Opinion
C059839.
7-14-2009
THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. DON LEE CARSKADDON, Defendant and Appellant.
Not to be Published
Based on a shooting spree, a jury convicted defendant Don Lee Carskaddon of the first degree murder of his eldest brother at their mothers home, premeditated attempted murder of another brother and a lodger in the home, and shooting at that inhabited dwelling. It also convicted him of shooting at the inhabited dwelling of his former parents-in-law, and their premeditated attempted murders. It sustained various gun enhancements as well. The trial court sentenced defendant to prison for an 80-year determinate term and a consecutive minimum indeterminate life term of 78 years.
On appeal, defendant argues the evidence is insufficient with respect to the first degree murder conviction to establish either premeditation or that he was still on his motorcycle when he fired the gun at his eldest brother (which were the alternate theories in the jurys verdict). He further contends that the evidence is insufficient to prove that he shot at his other brother and the lodger with the intent to kill them. We shall affirm.
FACTS
Under the established standard of review we resolve all evidentiary conflicts, credibility disputes, and reasonable inferences in favor of the judgment. (People v. Mack (1992) 11 Cal.App.4th 1466, 1468.)
I. The prelude to September 4, 2003
Defendant and his ex-wife had been divorced since 1999. She and defendant had shared custody of their older son (born in 1990), who had been living most of the time with defendant on the Carskaddon family compound in Elk Grove near Wilton. However, the ex-wife started proceedings in 2003 to obtain full custody of the older son. Defendant found out about these in mid-August, and believed that his former father-in-law was assisting the ex-wife. When defendant learned of an upcoming court hearing from his son, he grew more and more angry in the days before it.
Also in August, 2003, he had "chewed [his ex-mother-in-laws] ass" on the phone (reducing her to tears) for coming around the family property with his ex-wife in order to get information from his family to use in the custody dispute. His neighbors had also told him that his ex-mother-in-law had asked them to peek through his windows and tell her if he was growing marijuana.
Also in August, defendant found out that the woman he had been dating was married and did not intend to change that status to be with him. He broke up with her as a result. He then attempted to rekindle a two-year liaison that had ended the previous year, but was unsuccessful: the woman was uninterested and had a restraining order in effect to keep him away (he having forced his way into her home in January 2003 and destroyed property).
There were a number of homes on the Carskaddon compound. Defendant and his son lived in one half of a duplex; defendants mother lived next door with the lodger; the surviving brother (Milo) lived in an apartment in a converted barn behind their mothers house, and a niece lived in a residence on the other side of the mothers home. (Although defendants son kept referring to her in his testimony as his "aunt," she was in fact his cousin.) A sister (mother to the niece) lived in the other half of defendants duplex with her family. The eldest brother (Ervin) apparently had lived in a house at some distance from the others, but was spending time in Idaho in 2003.
The Carskaddons were embroiled in ongoing property disputes with each other. Defendant had ejected one sister and a third brother from the family property, and had spent 10 years not speaking to the sister with whom he shared the duplex after she became involved in litigation with their parents over property issues. He despised his surviving brothers drug use, and defendant thought that both the surviving brother and the lodger shunned work and had been taking financial advantage of defendant and his mother for years. He felt similar animosity toward his eldest brother, whom he had ejected more than once from the family property and with whom he had longstanding disputes over loans and control of the property. In short, he was angry with the entire lot: as he told a former employer (and long-time acquaintance) during a jailhouse conversation, he felt "[t]he whole family ha[d] been mooching off [him] for years because hes the only one . . . employ[ed], [and] making any money," and had said to the lodger that he did not want anyone else living around him anymore.
Before the shootings, defendant had started to demand that his surviving brother and the lodger begin to pay him rent. He told the lodger that he could not otherwise remain on the family property. The lodger left a couple of days before September 4, but returned that night to collect some belongings. That same night, the eldest brother and the mother arrived at her home on their return from Idaho on a trip visiting his children.
II. September 4, 2003
On the morning of September 4, 2003, defendant failed to attend a court-ordered mediation session. When the mediator phoned defendant from the session, defendant was agitated and indifferent to accusations about his conduct, even in the face of a threat of contempt if he were to fail to show up for the next session.
After taking his son to dinner around 7:00 p.m., defendant dropped him off at home and then drove off on his motorcycle. Defendant returned over 90 minutes later. Defendant rushed in, looking angry, and told his son to grab his stuff and stay at the nieces home. This was unusual, because defendant generally let him stay home alone and the son had never stayed at his cousins home before.
While defendant was absent from the compound, he had driven to the apartment of his unrekindled flame. She was out playing bocce ball, but her daughter was home. Her daughter phoned her to ask her to come home, because defendant was armed and trying to force his way into the apartments security gate, and was threatening to kill himself or his former love. He later left a message on the answering machine. He admitted damaging the gate, and asserted that he did not care what she did, as he had two guns and would not be going to prison.
The son went to his cousins house. After sitting with her and her dogs for about a half-hour, he heard defendants motorcycle start up. This was followed with the sound of gunshots.
The people in the mothers house heard defendants motorcycle, and then defendant shouting out a challenge to the continued presence in the house of his surviving brother and the lodger. The eldest brother told the others that he would talk with defendant, and went out to the porch through the screen door. His mother followed him. The lodger watched from behind the inner door. At this point, the other brother had just gotten into the shower in the master bedroom in the front of the house, the entrance to which was immediately behind the front door.
When the eldest brother walked out the door, defendant commented on his being present there as well. Defendant got off his motorcycle and took a few steps toward him, saying that he had something for him. Defendant drew a gun and fired a shot into his brothers chest from about 20 feet away. The brother died of a single gunshot wound to his aorta.
Hearing his mother scream, the surviving brother came out of the shower. She told him that defendant had shot his brother. The surviving brother heard a shot from outside, at which point he pushed the lodger to the floor. He heard a bullet whistle past them as he stood just outside the front bedroom, and defendant shouting for him and the lodger to come outside. There was a fresh bullet hole in the screen door.
The lodger heard a bullet hit a wall toward where he had been standing and a second bullet hit a window in the back. He then heard defendant demand that they come outside or else he would kill everyone in the house.
The niece told defendants son to stay inside as she ran over to their grandmothers house next door. She asked defendant what he was doing. He answered that he could not take any more and was through with everyone around there. Defendant asked her to look after the house and his son, because he was not going to be taken alive. Driving off, defendant told his son that grandfather Bill "was dead."
Defendants son then called his maternal grandparents to warn them. They lived about 15 minutes away, near the intersection of Gerber and Elk Grove-Florin Roads. Their bedroom was in the front of the house. The ex-father-in-law loaded his shotgun and awaited the arrival of defendant. At the sound of an approaching motorcycle, he told his wife to crawl into the bathroom. He heard shots being fired before he could even get to the window. A number of them penetrated the bedroom wall. When the ex-father-in-law approached the window, defendant aimed and fired at him from about 60 feet away, shouting that he was going to kill him. The ex-father-in-law returned fire, and defendant drove off.
With respect to the events of September 4, defendant claimed he could remember only conversing with his old flames daughter at the gate to the apartment and finding his motorcycle jammed into the gate. His next memory flash was finding himself in front of his mothers house and driving off. After that, he first found himself at a gas station on Elk Grove-Florin Road with guns strapped on, and then was suddenly shooting at his ex-in-laws house and being fired on in return. He did not even recall when he extracted his guns from the safe. He produced psychiatric testimony that he suffered from bipolar disorder and was in the throes of a manic phase on September 4, which left him without self-control. Being in a psychotic state could possibly lead to a blackout, but there was nothing in defendants medical records that would support a blackout of the magnitude that he claimed.
DISCUSSION
I
Defendant claims insufficient evidence supports the verdict of first degree murder. He argues that the evidence shows nothing more than "an unconsidered explosion of violence rather than [a] cold and calculated killing" of his eldest brother. He also contends the prosecution all but abandoned the theory of a shooting from a motor vehicle because it lacked substantial evidence to support it, in that only the niece testified to his being on the motorcycle at the time of the shootings (which not only was in contradiction to the other witnesses present, but also was contrary to her contemporaneous report that night). We do not need to address the latter argument because it becomes moot in light of our determination that the evidence of premeditation is more than substantial and the record does not contain any affirmative indication that the verdict is based on shooting from a motor vehicle. (See People v. Guiton (1993) 4 Cal.4th 1116, 1128-1129.)
We find ample evidence of premeditation.
Even our abbreviated account above establishes abundant evidence of defendants enmity against his eldest brother in particular and the host of people he perceived as hindering his life. Much as a defendant can commit murder where harboring a collective intent to kill a group of people without having a primary target (see People v. Bland (2002) 28 Cal.4th 313, 323; People v. Stone (2009) 46 Cal.4th 131, 141), there is no reason why a defendant cannot act on a collective motive to plan to kill any member of the group that might cross defendants path. That he was acting on a plan to kill all those who he believed had wronged him is evident. He first took his guns from their customary storage place. He went to the home of his former flame, where he brandished the guns and made express threats against her (whether hyperbolic or not). He returned to the family compound to confront the freeloaders, before completing his journey at the home of the interlopers in the custody proceedings, against whom he also made express threats of death. It was therefore rational for the jury to conclude that at the time he unexpectedly encountered his eldest brother he was acting in the midst of a preconceived plan to kill these "wrongdoers."
Contrary to defendants belief, the chance nature of this ill-fated reunion does not of itself make the shooting a spontaneous act merely because this brother was outside the ambit of the plan. Defendant did not immediately shoot the victim, but instead engaged him in brief conversation and then took time to approach him on foot, "which indicates a more coldblooded [attitude toward] the shootings than a spur-of-the-moment impulse . . . ." (People v. Gunder (2007) 151 Cal.App.4th 412, 424.)
Therefore, we reject the argument that the evidence is insufficient to support a verdict of first degree murder on a theory of premeditation. Any insufficiency in the evidence as to whether he shot the victim while astride his motorcycle is harmless as a result. (See People v. Guiton, supra, 4 Cal.4th at p. 1131.)
II
Defendant claims insufficient evidence supports his convictions for premeditated attempted murder of his other brother and the lodger. Defendant argues the evidence is insufficient that he shot at his other brother and the lodger, because the record does not contain any evidence that he knew their location when he fired the shots (the surviving brother testifying that the curtains were drawn in the front window). This ignores the testimony from these victims that they were standing just behind the front door, that bullets flew by in close proximity to them, and that there was a bullet hole in the front screen. From this the jury could reasonably infer that defendant could see them and was firing at them (even if firing random shots into a home known to be occupied was insufficient proof itself (but compare People v. Vang (2001) 87 Cal.App.4th 554, 564)).
Defendant additionally argues that if he had actually intended to kill them rather than merely scare them, he would have completed the job. The ample evidence above of his enmity toward them is a rational basis for the jury to infer a specific intent to kill them. It also ignores the intervention of the niece, which the jury could rationally have concluded led defendant to break off his efforts at this location and move on to the next. This does not detract from his intent, however, at the time he was shooting at these victims.
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.
We concur:
BUTZ, J.
CANTIL-SAKAUYE, J. --------------- Notes: Defendant ordinarily kept his guns in a safe.