People v. Morales CA2/8

Filed 10/23/23 P. v. Morales CA2/8 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.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

SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION EIGHT

THE PEOPLE, B318146

Plaintiff and Respondent, Los Angeles County Super. Ct. No. TA153061 v.

MARLON MORALES,

Defendant and Appellant.

APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Teresa P. Magno, Judge. Affirmed. Susan Morrow Maxwell, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant. Rob Bonta, Attorney General, Lance E. Winters, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Susan Sullivan Pithey, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Scott A. Taryle, Supervising Deputy Attorney General, and Viet H. Nguyen, Deputy Attorney General, for Plaintiff and Respondent. ____________________

Marlon Morales appeals his torture conviction and seeks resentencing. He claims insufficient evidence supports his conviction and the trial court was unaware of its new discretion to dismiss sentencing enhancements. We affirm. Neither claim has merit. Statutory references are to the Penal Code. I Morales’s victim testified at trial. She and Morales had dated on and off for more than a year. Morales told her to come to his house early in the morning on November 7, 2020. They were intimate and then fell asleep. After a phone call woke him later that afternoon, Morales noticed notifications on the victim’s phone and a call from a man. Morales looked through the phone. He beat her with his hands and other objects over the next 20 hours or so every time he saw something on the phone he did not like. We provide more details of the victim’s captivity later when reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence. For now, we sketch some of Morales’s acts over that 20-hour period and some of the victim’s injuries. According to the victim, Morales kicked and punched her, choked her, pulled her by her hair, and slammed her into a wall. He hit her face with a gun and made her left eye bleed. He hit her with a stick so hard the stick broke. He hit her thigh with a brick after trying to hit her in the head with it. He stabbed her thigh with scissors. He kicked her in the back and fractured her vertebrae. He made it seem as if he would set her on fire with gasoline using the gas can he had on hand. The victim blacked out at one point and later pretended to lose consciousness so Morales would leave her alone. She did not try to leave because she feared he would kill her.