California Court of Appeal Aug 8, 2016 No. E063691Unpublished
Filed 8/8/16 P. v. Vasquez CA4/2
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION TWO
THE PEOPLE,
Plaintiff and Respondent, E063691
v. (Super.Ct.No. INF1300357)
RAYMUNDO GARCIA VASQUEZ, OPINION
Defendant and Appellant.
APPEAL from the Superior Court of Riverside County. Anthony R. Villalobos,
Judge. Affirmed with directions.
Allen G. Weinberg, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and
Appellant.
Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General, Gerald A. Engler, Chief Assistant Attorney
General, Julie L. Garland, Senior Assistant Attorney General, and Charles C. Ragland
and Alan L. Amann, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
Defendant Raymundo Garcia Vasquez seemed to be “obsessed” with Karina
Sepulveda; she was not attracted to him, although she did accept money and rides from
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him. After April 28, 2011, she went missing. On May 4, 2011, defendant went to
Mexico, thus effectively quitting his job. Also on May 4, 2011, Sepulveda’s dead body
was found in a remote cornfield, so badly decomposed that a cause of death could not be
determined. Eventually, defendant admitted that he drove to the cornfield with
Sepulveda and left her there alone at night, but he denied killing her.
After a jury trial, defendant was found guilty on one count of first degree murder.
(Pen. Code, §§ 187, subd. (a), 189.) He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison, along
with the usual fines, fees, and miscellaneous orders.
Defendant now contends that there was insufficient evidence of premeditation and
deliberation to support the finding that the murder was of the first degree. We disagree.
We will conclude that the fact that defendant had a recently heightened motive, the fact
that he borrowed his roommate’s car to pick Sepulveda up in, and the fact that had no
credible reason to drive Sepulveda to the cornfield — other than to kill her — were
sufficient to support the first degree finding.
I
FACTUAL BACKGROUND
As of April 2011, Karina Sepulveda was 19 years old. She lived in Indio, where
she worked for an insurance company. She did not own a car, though she was saving up
money to buy one. She had no known health problems.
Defendant lived in Indio with his friend, coworker, and roommate, Felipe Navarro.
Defendant worked at a Cardenas market. In the two or three years that he had worked
there, he had never requested a vacation.
2
Defendant told Navarro that he avoided going to Mexico, and that he had even
skipped his father’s funeral there, because he was afraid he would not be able to get back
into the United States.
Sepulveda first met defendant in 2007 or 2008, when she was 16 or 17. She and a
friend needed a ride back from a party, so they flagged him down and he gave them a
ride. After that, Sepulveda would call defendant when she needed a ride. She also
started asking him for money. He gave her money to go shopping at the mall and paid
some of her bills. As a quid pro quo, she occasionally allowed defendant to perform oral
sex on her. Some of these sex acts took place in defendant’s car.
Defendant seemed “obsessed” with Sepulveda. He phoned her and texted her
frequently. He had offered her $500 to engage in sexual intercourse with him. However,
Sepulveda was not romantically or sexually interested in defendant. When he phoned or
texted her, she seemed annoyed. He would try to kiss her, but she would she recoil.
When he tried to touch her, she yelled at him and said, “Don’t ever touch me, or else.”
She told a friend that he “repulsed” her.
On April 28, 2011, Sepulveda got off work at 8:00 p.m. A male acquaintance
picked her up. They sat in his car, talking. At about 8:15 p.m., Sepulveda phoned a man
who spoke Spanish and asked him to come and pick her up. Around 8:40 p.m., a white
sports utility vehicle (SUV) pulled up. Sepulveda said that she was going to go buy a car,
then got into the white SUV.
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A security video showed a white SUV arriving at a Carl’s Jr. in Thermal at
9:23 p.m. Navarro later identified it as his white Mitsubishi Montero, which defendant
had borrowed.1
At 9:45 p.m., Sepulveda phoned a female friend. She had agreed to help the friend
move that night. Sepulveda said she was at the Carl’s Jr. and asked the friend to pick her
up from there. Then she said, “Never mind. Just come to my house.”
At 9:48 p.m., Sepulveda posted a photo to Facebook showing her hand holding
nine $100 bills fanned out.
The last time Sepulveda used her cell phone was at 9:59 p.m. She was never heard
from or seen alive again.
In the three days from April 26 through April 28, defendant had phoned or texted
Sepulveda some 71 times. However, between April 29 and May 3, he did not phone or
text her at all.
On May 1, defendant asked to transfer to a Cardenas store in Las Vegas, but there
were no openings there. Also on May 1, he requested a 14-day vacation, from May 9
1 Defendant owned a red Mustang. On direct, Navarro testified that it had “a mechanical problem with the clutch” and the air conditioning did not work. On cross, he added that it had bad tires. He had told the police that it had bad tires, but not that it had a bad clutch or bad air conditioning. Defendant nevertheless drove the Mustang to work. Navarro also testified: “During the time [defendant’s] car was having problems, we were constantly switching cars.”
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through May 23. He explained that “he had to go to Mexico to fix [a] situation” there.2
Under Cardenas’s rules, if he took off work before May 9, he would be fired.
On May 4, a little before 2:00 p.m., Sepulveda’s dead body was found in a
cornfield at Avenue 50 and Fillmore Street in Coachella. Around it, there was a circle of
flattened corn. The body was clothed; the position of the clothing indicated that the body
had been dragged to where it lay. Sepulveda’s purse and cell phone were not present.
Insect activity indicated that Sepulveda had died a minimum of four and a half to
five and a half days before her body was found, and possibly more.
As a result of decomposition and animal activity, the cause of death could not be
determined. A shooting or a stabbing could be ruled out. Some natural causes could be
ruled out, but not all. A toxicology screen for over 150 different drugs was negative.
Blunt force trauma to the head could not be ruled out; however, there were no
skull fractures and “[n]o hemorrhaging in what was left of the brain.” Normally, with
blunt force trauma, one would expect to see hemorrhaging.
Strangulation also could not be ruled out; however, the hyoid bone and the larynx
were not broken and there was no swelling of the larynx. A forensic pathologist testified
that you would “always” expect to see such injuries in a strangulation case.
Finally, asphyxiation could not be ruled out. Asphyxiation would have taken a
minimum of five minutes.
2 However, he told Navarro that he wanted to see his mother for Mother’s Day.
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Defendant’s DNA was found under Sepulveda’s fingernails, in a small quantity
more consistent with tissue (or even perspiration) than semen. No semen was found on
the body.
On May 4, the fact that the body had been found was reported in the news. Also
on May 4, defendant went to Mexico. Navarro asked him for his subscriber identity
module (SIM) card, because he believed that defendant would not be able to use it in
Mexico. Defendant took the SIM card out of his phone, but instead of giving it to
Navarro, he broke it, saying “it wasn’t any good.” Defendant did not take his Mustang.
While he was in Mexico, he sold it to Navarro.
Starting on June 3, defendant tried repeatedly to reenter the United States, but he
was arrested every time.
On June 13, Detective James Campos interviewed Navarro. He also asked
Navarro for a DNA sample. Navarro contacted defendant and told him what had
happened.
On June 28, defendant sent a text message to Detective Campos, saying, “Hi,
police. This is Raymundo Garcia. I know you are looking for me for the [death] of
Karina Sepulveda. Call me at this number. I want to speak with you all.”
On July 13, Detective Campos spoke to defendant on the phone. Defendant
confirmed that, on April 28, he picked Sepulveda up to take her car-shopping. He was
going to let her charge $1,500 for the down payment to his credit card. At his suggestion,
she took the photo of herself holding the cash and posted it on Facebook.
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Defendant and Sepulveda went to a couple of car dealerships, but they were
closed. Sepulveda wanted something to eat, so they went to the Carl’s Jr. Next,
Sepulveda told defendant to drive to Avenue 50, as this would take them to some
junkyards that sold used cars.3
Meanwhile, Sepulveda started fondling defendant’s penis over his clothes.
Defendant stopped the car somewhere on Avenue 50. She masturbated him to
ejaculation. Then they got into an argument over money. Sepulveda got out and walked
away, and defendant drove home without her.
On August 11, Detective Campos spoke to defendant on the phone again. He told
defendant — falsely — that there was surveillance video of the cornfield. Defendant
replied, “[I]f that were so, you would already have come to get me here.”
On October 26, Detective Campos and defendant met at the Mexican border.
Defendant was unhappy in Mexico and wanted to get back into the United States. He
said that, in the week Sepulveda died, “he had a plan to get married.” He asked her to
sign a written contract to marry him. “[H]e would pay [her] . . . $10,000 so she would
marry him, and he would become a citizen[.]” The money he was giving her for the car
would be treated as an advance against the $10,000. She said she would sign it, but then
she “just kind of put it off to the side.” He was “upset” because he believed she was
reneging.
3 Cell phone records enabled the prosecution to create a map of defendant and Sepulveda’s approximate path. These documents have not been transmitted to us, but apparently they were generally consistent with defendant’s account.
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Using a map, defendant indicated that he had parked at Avenue 50 and Polk
Street; this was about a mile from where the body was actually found. He said that he
went to Mexico partly because he had not heard from Sepulveda and he assumed she was
mad at him.
Finally, on August 14, 2012, Detective Campos and defendant met again at the
Mexican border. This time, defendant claimed, for the first time, that he had been
attacked by carjackers who conspired with Sepulveda.4
According to defendant, as he and Sepulveda were driving, a car pulled up next to
them. A man and a woman inside smiled at them.
Defendant admitted for the first time that he parked at Avenue 50 and Fillmore.
After Sepulveda masturbated him, the car door opened and a man and a woman were
there. Defendant believed that the other car had followed them, and the man and the
woman had been dropped off there. Sepulveda said, “Vengeance is sweet.” She added
that the people wanted his car and his money. The man and the woman forced defendant
out of the car. In the process, his shoes came off.5 They beat him and he blacked out.
When he came to, he heard Sepulveda asking for help. Her face was bleeding.
Defendant wiped some of his blood onto a cornstalk. He also wiped some of Sepulveda’s
4 The defense theory was that defendant’s original account was true and that defendant made up the carjacking story because he wanted Detective Campos to help him get back into the United States. 5 In the prosecution’s view, defendant was trying to explain away some bare footprints that were found at the scene.
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blood onto a cornstalk.6 Sepulveda said, “I am sorry. This won’t happen again. I will
marry you. We will be happy.” Defendant felt “very betrayed.” He did not want to
listen to her anymore, so he put his hand over her mouth and said, “Shut up.” However,
he denied cutting off her breathing.
Defendant tried to take a video with his phone “to show that she was alive . . .
when he was leaving,” but the battery was low and the password did not seem to work.
He got into the car (which the carjackers, for some reason, had not taken) and went home.
II
THE SUFFICIENCY OF THE EVIDENCE
OF PREMEDITATION AND DELIBERATION
Defendant contends that there was insufficient evidence of premeditation and
deliberation to support the first degree murder verdict.
“In reviewing a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence under the due process
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and/or the due
process clause of article I, section 15 of the California Constitution, we review the entire
record in the light most favorable to the judgment to determine whether it discloses
substantial evidence — that is, evidence that is reasonable, credible, and of solid value —
from which a reasonable trier of fact could have found the defendant guilty beyond a
6 The police found no blood at the scene. The prosecution’s theory was that there had been blood on Sepulveda’s face, but it had been obliterated by insect activity.
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“‘ . . . In so doing, a reviewing court “presumes in support of the judgment the
existence of every fact the trier could reasonably deduce from the evidence.”’