California Court of Appeal

In this case, a jury convicted defendant of first degree murder and found firearm and gang allegations true, and in a bifurcated trial, the court found true three prior strike allegations. The judgment of conviction is affirmed, where: 1) defendant was deprived of competent counsel at the preliminary hearing, and had defendant pursued and perfected relief before he was tried and convicted in a trial free from that defect, he would have been entitled to have the information set aside, but that relief is no longer available without a showing that he was prejudiced by the pretrial error, which he has not done here; 2) despite the various uncertainties and inconsistencies in the identification of defendant by various witnesses, those identifications provided substantial evidence enough to support the jury’s determination on the issue, and the reviewing court is not free to reweigh the evidence or to discount the testimony of eyewitnesses, particularly those who have given evidence, as here, without objection to their competence or to the relevance of their testimony; and 3) substantial evidence supports the jury’s true finding on the special gang allegations.

Appellate Information

• Decided 03/10/2015
• Published 03/10/2015

Judges

• Chaney

Court

• California Court of Appeal

Counsel