People v. Walton

Opinion

GRODIN, P. J.

One summer day Lloyd Laverne Walton was working outside the leather goods shop which he operates next to his home in the vicinity of Santa Rosa, California, helping a customer load leather into a van, when he saw two men whom he believed had come to conduct a drug transaction at a house down the street. The occupants of the house had moved in three months before, and “strange things relating to gangs and violence” had taken place there ever since. Other neighbors, as well as Walton, believed that the occupants were dealing in drugs. Walton had called the police five or six times, but to no apparent avail.

The two men were sitting in a car parked in front of the van that was being loaded and Walton went to talk with them. The driver said they were waiting for someone down the street. Walton said if they were

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waiting for a drug deal they should please go down the street, and not stay in front of his house. He warned them that if he found them there again he would “put holes” in their car. He also told them the next time he would come out shooting.

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The two men left in their car, and Walton and his customer walked back to Walton’s house. As they were walking, the customer told Walton, who was hard of hearing, that one of the two men had hurled an obscenity at Walton as he drove away. Walton stormed into the house, returned to the front door with a pistol in his hand, and fired four times into the air. By this time the car had left, but 20 minutes later Walton looked outside his front window and saw another car parked down the street. Believing that this car was linked to the first, Walton walked down the middle of the street toward the car with a gun and holster at his side. As he approached the vehicle, the driver asked, “What’s happening?” Appellant pulled the gun out of its holster, and extended his right arm, holding the gun, through the open car window. The occupant of the car, who also had a gun, lay down on the front seat, and he and Walton both shot at each other at the same time. A full-blown shootout followed, as a result of which Walton was shot in the abdomen.

As it happens, the occupants of both cars were undercover officers who were waiting for a contact to come out of the house down the street so that they could arrest the occupants for drug dealing. Walton was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon, with enhancements for use of a firearm and brandishing a firearm.