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People v. Willis CA4/2 (2023) · DecisionDepot
/ California Court of Appeal People v. Willis CA4/2 Unpublished Filed 11/15/23 P. v. Willis CA4/2 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.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, E078414
v. (Super.Ct.No. INF2000876)
HUGH OBRINE WILLIS, OPINION Defendant and Appellant.
APPEAL from the Superior Court of Riverside County. Dale R. Wells, Judge.
Affirmed.
Steven A. Torres, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and
Appellant.
Rob Bonta, Attorney General, Lance E. Winters, Chief Assistant Attorney
General, Charles C. Ragland, Assistant Attorney General, Eric A. Swenson and
Felicity Senoski, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
1
A jury convicted Hugh Obrine Willis of torture, child endangerment, and willful
infliction of corporal punishment on a child. (Pen. Code, §§ 206, 273a, subd. (a), 273d,
subd. (a); unlabeled statutory citations refer to the Penal Code.) The victim of the
offenses was Willis’s son, John Doe (John). The torture conviction required the jury to
find that Willis inflicted great bodily injury “with the intent to cause cruel or extreme
More from California Court of Appeal Source: opinion data from the Free Law Project / CourtListener (public-domain court records). DecisionDepot is for informational use only and is not legal advice — verify against the official reporter before relying on any text or AI-generated summary.
pain and suffering for the purpose of revenge, extortion, persuasion, or for any sadistic
purpose.” (§ 206.) Willis argues that the record does not contain substantial evidence
that he acted for the purpose of revenge, extortion, persuasion, or for any sadistic
purpose. We disagree and affirm.
BACKGROUND Willis has two sons, Adam Doe (Adam) and John. Lorri Willis (Lorri) is the
children’s mother and Willis’s wife.1 The family was living at a motel in June 2020.
Twelve-year-old John found a hypodermic needle and syringe in the parking lot and
stabbed 14-year-old Adam with the needle during a fight. To discipline John, Willis
struck John numerous times. Willis made John strip off his clothes, lie on the bed face
down, and stretch his hands above his head. Willis then hit John with a metal hanger and
a bungee cord on the child’s back, arms, buttocks, legs, and head. John could not recall
how many times Willis struck him, but it was more than 10. John was squirming, and
Willis told him to lie still. When the child did not stop squirming, Willis made Lorri hold
John’s legs. Willis also punched John in the eye, on the forehead, and on the chest, and
1 We refer to Lorri by her first name for the sake of clarity. No disrespect is intended.
he pressed his forearm against the back of John’s neck for several seconds. Willis took
his arm off John’s neck when John said that he could not breathe. After the beating,
Willis made John smoke a cigarette. John was bleeding from his ear, and he could not
hear from that ear for several hours afterward. He also had a “busted” lip, bruises on his
leg, buttocks, and back, and a black eye.
At the time of those events, Willis weighed 190 pounds and was five feet 10
inches tall. John, who was small for his age, weighed 58 pounds and was four feet six
Lorri witnessed the beating and confirmed that she held John’s legs for roughly
five minutes when Willis instructed her to do so. She complied because she did not feel
like she had a choice. She said that the beating was hard to watch, and she usually left
the room when Willis hit the children. John was crying and screaming and looked like he
was in pain. Willis “kept telling [John] to shut up and be quiet.” After the beating, John
was drooling, and blood was coming out of his mouth.
Lorri said that Willis always had a reason for hitting John and Adam, but she
thought that the beatings were unnecessary on a couple of occasions. Lorri sometimes
heard Willis say, “‘If you like it, I love it,’” before hitting the children. Willis did not
appear happy or joyful during the beatings.
Adam also witnessed parts of the beating. He went into the bathroom because he
was scared and did not want to see it, but he poked his head out of the bathroom four or
five times. He saw Willis hit John with the bungee cord “a lot,” maybe 20 to 30 times,
and choke John. Willis also used a metal hanger to hit John. Adam heard John crying
and yelling, and he heard Lorri tell Willis to stop, but Willis refused and said that he was
disciplining his child. Willis looked angry.
The day after Willis beat John, a neighbor at the motel called 911 and reported a
child crying throughout the night. A police officer responded to the call for a welfare
check and observed bruising all over John’s body. Willis told the officer that he was
responsible for “the whooping” and John’s injuries. Willis said that he struck John to
discipline him for the needle incident; he was “fearful” that if he did not beat the child,
John would not learn and would do the same thing again. He also said that he did not
strike John out of anger, and he never told the officer that he enjoyed striking the child.
Lorri told the officer that Willis struck John to discipline him for the needle incident and
because they had caught the child watching pornography.
The officer referred John and Adam to the Riverside County Child Assessment
Team for forensic interviews. John’s statements to the forensic interviewer were largely
consistent with his trial testimony: He described how Willis made him strip, hit him with
a bungee cord, choked him, punched him in the face, and made Lorri hold his legs. John
described Willis as “pretty mean,” and he was scared that Willis might kill him someday
by hitting “something vital.” In Adam’s forensic interview, he likewise described how
Willis choked John, punched him in the face, and hit him with the bungee cord.
John also underwent a forensic medical evaluation. John told the nurse
practitioner that his ears were tender and his buttocks were very sore. The nurse
observed much bruising on John’s ears and dried blood in one of his ear canals. There
was a small abrasion on the child’s forehead, purple and red bruising on his eyelid and
above the eye, a red linear bruise on his face, and a broken blood vessel in one of his
eyes. He had a long linear pattern bruise on the front of one thigh and a small bruise in
the pubic area, but most of his injuries were on the back of his body. There were a few
red pattern bruises on his upper back, deep purple pattern bruises on his forearms, and
very distinct pattern bruises on the back of both thighs. The distinctive bruises were a
hook pattern consistent with a hanger. The other pattern bruises were long linear marks
consistent with a bungee cord. John had extensive bruising on his buttocks that did not
have a specific pattern. The “areas of bruising kind of just joined together” so that both
buttocks “were essentially just large areas of purple and red bruise.” It was difficult to
tell how many impacts caused the entirety of the bruising on his buttocks. John’s
bloodwork showed that there had been extensive injury to his muscles.
John and Adam both described prior beatings at trial and during their forensic
interviews. When John was 11 years old, he got in trouble for using Lorri’s phone while
the rest of the family was sleeping. Willis told Lorri and Adam to take a walk, and he
made John take off his clothes and lie face down on the bed. Willis hit John with an
extension cord for four to five minutes, and when John would not stop squirming, Willis
taped him to a chair. Two days before the charged offense, Willis hit John with a metal
hanger roughly six times when the child picked up a pipe he found outside. John said
that Willis typically looked mad or angry when he was hitting John, and he had never
seen Willis look happy or joyful.
As for Adam, he once got in trouble for buying the wrong chips at the store.
Willis made Adam take his clothes off and hit him with an extension cord. Willis soaked
the extension cord in water first and told Adam that the water would make the cord hurt
more. Adam was screaming during the beating, so Willis put on his headphones and
played music loud enough for Adam to hear it. Willis then continued hitting Adam with
the cord. The child dropped to the floor after Willis hit him numerous times. Willis told
him to get up, but Adam refused, and Willis hit him in the head with the cord. On
another occasion, Adam got in trouble for drinking a soda at the store and putting it back
on the shelf. Willis punched Adam in the head, and after the child started crying, Willis
said that he would “‘give [Adam] something to cry about.’” He then hit Adam on the
legs several times with an extension cord.
Adam said that during or before beatings, Willis often said, “‘If you like it, I love
it.’” Willis did not enjoy hitting Adam and John as far as Adam could tell, but he “really
wasn’t sure.” Willis would hit them until he tired, and the beatings could “go on
forever.” On one occasion, Willis took a break to smoke, and then he hit Adam more
afterward. Adam was scared that Willis would kill him and John or hurt them severely
When the forensic interviewer asked Adam how he felt about all of the things he
told her, he replied: “Sad. I just . . . feel tortured.” She asked him to say more about that
feeling, and he responded: “Just getting whooped. Like, his whooping us is fun for
him.” At trial, Adam explained that when he said the beatings were fun for Willis, he
meant that sometimes Willis would “just find a reason to whoop” them. Adam further
explained: “[H]e would just say we did stuff, and it wouldn’t even be true half the time.
So he would just whoop us over no reason.”
The jury found Willis guilty of torture, child endangerment, and willful infliction
of corporal punishment on a child. The court sentenced him to prison for seven years to
life on the torture count and stayed his prison terms on the other counts.
DISCUSSION Willis argues that the record does not contain substantial evidence that he
possessed the mental state required for his torture conviction. We disagree.
In resolving a substantial evidence challenge, we review “the entire record in the
light most favorable to the prosecution to determine whether it contains evidence that is
reasonable, credible, and of solid value, from which a rational trier of fact could find the
defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” (People v. Kipp (2001) 26 Cal.4th 1100,
1128.) We resolve all conflicts in the evidence and credibility questions in favor of the
verdict. (People v. Zamudio (2008) 43 Cal.4th 327, 357.) We do not reweigh the
evidence or reevaluate witness credibility. (People v. Nelson (2011) 51 Cal.4th 198,
“[T]orture has two elements: (1) the infliction of great bodily injury; and (2) the
specific intent to cause cruel or extreme pain and suffering for the purpose of revenge,
extortion, persuasion, or for any sadistic purpose.” (People v. Massie (2006) 142
Cal.App.4th 365, 370-371 (Massie).) “Sadistic purpose encompasses the common
meaning, ‘“the infliction of pain on another person for the purpose of experiencing
pleasure.”’” (Id. at p. 371.)
“The intent with which a person acts is rarely susceptible of direct proof and
usually must be inferred from facts and circumstances surrounding the offense.” (Massie,
supra, 142 Cal.App.4th at p. 371.) In addition, evidence of uncharged acts of child abuse
may be used to show the mental state required for the charged offenses. (Evid. Code,
§ 1101, subd. (b); People v. Evers (1992) 10 Cal.App.4th 588, 598.)
Willis argues that the record does not contain substantial evidence that he had a
sadistic purpose for inflicting pain on John. Willis asserts that he had “different
motive[s],” namely, he was angry with John for sticking Adam with the needle, he feared
for Adam’s safety, and he disapproved of John watching pornography. But even if the
evidence shows that Willis beat John to discipline him for some wrong, the jury could
reasonably infer from the evidence that Willis also took pleasure in abusing John. The
beating was severe and gratuitous. Willis made John strip off his clothes and struck the
child’s bare skin numerous times with two different implements, a metal hanger and a
bungee cord. He also punched John and choked him, and he made John’s mother hold
the child’s legs when the child was squirming in pain. The beating lasted roughly five
minutes, and John suffered bruises all over his body. His buttocks in particular were
completely covered in bruises.
The gratuitous nature of the beating was familiar to the children. For instance,
Adam described a beating Willis gave him for buying the wrong bag of chips. Willis also
made Adam strip off his clothes and hit the child with a wet extension cord numerous
times. Willis put on loud music when Adam screamed, and Willis continued to hit the
child. And when Adam fell to the ground, Willis told him to get up and continued to hit
him. Both children were afraid that Willis would kill them someday when he was
disciplining them for some actual or perceived wrong. Adam thought that the beatings
were fun for Willis because he seemed to find any reason to hit them, whether that reason
was based in fact or not. And both Adam and Lorri said that when Willis hit the children,
he told them, “‘If you like it, I love it.’” In light of all the foregoing evidence, the jurors
could reasonably conclude that Willis inflicted extreme pain on John for more than mere
discipline. They could reasonably infer that he experienced a sadistic pleasure in causing
John pain. (People v. Flores (2016) 2 Cal.App.5th 855, 872 [jury could have reasonably
concluded that the defendants intended to cause extreme pain and suffering for the
purpose of persuasion when they disciplined the child victims by beating them and
depriving them of food]; Massie, supra, 142 Cal.App.4th at pp. 375-376 [“a reasonable
jury could have concluded that the gratuitous and repeated acts of extreme brutality”
against the victim “were committed for the sadistic purpose of providing defendant
Willis argues that this case is like People v. Steger (1976) 16 Cal.3d 539 (Steger),
but Steger in inapposite. Steger involved a first degree murder conviction in which the
prosecution relied on a torture murder theory. (Id. at pp. 542-543; see § 189, subd. (a)
[“All murder that is perpetrated by means of . . . torture . . . is murder of the first
degree”].) The defendant severely beat her three-year-old stepdaughter over the course
of weeks, eventually causing the child’s death from head injuries. (Steger, supra, at
p. 543.) The court held that torture murder required the willful, deliberate, and
premeditated “intent to inflict extreme and prolonged pain” (id. at p. 546), but there was
“not one shred of evidence to support a finding” that the defendant beat her stepdaughter
“with cold-blooded intent to inflict extreme and prolonged pain.” (Id. at p. 548.) The
court reasoned: “Rather, the evidence introduced by the People paints defendant as a
tormented woman, continually frustrated by her inability to control her stepchild’s
behavior. The beatings were a misguided, irrational and totally unjustifiable attempt at
discipline; but they were not in a criminal sense [willful], deliberate, or premeditated.”
(Ibid.) The court thus modified the judgment by reducing the defendant’s conviction to
second degree murder. (Id. at p. 553.)
Steger does not change our conclusion. It concerned the sufficiency of the
evidence showing willfulness, premeditation, and deliberation, as well as intent to inflict
extreme pain. But the crime of torture does not require premeditation and deliberation.
(Massie, supra, 142 Cal.App.4th at p. 371; People v. Hale (1999) 75 Cal.App.4th 94, 107
[“The intent required for torture as defined by section 206 is not identical to the intent for
murder by torture under section 189”].) And Willis does not contend that the evidence
here was insufficient to show that he intended to inflict extreme pain on John. He argues
that the evidence was insufficient to show that he intended to inflict pain for the purpose
of a sadistic pleasure, and Steger said nothing about the sufficiency of the evidence to
For all of these reasons, substantial evidence shows that Willis acted with a
sadistic purpose when he beat John.
DISPOSITION The judgment is affirmed.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
MENETREZ J.
RAMIREZ P. J. MILLER J.