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People v. Steele5/30/2002
A jury convicted defendant of the first degree murder of Lee Ann Thurman (Pen. Code, § 187) with the use of a knife (§ 12022) and found true the special circumstance of a prior murder conviction (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(2)). Later, defendant admitted three prior serious felony convictions. (§ 667, subd. (a).) After a penalty trial, the jury returned a verdict of death, and the court imposed that sentence. This appeal is automatic. (§ 1239, subd. (b).) We affirm the judgment.
I. The Facts
A. Guilt Phase
1. Prosecution Evidence
During the evening of August 5, 1988, the body of Lee Ann Thurman, nude but partially covered by a blanket, was discovered on the floor of her apartment in Redding. She was 24 or 25 years old and developmentally disabled; she "had the skills of . . . maybe a 10 year old." The body had bruises on the face and neck possibly caused by a fist and eight or nine stab wounds, all but one to the chest. The other stab wound, inflicted after death, was to the vagina. The autopsy revealed that the victim had also been manually strangled before she died. The cause of death was "multiple stab wounds to the chest with manual strangulation."
The morning after the body was found, August 6, 1988, defendant entered the Circus Circus casino in Reno, Nevada, and told a security officer, "I just killed a girl. I need a drink." He said he had killed her " ecause she was a whore." He also said he had the knife and the victim's identification. Another security officer was called to the scene, and the two seized a knife and wallet from defendant. A short time later, defendant told a police officer, "I killed a lady. Talk to me please."
Defendant spoke with an officer of the Reno Police Department about the killing. His story changed a number of times, but basically he said he picked the victim up while she was hitchhiking in Redding, and he paid her $10 to orally copulate him. The two went to her home, where they had sexual intercourse. He drank a lot of peppermint schnapps. Then, he said, "I just snapped." He killed her with the knife he showed the security guard, which had been in his pocket. He said, "I just nutted up," and "I hate women." When asked why he killed her, he said he "heard helicopters." He said he had spent two and a half years in Vietnam, from November 1964 to April 1967, and suggested that he had been in combat and had been trained to kill. He claimed he had been honorably discharged from the military and had received a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. After he killed her, he said, he wiped his fingerprints off the doorknob, the couch, and the shower. He denied ever having hurt a girl before. Later defendant gave a similar statement to the Redding police. He said he just "snapped." "I heard chopper blade, . . . I just blew it." He said he had "been drinking a hundred proof of Peppermint Schnapps for two weeks."
The police recovered the truck that defendant said he had driven to the Reno area. It contained a purse that defendant said was the victim's. The wallet defendant gave the security guards contained Thurman's identification. The knife that defendant gave the guards had human blood on it that could have been the victim's but not defendant's.
The truck that defendant drove to Reno belonged to Richard Blakeslee, with whom defendant was living at the time of the killing. Blakeslee testified that defendant had taken the truck once before without permission. On the day of the killing, Blakeslee said, he and defendant had been drinking. One of Thurman's neighbors testified that around 7:30 to 8:00 p.m., the day of the killing, she saw a man she did not know drive the same truck with Thurman as a
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