People v. Superior Court of Riverside Cnty.

86 Cal.App.5th 268

302 Cal.Rptr.3d 306

The PEOPLE, Petitioner,

v.The SUPERIOR COURT OF RIVERSIDE COUNTY, Respondent;

Armando Rodriguez Mendez, Real Party in Interest.

E079069

Court of Appeal, Fourth District, Division 2, California.

Filed December 13, 2022

Michael A. Hestrin, District Attorney, and Richard J. Sachs, Deputy District Attorney, for Petitioner.

No appearance for Respondent.

Steven L. Harmon, Public Defender, and Jason M. Cox, Deputy Public Defender, for Real Party in Interest

Taylor L. Huff as Amicus Curiae on behalf of Real Party in Interest.

OPINION

MENETREZ, J.

The superior court granted real party in interest Armando Rodriguez Mendez's motion under Penal Code section 995 and dismissed an assault with a deadly weapon charge against him. (Undesignated statutory references are to the Penal Code.) The People petition for a writ of mandate to compel the superior court to reinstate the charge. We grant the petition.

BACKGROUND

A. The Charges

According to the People's verified petition, the People filed a felony complaint in September 2021 charging Mendez with one count each of felony assault with a deadly weapon ( § 245, subd. (a)(1) ) ( § 245(a)(1) ), felony child endangerment ( § 273a, subd. (a) ), and felony making a criminal threat ( § 422 ), and one misdemeanor count of domestic battery ( § 243, subd. (e)(1) ).

B. The Preliminary Hearing

The preliminary hearing was held in January 2022. Three witnesses testified for the prosecution: Jane Doe (the victim), Cynthia R. (Mendez's niece), and an investigating law enforcement officer. No witnesses testified for Mendez.

On September 15, 2021, Doe lived with Mendez and her three children. Mendez is the father of Doe's two daughters. That afternoon, Doe picked up the children from school and returned home with them. Mendez had been drinking all day and was "a little drunk." Doe had to go to work. Her coworkers were scheduled to pick her up for work at 3:00 p.m.

Before 3:00 p.m., Mendez grabbed a knife from the kitchen, went outside, and punctured a tire on the couple's one car. The knife had a handle when Mendez took it outside. Doe did not follow Mendez outside, but from inside the house she could hear air escaping from the tire. Mendez came back inside. His hand was bleeding. The knife's handle was missing.

Doe gave varying accounts of what happened before and after Mendez went outside and punctured the tire. On the day of the incident, Riverside County Sheriff's Deputy Gabriel Garcia responded to a 911 call and spoke to Doe at her residence. Cynthia was also there and translated for Doe because Doe does not speak English. Garcia recorded his conversation with Doe on a body camera, and a portion of that recording was played for the magistrate.¹

Doe testified that before Mendez grabbed the knife and went outside, he "started being aggressive towards us, towards ... [Doe]," but he did not say anything. She otherwise recalled telling Garcia that Mendez had been upset with her because he did not want her to take the car. She also said that Mendez did not want her to go to work. She recalled telling Garcia that before Mendez punctured the tire, Mendez grabbed her arm and pushed her as she was leaving the house. After reviewing a portion of the transcript of her conversation with Garcia, Doe confirmed that Mendez grabbed her arm and pushed her before puncturing the tire. But Doe later denied that Mendez pushed her at that point, even though she remembered telling Garcia about it.

Doe said that when Mendez came back inside after puncturing the tire, she was "[i]n the kitchen, in the living room." She described the residence as having an open format with everything being together, including "the kitchen, the bedrooms." Asked by the prosecutor what Mendez did when he entered the house, Doe initially responded, "He had the knife and he just told us to go outside but I felt that he was coming towards us." Mendez told Doe to leave the house with all three children. He wanted her to go outside because he did not want the children to see him with the cut on his hand. The children were in their bedroom.

Doe explained that when Mendez had the knife she "was really afraid that he was going to hurt us" and that he was "aggressive at that moment." Mendez was yelling at her. Doe explained that "[a]ggressivness means yelling."

When asked how Mendez was holding the knife to cause her to feel fearful, Doe said that Mendez did not have the knife in his hand anymore when she felt fearful. Mendez threw the knife into the kitchen when he came back inside. Mendez "went towards" her when he reentered the house, but he had already thrown the knife onto a surface in the kitchen. Mendez never went towards her with the knife in his hand. Doe was afraid that he would grab the knife and "hit us with it." Mendez told her and the children to go outside, and he threatened to hit Doe with the knife if she did not. Mendez also told Doe's oldest child (a nine-year old son) to go outside too, but Mendez did not make any statements about the knife to Doe's son or go towards her son with the knife.

After Mendez reentered the house and when he told Doe to leave, Doe and Mendez were "close to each other." Doe's son came out of the bedroom and "got between" Mendez and Doe. Mendez had picked up the knife again. Doe's son pushed Mendez to get Mendez away from Doe, because her son saw that Mendez "had the knife on his hand against" Doe and was threatening Doe with the knife. Mendez was holding the knife in his injured right hand. Defense counsel asked Doe how Mendez was holding the knife, and she responded, "Right beside his hand," and "[o]n the side." Defense counsel asked, "So his hand's down, hanging down near his waist, and he's holding the knife in his hand?" Doe answered, "Yes." Mendez's exact words to Doe were "go outside, otherwise I will kill you."

On redirect examination, the prosecutor questioned Doe further about what happened after Mendez picked up the knife again. Doe confirmed that Mendez "came at" her and that he pointed the knife in her direction. Asked whether the knife was pointed at her "with the pointy end or the other end," Doe made a gesture and said, "With the hand." The prosecutor stated for the record that Doe had "picked her right hand up and raised it above her shoulder about ear level." After the prosecutor described the gesture, Doe said, "Yes." The prosecutor then asked Doe if the motion Doe had made with her hand was what Mendez "did with the knife," and Doe confirmed that it was.

On the day of the incident, Doe told Garcia that Mendez had threatened to kill "us." Cynthia asked Doe: "[W]hen he threatened you, did he have the knife trying to—to stab you?" Doe responded, "Yes." Doe otherwise told Cynthia that she was afraid of Mendez because he "threatened to kill her with a knife." Cynthia confirmed that Doe did not initially tell Garcia everything that had transpired. According to Cynthia, Doe did not want charges pressed against Mendez.

After the incident with the knife inside the house, Doe went outside. Doe said that as she was leaving and walking down the stairs outside, Mendez told her that he was going to kill her. Mendez was not holding the knife. Mendez followed her outside, threatened her, and immediately went inside. Doe also said that Mendez did not go outside but followed her to the door, where he pushed her when she "was almost outside by the door," and he then threatened to kill her.

After Mendez threatened to kill her, law enforcement arrived, but Doe said that she did not call them. Elsewhere in her testimony, Doe said that she had called law enforcement.

Doe said that the children were with her when Mendez made the threat and she also said that they were not with her because her coworkers had taken the children away from the house. She also said that her son went outside with her. She said that her coworkers arrived before Mendez threatened to kill her outside, and they took the children from inside and left with them. But she also stated that the coworkers arrived when Doe was outside, and they went inside to get Doe's two daughters. Doe left with her coworkers and her children.

When Garcia arrived at Doe's residence, Doe was not there. Garcia spoke with Mendez. Cynthia was at the residence when law enforcement arrived because Mendez had called her and asked her to take the children. Cynthia called Doe. Doe returned to her home and then spoke with Garcia.

The parties submitted on the prosecution's evidence. Defense counsel argued that there was not "enough evidence" for the count of assault with a deadly weapon because it was not clear "exactly what happened with the knife, did [Mendez] hold it above his head, was it down around his waist area." Counsel emphasized that it was not clear what happened because of the numerous accounts of the incident given by Doe. The magistrate ruled: "The court does agree with defense counsel, I didn't see sufficient evidence for a [ section] 245(a)(1) holding order on that."

C. The Information and the Section 995 Proceeding

Following the preliminary hearing, the People filed an information with all of the same charges as those in the complaint, including the one count of assault with a deadly weapon. Mendez moved under section 995 to dismiss that count.

At a hearing on the motion, defense counsel argued that the magistrate made a factual finding when he concluded that there was not sufficient evidence to hold Mendez on the assault with a deadly weapon count. The People argued to the contrary. The trial court agreed with defense counsel and granted the motion. The court explained: "I agree with the defense that specifically saying the language that there is not sufficient evidence is a question of fact that there was not sufficient evidence that the assault with the knife, that actual element of that crime took place and transpired throughout this incident." The court further agreed with the defense "that there just wasn't sufficient...