Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los Angeles, Martin Herscovitz, Judge. Ct. No. LA046635
Murray A. Rosenberg, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Pamela C. Hamanaka, Assistant Attorney General, Lance E. Winters and Dana M. Ali, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
VOGEL, J.
Carl Bentley Marion was charged with one count of making criminal threats (count 1), one count of carrying a loaded firearm that was not registered to him (count 2), and one count of second degree burglary with an allegation that a principal was armed with a firearm during the commission of the offense (count 3). (Pen. Code, §§ 422, 12031, subd. (a)(1), 459, 12022, subd. (a)(1).) He was acquitted of count 1 and convicted of counts 2 and 3, with the ancillary allegation found true, and placed on formal probation. Marion appeals, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence in support of the burglary count. We affirm.
All section references are to the Penal Code.
FACTS
Marion (who had just turned 18 years old) and several family members were present in the intensive care unit of the Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Los Angeles when Marion’s father (a retired police officer) died. Marion became very angry, left the hospital, and moments later walked back in carrying a handgun. As he entered the second floor from an elevator, his uncle tackled him, and Marion gave him the weapon.
Meanwhile, a security guard (Jimmy Villalobos), who had seen Marion go to the second floor carrying a gun, had called the security office, and the police had responded to a 911 call to find people running out of the downstairs emergency room, screaming about a man with a gun. Villalobos told the officers the man with the gun had gone to the second floor.
The officers went to the second floor where they found Marion in a waiting area with members of his family and took him into custody without incident. The officers found Maria Marion (Marion’s newly widowed mother) hiding in a bathroom with the lights turned off. Mrs. Marion told the officers that her son blamed her for his father’s heart condition, and that he had threatened her earlier that day, saying, “If anything happens to my father, you’re next.” At the police station, Marion waived his rights and told the officers he had taken the handgun from his father’s room at the family home, placed it in his car, and retrieved it after his father died. He said he was “mad at the nurse” and knew the gun was loaded, but he did not know what he had intended to do with it. The officers found ammunition in the car.
At trial, the People presented evidence of the facts summarized above. Marion testified in his own defense. He admitted that he had carried the gun into the hospital but said he believed it was not loaded. He said he was upset with the hospital staff and had not been thinking clearly. The jury acquitted him of the criminal threats count but convicted him of the firearm and burglary counts.
DISCUSSION
Marion contends the evidence is insufficient to show that he entered the hospital with the intent to commit a felony and, therefore, insufficient to support his burglary conviction. We disagree.
The jurors were instructed that, to convict Marion of burglary, they would have to find that he entered the hospital with the intent to commit a felony, either making a criminal threat or an assault with a firearm. (§§ 459, 422, 245, subd. (a)(2); People v. Frye (1998) 18 Cal.4th 894, 954; People v. Cain (1995) 10 Cal.4th 1, 47.) The evidence supports the conviction on either theory. (People v. Washington (1996) 50 Cal.App.4th 568, 577-579.)
It is undisputed that Marion took the handgun from his father’s house, put it in his car, left it there while he went to visit his father, returned to the car after his father died, got the handgun, and (gun in hand) entered the hospital. Viewing the evidence and drawing all inferences to support the verdict (People v. Bloom (1989) 48 Cal.3d 1194, 1208), Marion’s intent at the time he re-entered the hospital was either to threaten his mother or assault the nurses -- or both. He blamed his mother for his father’s illness and death, and she told the police that he had threatened to kill her; several family members told the police they had heard Marion express his anger at the hospital staff; and he entered the hospital carrying a gun. The fact that he did not commit either felony is immaterial, as is the fact that the evidence could support the opposite conclusion, and no more was required to support the burglary charge. (§§ 245, subd. (a)(2); 422; People v. Pre (2004) 117 Cal.App.4th 413, 420; People v. Ceja (1993) 4 Cal.4th 1134, 1138-1139; People v. Rodriguez (1999) 20 Cal.4th 1, 11; People v. Sanghera (2006) 139 Cal.App.4th 1567, 1573-1575.)
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.
We concur: MALLANO, Acting P.J. JACKSON, J.
Judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court, assigned by the Chief Justice pursuant to article VI, section 6 of the California Constitution.