.3d 40

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent,

v.Antonio EDWARDS, Defendant and Appellant.

The People, Plaintiff and Respondent,

v.Emmanuel Chioma, Defendant and Appellant.

A147103

A147379

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

Filed April 10, 2019

Certified for Partial Publication.^*

Emmanuel Chioma – Ozro William Childs, by Court-Appointment under the First District Appellate Project - Independent Case System, Antonio Edwards – David Y. Stanley, by Court-Appointment under the First District Appellate Project - Independent Case System, for Appellants.

Xavier Becerra, Attorney General; Gerald A. Engler, Chief Assistant Attorney General; Jeffrey M. Laurence, Senior Assistant Attorney General; Bruce M. Slavin, Supervising Deputy Attorney General; Gregg E. Zywicke, Deputy Attorney General, for Respondents.

TUCHER, J.

Appellants Emmanuel Chioma and Antonio Edwards were each convicted on multiple counts arising from their joint sexual assault and robbery of Jane Doe and robbery of her male friend. With "one-strike" and other allegations against them, Chioma was sentenced to 129 years to life, and Edwards was sentenced to 95 years to life. Appellants were both 19 years old when they committed these offenses.

Appellants challenge their respective prison sentences as cruel and unusual punishment, and they challenge on equal protection grounds their exclusion from the provisions of Penal Code section 3051¹ —which mandates youthful-offender parole hearings for most who receive de facto life sentences for crimes they commit at or before age 25. In the published portion of our opinion, we reject appellants’ cruel and unusual punishment challenge but accept their equal protection arguments. In the unpublished portion we reject two further challenges—Chioma’s to the sufficiency of the evidence of his involvement in the crimes and Edwards’s to the admission into evidence of photographs recovered from Chioma’s phone. We therefore affirm the judgments, except to the extent we remand to allow appellants to develop the record with evidence of youth-related factors that will be relevant in a youthful-offender parole hearing.

BACKGROUND

I. Sexual Assault and Robberies

At 11:30 p.m. on December 8, 2012, Jane Doe and Rafael Reynolds stopped at Reynolds’s Oakland home before driving to a fundraiser where Reynolds, a professional photographer, planned to take photographs. Inside, one of Reynolds’s roommates told them someone had been robbed nearby by two men several hours earlier. When Doe and Reynolds prepared to leave for the fundraiser, they paused on their way out as they saw two men walk by. When the men were out of sight, Doe got into the passenger seat of her Mercedes, which Reynolds planned to drive to the fundraiser, and Reynolds went to his truck to retrieve some photography equipment. It was approximately 11:45 p.m.

Suddenly, a man opened the passenger door to the Mercedes, placed a gun to Doe’s head and ordered her out of the car. The gunman, Chioma, demanded money from Doe and grabbed her bag. Another man, Edwards, put a gun to Reynolds’s head and ordered him to the ground. One of the gunmen took Reynolds’s keys, money clip, and phone. Edwards then switched positions with Chioma and placed his gun to Doe’s chest. Edwards opened Doe’s jacket and lifted up her shirt. Chioma returned and directed Doe to get on her knees in between the two vehicles. With a gun still to her head, Doe complied. Chioma then took out his penis and forced Doe to orally copulate him, telling her "to act like you mean it" if she did not want "something to happen" to her.

Edwards then ordered Doe to stand up, pulled her pants down, and forced his penis into her vagina. For a time, Chioma compelled Doe to orally copulate him while Edwards was raping her. Then, as Edwards persisted in raping Doe, Chioma moved away and began searching through the Mercedes to see what "he could take." Edwards paused in raping Doe to pull her into the back seat of the Mercedes, but Chioma immediately told him to remove her. Edwards again raped Doe from behind, attempting to insert his penis into her anus before inserting it back into her vagina. Meanwhile, Chioma walked to where Reynolds lay on the ground and hit Reynolds in the back of the head with his gun; Doe recalled hearing a "crack" which she was "sure was the gun." Edwards eventually withdrew his penis and Doe saw him ejaculate onto the ground near where they were standing. Chioma and Edwards then left. In addition to the items already taken from Reynolds, the two men left with Doe’s purse, including her wallet and phone.

Doe found Reynolds unconscious. She summoned one of Reynolds’s roommates to call 911, and the Oakland police responded to investigate. Officers spoke with Doe and recovered the semen from the ground near her car. In a subsequent meeting with police, Doe identified a photograph of Chioma as the person who pulled her out of the car and forced her to orally copulate him. At trial, she identified Chioma with "a hundred percent certainty." Doe could not positively identify Edwards, however. Edwards was identified by DNA recovered from the semen. Police recovered a fingerprint matching Chioma’s from the driver’s-side door of Doe’s car.

Police also obtained surveillance video from outside Reynolds’s home, and the prosecution played it for the jury at trial. The video depicted most of the incident, including Doe and Reynolds parking her car and entering Reynolds’s house, leaving Doe’s Mercedes in the center of the image; Doe and Reynolds exiting Reynolds’s house and returning to their vehicles; one assailant removing Doe from her Mercedes and another forcing Reynolds out of view; Doe being forced to her knees to orally copulate someone; someone else having vaginal sex with her from behind; two men walking away; and Doe checking on Reynolds and then ringing the buzzer to his house. Doe acknowledged the video was not clear enough to show faces, but she was confident it clearly depicted the incident, including the respective actions of the two assailants.

Reynolds sustained a concussion that left him unable to walk for several days and unable to focus his eyes—particularly with a camera—for significant periods of time. He still suffered from abnormal eyesight, headaches, and an inability to concentrate at the time of trial in 2015.

II. Arrests in Possession of Firearms

Five days after the assault, at approximately 10:30 p.m., appellants were detained by private security officers after Chioma purchased drugs in Oakland. Chioma, Edwards, and a friend had driven to the purchase location and were stopped while still in their vehicle. Edwards was in the driver’s seat, Chioma was in the front passenger’s seat, and their friend was in the back seat. The security officers located a handgun in Chioma’s waistband and another gun, with an extended magazine, on the floorboard beneath where Edwards was sitting. An Oakland police officer was dispatched to the scene and recovered the guns. The gun recovered from Chioma’s waistband was a loaded .40-caliber Glock with a 30-round clip. The gun recovered from the driver’s side floorboard was a loaded .45-caliber Colt with an extended magazine. Officers also seized four mobile phones during the incident and booked them into evidence. Chioma and Edwards were arrested.

Police subsequently examined the four mobile phones and their contents. From an HTC phone identified with Chioma, police recovered several photographs taken in the months leading up to these incidents. Several of the photographs depicted guns, including the two guns found in the car that night. The parties described one of the photographs as showing "Edwards allegedly or purportedly with a gun on his hip." The same phone received a call from a contact listed as "Bankhead" at approximately 11:45 p.m. on December 8, 2012. This was just as the assault of Doe and Reynolds began, and the call lasted 13 minutes and 26 seconds. A phone associated with Edwards did not contain photographs of guns.

III. Procedural Background

The operative consolidated information charged appellants with the following counts as to the December 8, 2012 incident: oral copulation by acting in concert with force and fear (§ 288a, subd. (d)(1) (count 1) ) as to Chioma and Edwards; attempted sodomy by use of force (§ 286, subd. (c)(2)(A) (count 2) ) as to Edwards only; forcible rape while acting in concert (§ 264.1, subd. (a) (counts 3 and 4) ) as to Chioma and Edwards; assault with a firearm (§ 245, subd. (a)(2) (count 5) ) as to Chioma only; and second degree robbery (§ 211 (counts 6 and 7) ) as to Chioma and Edwards.

As to the December 13h, 2012 incident, the information charged appellants with: carrying a concealed firearm on the person (§ 25400, subd. (a)(2) (count 8) ) as to Chioma only; carrying a loaded firearm on one’s person in a city (§ 25850, subd. (a) (count 9) ) as to Chioma only; carrying a concealed firearm within a vehicle (§ 25400, subd. (a)(1) (count 10) ) as to Edwards only; carrying a loaded firearm on one’s person in a vehicle in a city (§ 25850, subd. (a) (count 11) ) as to Edwards only; and possession of a firearm by a felon with priors (§ 29800, subd. (a)(1) (count 12) ) as to Edwards only.

The information also alleged numerous sentencing enhancements against appellants. Enhancement allegations arising from the sexual assault and robbery included those against Chioma for inflicting great bodily injury on Reynolds (§ 667.61, subd. (d)(6) ), against Edwards for Chioma’s infliction of great bodily injury on Reynolds in the course of Edwards’s violation of section 288a, subdivision (d) (in-concert oral copulation with force and fear) (§ 667.61, subds. (e)(7) and (d)(6) ), and against both Chioma and Edwards for personal use of a firearm (§§ 667.61, subd. (e)(3), 1203.06, subd. (a)(1), 12022.5, subd. (a), 12022.53, subd. (b), and 12022.53, subd. (g) ). If found true by the jury, these enhancements...