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People v. Kraft8/10/2000
t of the charged offenses: Defendant generally supplied the victims with alcohol and drugs, often diazepam, to the point they could no longer resist, whereupon defendant generally bound their wrists with ligatures, frequently using shoelaces. After gaining control over the victims in such a manner, unless they were already succumbing from the effects of the drugs, defendant killed them, often by ligature strangulation. After the victims' deaths, defendant disposed of the bodies generally by dumping them from his car, usually on or near a freeway or other roadway. And each murder involved some type of arguably sexual activity or aberration, whether taking the form of sodomy, mutilation or stripping the victim of clothing.
As this court noted in People v. Ewoldt (1994) 7 Cal.4th 380: "To establish the existence of a common design or plan, the common features must indicate the existence of a plan rather than a series of similar spontaneous acts, but the plan thus revealed need not be distinctive or unusual. For example, evidence that a search of the residence of a person suspected of rape produced a written plan to invite the victim to his residence and, once alone, to force her to engage in sexual intercourse would be highly relevant even if the plan lacked originality. In the same manner, evidence that the defendant has committed uncharged criminal acts that are similar to the charged offense may be relevant if these acts demonstrate circumstantially that the defendant committed the charged offense pursuant to the same design or plan he or she used in committing the uncharged acts. Unlike evidence of uncharged acts used to prove identity, the plan need not be unusual or distinctive; it need only exist to support the inference that the defendant employed that plan in committing the charged offense. [Citation.]" (Id. at p. 403.) In general, the charged offenses in this case were sufficiently similar to each other to support an inference that defendant acted according to a plan. Indeed, some aspects of each of the offenses were sufficiently similar to each other as to support instructions on modus operandi, as discussed post, at pages -.
We reject defendant's contention that the evidence in each charged murder had to be so similar as to establish a distinctive "signature" for cross-admissibility under the common plan theory pursuant to Evidence Code section 1101, subdivision (b). As we observed in People v. Ewoldt, supra, 7 Cal.4th at page 403, a lesser degree of similarity is necessary to admit evidence of other offenses to prove a common design or plan than to prove identity. That all of the charged murders were not committed in exactly the same way, therefore, does not preclude cross-admissibility.
The Attorney General contends evidence of the charged murders was also cross-admissible to refute certain anticipated defenses. For instance, the Attorney General contends evidence of other murders involving the provision of drugs to the victims would have been admissible in a trial of the Crotwell charge to refute the explanation defendant offered to police, i.e., he merely provided drugs to Crotwell and took him for an automobile ride, but played no role in his death. To the contrary, the Attorney General reasons, evidence that defendant murdered other persons whom he had supplied with alcohol and drugs would be admissible to show that defendant gave Crotwell drugs and took him for a drive, not as a gesture of friendship, but in order to render him vulnerable to an attack by defendant. The Attorney General additionally contends evidence of the DeVaul, Church and Loggins homicides (those in which photographs of the victims were found in defendant's car and house) was cross-admissible to refut
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