People v. Swain

12 Cal.4th 593 (1996)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

A brown van passed through the Hunter's Point neighborhood of San Francisco about 2 a.m. on January 13, 1991. It slowed down near the spot where the young victim, who was of Samoan descent, and his friends were listening to music on the street. A young Black male who appeared to have no hair was driving the van. Suddenly several shots were fired from the front of the van. Chatman (D1) and another young man also fired guns from the rear of the van. One of the intended victims had yelled out 'drive-by' as a warning of the impending shooting, so most of the people on the street ducked down. The 15-year-old victim, Hagbom Saileele, who was holding the radio from which music was playing, was shot twice from behind. He later died in surgery. Swain (D) was in jail and boasted to jailmates about what good aim he had with a gun: 'He was saying he had shot that Samoan kid when they were in the van going about 30 miles an hour up a hill.' The area where the shooting occurred is hilly; the van would have had to have been traveling uphill as it passed by the scene of the shooting. Evidence established that D had used his jailhouse visiting privileges to threaten and intimidate witnesses into changing their stories so that he would not be identified as involved in the crime. The abandoned brown van was recovered by police; in the van and nearby were found surgical gloves, expended cartridges, a hooded ski mask, and two handguns--a .380-caliber semiautomatic and a .25-caliber automatic. D's fingerprint was on the inside of the driver's side window. The forensic evidence established that whoever had used the .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun, from which the fatal shots were fired, had been sitting in the driver's side front seat of the van. The .380-caliber gun was traced to D1. D1 denied any knowledge of the van and claimed he had not purchased the gun. When this story proved false, D1 admitted he had bought the gun, but claimed it had been stolen from him. Still later, he claimed he had sold it to someone else. D1 eventually told police he and two other people, not including D, had driven the van to the crime scene in order to get revenge for a car theft by a rival gang. D1 could not explain D's fingerprint inside the van. The owner of the van testified D had never been inside his van prior to the incident, and about D's attempts to intimidate him. At trial, D1 admitted he had been in the van, which was driven to Hunter's Point for retaliation against a car thief. The plan was to steal the car of the thief. D1 admitted he had fired shots, but claimed he fired wildly and only in self-defense. D testified he was not in the van during the shooting and did not do any shooting. D1 was found guilty of second-degree murder and conspiracy. D was found not guilty of murder or its lesser included offenses, but guilty of conspiracy and of attempting to dissuade a witness from testifying by threats. The jury found that the target offense of the conspiracy was murder in the second degree. Ds appealed.