People v. Fragamadan

1

THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. MANUEL G. FRAGAMADAN, Defendant and Appellant.

B322287

California Court of Appeals, Second District, First Division

April 30, 2024

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED

APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County No. BA486958, Henry J. Hall, Judge.

Edward J. Haggerty, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.

Rob Bonta, Attorney General, Susan Sullivan Pithey, Assistant Attorney General, Scott A. Taryle and Daniel C. Chang, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

WEINGART, J.

In 2022, a jury convicted defendant and appellant Manuel G FragaMadan of one count of first degree murder (Pen. Code § 187, subd. (a))^[1] for his role in the 1984 killing of Johnny Williams and rape of Patricia H., who was Williams's girlfriend. FragaMadan and an accomplice planned to rob Williams in his motel room, but he was not there when they entered. They found Patricia in the room and took turns raping her. When Williams returned and refused to give them money or drugs, they shot him in the head. The crime was unsolved for decades until the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD) tested DNA recovered from the crime scene and found that it matched FragaMadan's.

Patricia the sole percipient witness to the murder, died several years before FragaMadan became a suspect and, at trial, the prosecution relied on statements she made to police on the night of the murder. The prosecution also presented a recorded conditional examination in lieu of live testimony from a retired detective who investigated the killing in 1984. FragaMadan contends that the admission of these out-of-court statements violated his Sixth Amendment right to confront adverse witnesses, as well as the Evidence Code. He also argues the trial court erred by admitting his own statements to investigators regarding his involvement in other uncharged crimes, by failing to conduct a competency hearing in response to his trial attorney's concerns regarding his ability to understand the proceedings, and by instructing the jury incorrectly as to the intent required for a finding of a felony-murder special circumstance (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(17)). Finally, FragaMadan contends the trial court erred in calculating his presentence conduct credits and in imposing certain fines. We agree with FragaMadan as to the presentence credits and the fines, but we otherwise affirm for reasons we explain below.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

A. Initial Investigation by Deputy Richard Garcia

At around 2:00 a.m. on July 12, 1984, Richard Garcia, who was working as a LASD patrol deputy,^[2] received a report of shots fired at a motel on Vermont Avenue in an unincorporated area of southern Los Angeles County. Garcia and his partner were the first officers to arrive on the scene, where they encountered Patricia and her son, who was approximately two years old.

Patricia was "hysterical, crying," and told Garcia that her boyfriend was in a room of the motel and had been shot. According to Garcia, Patricia said "that she and her boyfriend had been in the room with another female and that the other female and her boyfriend had left and left her and the child alone. While she was in the room there was a knock at the door. She looked out the window and she saw it was a female out there, . . . who asked her . . . for drugs. She went to open the door. And at that point the door was forced open and two males entered the room."

Patricia described the men as Black male Cubans carrying "dark-colored large caliber handguns." They entered the room, directed Patricia to the bed, and took turns raping her. The men then directed Patricia to go into the bathroom, where she waited until she heard Williams returning. Patricia heard voices arguing, and Williams said he had no drugs or money. She pushed open the bathroom door and saw Williams on his knees holding his hands up. She heard a gunshot and slammed the door. Soon afterward, Patricia heard a second gunshot. She came out a little while later and saw Williams's body.

After speaking with Patricia, Garcia went up to the room where Patricia said the shooting occurred. He found Williams's body on the floor surrounded by blood. Williams had suffered two gunshot wounds, one to the leg and another to the back of the head. Garcia also saw a .45-caliber casing on the floor. Paramedics arrived on the scene and confirmed Williams was dead.

B. 1984 Investigation by Detective Birl Adams

LASD detective Birl Adams arrived on the scene with his partner at about 3:35 a.m. and took control of the investigation. Garcia directed the detectives to the bedding and towels in the room, and the detectives secured two towels, two bedsheets, and one pillowcase, along with the shell casing, as potential evidence. The detectives also found various drug paraphernalia in the room, as well as pieces of a $10 bill and a $20 bill torn in half. Coroners examining Williams's body later found an additional $71, also torn in half, in his pocket. Adams testified that the torn currency suggested it was associated with criminal use, allowing for "half [payment] up front and the other half after the deal was completed."

At 6:25 a.m., Adams and his partner interviewed Patricia again, this time at the police station. Patricia gave largely the same account of the events that night as she had given to Garcia, with some exceptions including how many people were in the motel room before everyone left and when she went into the bathroom. She told the detectives that Williams had been living at the motel for about two months. Patricia arrived at around 10:45 p.m. with her young son and a friend to find Williams with two other women. Williams left the room at 11:00 p.m. with one of the women to pick up some cocaine, and Patricia's friend and the other woman went out later, leaving Patricia and her son alone. About 15 minutes later, there was a knock at the door, and Patricia saw a White woman outside. She opened the door, and two Black Cuban men rushed in with guns pointing at her. They demanded money and dope, and when Patricia said she was only visiting and did not have any, they searched her and made her take off her clothes. One of the men told her to get on the bed and had sex with her while the other man ransacked the room. The other man said he could not find anything, and the men decided to wait. The second man forced Patricia to perform oral sex on him until he climaxed. Patricia's two-year-old son was asleep on the other bed while these events occurred, and Patricia stated that she complied with the men's demands because they threatened to kill her son if she did not.

Patricia heard a knock at the door and grabbed her clothes. Williams opened the door with his key, and one of the men pulled him inside, pointed his gun at him, and asked where the money and dope was. Williams held his hands up and said he had no money or dope, and Patricia went to hide in the bathroom. Patricia heard a gunshot but could not see who fired it. Patricia could hear Williams talking after the gunshot, saying things like, "don't be doing that." Approximately two minutes later, Patricia heard a second shot, the light in the room went out, and the door closed. She waited a few minutes, then ran to the manager's office for help.

Patricia told the detectives that she had seen the two men once before at a house a few blocks away, where they had been dealing drugs. She also said one of the men had something wrong with his eye, but she could not describe it.

C. 2018 DNA Test and Subsequent Investigation

The crime remained unsolved until 2018, when the LASD Forensic Biology Section tested the linens recovered from the scene and found a match with FragaMadan's DNA. Subsequent analysis of the towels and bedsheets showed that they contained semen matching FragaMadan's DNA, and blood matching Patricia's and Williams's.

In 2020, a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney, together with a sergeant and a detective from the Hialeah, Florida police department, interviewed FragaMadan at his home near Miami, with the detective acting as translator.

In the interview, FragaMadan stated that he immigrated to the United States from Cuba in 1980, moved to San Francisco shortly thereafter, and then to Los Angeles around 1984.

Initially, FragaMadan stated that he never sold drugs in Los Angeles, never owned a gun, and claimed not to remember having been arrested while in possession of a .45-caliber pistol in August 1984, less than a month after the murder of Williams. When pressed on these issues, however, he admitted to having sold marijuana in Los Angeles and to having been arrested while in possession of a gun in Miami. FragaMadan also acknowledged that he had been armed during a robbery in 1984 in Chula Vista, and that he and an accomplice-another Cuban man-stole money from drug dealers.

FragaMadan initially claimed not to recognize the motel where the murder occurred, but then stated, "I may . . . have been to that . . . hotel," and later, "I have been to that hotel." FragaMadan also admitted that he was "familiar with Vermont and Century," an intersection one block away from the motel, and that he "could have lived close [to] it."

Near the end of the interview, FragaMadan admitted, "I've been a bandit. I've sold drugs," but he continued to deny any involvement in murdering Williams or raping Patricia.

D. Trial Court Proceedings

An information charged FragaMadan with one count of special-circumstance murder (§§ 187, subd. (a), 190.2, subd. (a)), on the ground that FragaMadan committed the murder while engaged in other felonies, namely robbery rape, and burglary. (See § 190.2, subd. (a)(17).) The information also...