California v. Son
Annotate this CaseDefendant Troy Son was charged with murder with an enhancement for the personal use of a deadly weapon. A jury found defendant guilty of first degree murder, unanimously finding that the murder was willful, deliberate and premeditated and committed by lying in wait. The jury found the weapon use allegation to be true. Defendant was sentenced to a state prison term of 26 years to life, comprised of 25 years to life for the murder, plus a consecutive one year for the enhancement. Defendant raises three issues on appeal. The first was that the trial court erred by permitting a detective to describe the events of a surveillance video that was subsequently watched by the jury. Defendant’s second and third arguments went to each of the first-degree murder theories. The jury made separate findings on two theories of first-degree murder: premeditation, and lying in wait. Defendant contended both were infected with error. To prevail on appeal, he had to prevail on both arguments: if either the premeditation or lying-in-wait finding was upheld, then any error in the other is necessarily harmless. The Court of Appeal concluded the trial court did not abuse its discretion, in admitting the detective’s narration - it was admissible lay testimony based on her extensive review of the video. The Court found no misconduct as to how the prosecutor explained the concept of premeditation to the jury: "the example was harmless: the multiple-shots example is not entirely wrong, the prosecutor mentioned it only briefly, this was not a gun case, the issue of premeditation hinged on defendant’s mental health, and the court properly instructed the jury. Because we uphold the first-degree murder conviction on a theory of premeditation, we need not address lying in wait." Conviction was affirmed.
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