Opinion
E067035
05-15-2018
THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. MANUEL TAYLOR, Defendant and Appellant.
Robert V. Vallandigham, Jr., under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant. Xavier Becerra, Attorney General, Julie L. Garland, Assistant Attorney General, and Peter Quon, Jr. and Stacy A. Tyler, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115. (Super.Ct.No. INF1600313) OPINION APPEAL from the Superior Court of Riverside County. Jeffrey L. Gunther, Judge. (Retired judge of the Sacramento Super. Ct. assigned by the Chief Justice pursuant to art. VI, § 6 of the Cal. Const.) Affirmed. Robert V. Vallandigham, Jr., under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant. Xavier Becerra, Attorney General, Julie L. Garland, Assistant Attorney General, and Peter Quon, Jr. and Stacy A. Tyler, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
Defendant and appellant, Manuel Taylor, pled guilty to unlawfully driving or taking a vehicle, a 1996 Honda Civic (count 5; Veh. Code, § 10851, subd. (a)); receiving stolen property, the 1996 Honda Civic (count 6; Pen. Code, § 496d, subd. (a)); and misdemeanor possession of burglary tools (count 7; Pen. Code, § 466). A jury thereafter convicted defendant of operating a chop shop (count 1; Veh. Code, § 10801); unlawfully driving or taking a vehicle, a 1993 Honda Civic (count 2; Veh. Code, § 10851, subd. (a)); breaking or removing vehicle parts (count 3; Veh. Code, § 10852); and receiving stolen property (count 4; Pen. Code, § 496, subd. (a)). Defendant admitted he had suffered a prior strike conviction. (Pen. Code, §§ 667, subds. (c), (e)(1), 1170.12, subd. (c)(1).) The court sentenced defendant to an aggregate term of imprisonment of eight years eight months.
On appeal, defendant contends insufficient evidence supports his conviction for operating a chop shop. We affirm.
I. FACTUAL HISTORY
On April 5, 2015, Victim 1 drove his 1993 Honda Civic to his work at Walmart where he parked it around 2:00 p.m. He got off work between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. and found his car missing. Victim 1 spoke with management who, in turn, spoke with security; Victim 1 then called the police to report the vehicle stolen.
That night, an officer responded to the report. The officer viewed Walmart video surveillance which showed a black vehicle park in the parking lot from which three people, two males and a female, exited and entered the store. Sometime later, all three individuals exited the store and went back inside the black vehicle. The vehicle was driven and parked next to Victim 1's car. About a minute later, both cars left at the same time.
Victim 1 had made several modifications to his vehicle, including adding rims, an ignition system, a light bar, and a grill. Other modifications had been made by the previous owner, including changes to its suspension, wheels, stereo, and intake manifold. Victim 1 posted a picture of his car on a local car group on Facebook asking that members keep an eye out for it because it had been stolen.
About two days after it was stolen, Victim 1 received information that someone had seen what they believed to be his car in Desert Hot Springs. He called Desert Hot Springs police to report on what street and in which direction his vehicle had been seen heading. Officers called Victim 1 back and told him they had found his vehicle.
Victim 1 went out to the location and found his car in an undrivable condition. It was missing his rims, taillights, headlights, fender, door panels, stereo, center console, and a lot of other parts. The value of the parts taken from his car was about $2,500 to $3,000. The value of the parts he recovered was about $500.
A few days later Victim 1 received information about his rims, including a picture, which had been posted on the Facebook car group's site. That information included a screen shot of defendant's post of a car for sale upon which Victim 1's rims had been placed. Victim 1 looked up defendant on Facebook; Victim 1 sent defendant a friend request, which defendant accepted; on defendant's Facebook page was a white Honda advertised for sale which had Victim 1's rims on it.
Another member of the Facebook group sent Victim 1 a picture of the white Honda parked behind an apartment complex along with a location in Indio. Victim 1 went to the location and observed the white Honda, which had his rims and headlights on it. He contacted the police.
While he was waiting for the police, Victim 1 saw two people removing parts from the vehicle. One of them was defendant. He then saw defendant drive the vehicle away prior to the arrival of the police.
A Riverside sheriff's investigator assigned to the auto theft interdiction team received tips from Victim 1 regarding the location of the white Honda, which Victim 1 believed to be driven by defendant. The officer went out to the location where he observed two individuals, including defendant, loitering around the white Honda. Defendant appeared to be showing the car to the other person; both individuals were inspecting the vehicle.
The officer had the vehicle towed into evidence, after which he obtained a search warrant and seized the stolen parts from the car. Victim 1 came to the tow yard and identified several parts which had been taken from his car and installed on the white Honda, including rims, a door panel, an intake filter, hood spacers, computers, and a stereo.
On March 15, 2016, Victim 2 parked his 1996 black Honda Civic and went to work. After work he found his car was missing. He reported it to the police as stolen.
On March 16, 2016, a California Highway Patrol officer pulled over a black 1996 Honda Civic after observing that it was missing a front license plate. Defendant was the driver. Defendant appeared "very nervous, anxious." There was no key in the ignition of the vehicle although it was still running. Defendant said he had keys for the car in the center console; however, a later search of the vehicle revealed no keys.
The officer ran the license plate through dispatch; it came back as belonging to another vehicle, a 1989 Honda, for which the registration had expired in 2014. The officer ran the vehicle identification number through dispatch, which came back as belonging to that vehicle which had just been the subject of a stolen vehicle report. The search of the vehicle turned up a "dipper," a tool used to steal vehicles. The officer also located a screwdriver, which is often used in conjunction with a dipper to steal vehicles.
The sheriff's deputy assigned to the auto theft interdiction team interviewed defendant. During the interview, defendant admitted that he was one of the individuals in the surveillance footage taken at Walmart of the black vehicle when Victim 1's car was stolen.
II. DISCUSSION
Defendant contends insufficient evidence supports his conviction for owning or operating a chop shop. We disagree.
Defendant apparently believes he raised a second issue in his opening brief: "In his opening brief, appellant argued that because none of [defendant]'s current convictions is for a violent offense listed in Penal Code section 667.5, the trial court's use of the 15 percent credit limitation pursuant to section 2933.1 was error." (Fn. omitted.) Defendant's counsel notes that he filed a request for correction of defendant's credit computation in the superior court, which that court granted. Defense counsel then notes: "For some unexplained reason, the People's Respondent's Brief fails to mention either the sentence credits issue or the trial court's revised ruling." Nevertheless, counsel observes that "[b]ecause the trial court has corrected its previously erroneous computation of sentence credits, this Court no longer needs to address this issue." The reason the People did not address this issue in its respondent's brief is not "unexplained"; rather, assuming the People have the same copy of defendant's opening brief that this court has, the reason the People did not address the issue is because it was never actually raised in defendant's opening brief. --------
"We '"'must review the whole record in the light most favorable to the judgment below to determine whether it discloses substantial evidence—that is, evidence which is reasonable, credible, and of solid value—such that a reasonable trier of fact could find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.'"' [Citation.]" (People v. Brooks (2017) 3 Cal.5th 1, 57.) "'Substantial evidence includes circumstantial evidence and any reasonable inferences drawn from that evidence.' [Citation.]" (Ibid.) "'"Reversal on this ground is unwarranted unless it appears 'that upon no hypothesis whatever is there sufficient substantial evidence to support [the conviction].' [Citations.]" [Citation.]' [Citations.]" (People v. Sanchez (2003) 113 Cal.App.4th 325, 329.) "Given this court's limited role on appeal, defendant bears an enormous burden in claiming there was insufficient evidence to sustain his conviction for operating a chop shop. If the verdict is supported by substantial evidence, we are bound to give due deference to the trier of fact and not retry the case ourselves. [Citations.]" (Ibid.)
"A 'chop shop' is any building, lot, or other premises where any person has been engaged in altering, destroying, disassembling, dismantling, reassembling, or storing any motor vehicle or motor vehicle part known to be illegally obtained by theft, fraud, or conspiracy to defraud, in order to do either of the following: [¶] (a) Alter, counterfeit, deface, destroy, disguise, falsify, forge, obliterate, or remove the identity, including the vehicle identification number, of a motor vehicle or motor vehicle part, in order to misrepresent the identity of the motor vehicle or motor vehicle part, or to prevent the identification of the motor vehicle or motor vehicle part. [¶] (b) Sell or dispose of the motor vehicle or motor vehicle part." (Veh. Code, § 250.) "Any person who knowingly and intentionally owns or operates a chop shop is guilty of a public offense and, upon conviction, shall be punished by imprisonment . . . ." (Veh. Code, § 10801.)
"There is nothing in the language of the statute[] to suggest the Legislature intended to include only conduct involving a planned, continuous use of a facility for purposes of dismantling stolen vehicles and dissemination of the vehicle components as part of an ongoing business operation. Furthermore, the term 'operate' is not limited to those who prepare, set up, or propose a scheme, nor is it limited to those with supervision and control. [Citation.]" (People v. Sanchez, supra, 113 Cal.App.4th at p. 331.)
Here, substantial evidence supports defendant's conviction for operating a chop shop. First, the People adduced both direct and circumstantial evidence that defendant was involved in the theft of at least two vehicles. Second, the People adduced evidence which inferentially suggested that defendant removed parts from Victim 1's car and placed them on another car which he then sought to sell on Facebook. Third, Victim 1 directly witnessed defendant removing parts from another vehicle on which Victim 1's stolen parts had already been placed. The investigator later witnessed defendant showing that same car to another person at the same location or premises.
Fourth, defendant was later found in possession of burglary tools used to steal automobiles. Finally, defendant was found in possession of a stolen automobile without a key, in which a dipper was found, and on which a license plate from another vehicle was attached. Thus, circumstantial evidence suggested defendant had both disguised a vehicle to mispresent the identification of the motor vehicle, the false license plate on the 1996 Honda Civic, and dismantled another vehicle to sell its parts, the 1993 Honda Civic.
Here, the testimony of Victim 1 and the police officer was direct evidence that defendant operated a premises where he disassembled vehicle parts for resale, the parking lot behind the apartment complex in Indio. Moreover, the circumstantial evidence that defendant was involved in the theft of more than one vehicle and the direct evidence of his attempt to sell one vehicle with parts taken from a stolen vehicle was circumstantial evidence that defendant operated a premises for the dismantling of automobile parts for resale. Therefore, substantial evidence supports defendant's conviction for operating a chop shop.
Defendant contends the evidence adduced in this case is starkly contrasted by the evidence adduced in both People v. Ramirez (2000) 79 Cal.App.4th 408 and People v. Sanchez, supra, 113 Cal.App.4th 325, which were deemed sufficient to support the respective convictions for operating a chop shop. We agree with defendant that the evidence adduced in both Ramirez and Sanchez was stronger than that adduced in the instant case. Nevertheless, neither Ramirez nor Sanchez stand for the proposition that the evidence adduced in those cases was the bare minimum necessary to support a conviction for operating a chop shop. As discussed above, the evidence in this case was sufficient to support defendant's conviction.
Lastly, defendant maintains that evidence of defendant's possession of the stolen 1996 Honda Civic "is totally irrelevant to the commission of an offense for operating a chop shop over a year earlier." Although the evidence of defendant's possession of the latter stolen vehicle might be directly irrelevant to the charge of operating a chop shop, it was admissible under Evidence Code section 1101, subdivision (b) to show a common motive, intent, plan, or absence of mistake. (People v. Balcom (1994) 7 Cal.4th 414, 425 ["The circumstance that the . . . offense occurred after the charged offense does not lessen its relevance in demonstrating the existence of a common design or plan."].)
In fact, during in limine motions, the People expressly moved for admission of the evidence regarding the latter theft, to which defendant had already pled, to be considered for purposes of lack of mistake and modus operandi under Evidence Code section 1101, subdivision (b). Defendant availed himself of the opportunity to respond to that motion. The court ruled the evidence regarding the offenses to which defendant had pled guilty would be admissible pursuant to Evidence Code section 1101, subdivision (b), to show defendant's knowledge and intent with respect to the remaining charges. Thus, the evidence of defendant's possession of the stolen 1996 Honda Civic was not irrelevant to his commission of the chop shop offense because it was relevant to prove his knowledge and intent with respect to the remaining charges.
III. DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
McKINSTER
J. We concur: RAMIREZ
P. J. FIELDS
J.