People v. Robbins

California Court of Appeal Mar 31, 1989 No. G003980Published

Before: Wallin

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Holding. A trial court is not required to provide a unanimity instruction regarding great bodily injury enhancements because the jury's role is to assess the totality of the injuries rather than agree on a specific act, and the defendant's conduct constituted a single, continuous transaction.

Issues

Whether a trial court must sua sponte instruct a jury to unanimously agree on which specific injury supports a great bodily injury enhancement.
Whether a unanimity instruction is required when a defendant's criminal acts are so closely connected in time that they form a single transaction.

Disposition. affirmed

Quotations verified verbatim against the opinion

“It matters not that individual jurors may have differed in their view as to which particular injury or injuries constituted great bodily injury: The only requirement is that the jury unanimously find the injury sustained by Jane M. to be significant or substantial.”

“Robbins’s attack on his victim was one prolonged assault, of which the individual blows and other indignities were inseparable components.”

Opinion

WALLIN, J.

A jury convicted Raymond Wade Robbins of two counts of

forcible oral copulation (Pen. Code, § 288a, subd. (c))

and one count of sexual penetration by force (§ 289, subd. (a)). The jury also found he used a deadly weapon (§ 12022.3) and inflicted great bodily injury in the commission of each offense (§ 12022.8). The court sentenced Robbins to the upper term of eight years on each count, to be served consecutively. Eight additional years were added to each count, also to be served consecutively, for knife use and infliction of great bodily injury. Another five-year enhancement was imposed for Robbins’s admitted prior serious felony conviction (§§ 667 and 1192.7, subd. (c)).

Robbins urges the court committed both instructional and sentencing error. We disagree and affirm.

Late on the evening of August 27, 1984, Robbins entered the Stanton apartments and found 68-year-old Jane M. asleep on her living room couch. He grabbed her around the neck, jerked her to her feet, knocked her glasses off her face and ripped her dentures from her mouth. After blindfolding her, he struck her in the head, knocking her to the floor. Robbins whispered he had a knife and knew how to use it, so she had better keep quiet. As Jane M.

[264]

lay on the floor, her attacker held the knife up beneath the blindfold and told her to look at it. She did so.

After Robbins forced Jane M. to remove her underwear, he struck her body and head several times with his fists. He told her to stand up, but because of her arthritis she could only get to her knees. Robbins grabbed Jane M.’s hair, dragged her into the bedroom, ripped off her remaining clothes and threw her on the bed. He forced her to orally copulate him approximately 12 times. At one point, Robbins forced her into a spread eagle position and stuck his finger into her vagina, causing her extreme pain.

Throughout the ordeal Robbins continued to beat his victim intermittently; he also bit her nipple, gouged her eye, and ran his knife down her spine. Before the last act of oral copulation Robbins ordered Jane M. to lick his anus. Unable to do so, she massaged his rectum with two fingers while orally copulating him. Soon Robbins fell asleep and Jane M. escaped, running naked to the apartment manager’s office.

People v. Robbins

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WALLIN, J.

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