IN THE SUPREME COURT OF CALIFORNIA THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. CALVIN LAMONT PARKER, Defendant and Appellant. S113962 San Diego County Superior Court SCD154640 May 19, 2022 Justice Groban authored the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye and Justices Corrigan, Liu, Kruger, Jenkins, and Petrou* concurred. * Associate Justice of the Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, Division Three, assigned by the Chief Justice pursuant to article VI, section 6 of the California Constitution. PEOPLE v. PARKER S113962 Opinion of the Court by Groban, J. This automatic appeal follows from defendant Calvin Lamont Parker’s 2002 conviction and death sentence for the murder of Patricia Gallego. Defendant was found guilty of first degree murder in violation of Penal Code1 section 187, subdivision (a), and the jury also found true the lying-in-wait special circumstance (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(15)), as well as the special circumstance allegations that defendant intentionally killed Gallego for financial gain (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(1)), while engaged in the commission or attempted commission of rape (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(17)). After a penalty trial, the jury returned a verdict of death. We affirm the judgment. FACTUAL BACKGROUND A. Guilt Phase 1. Prosecution’s Evidence Defendant and Gallego were roommates who met while she was dating his former roommate, Charles Ijames, in 1997. Gallego was a Brazilian citizen and had moved to the United States in 1996. In 1998, after Gallego had dated Ijames for some time, defendant told Ijames that Gallego had offered to pay him $5,000 if he would marry her. Ijames understood the offer to be 1 All further unspecified statutory references are to the Penal Code. PEOPLE v. PARKER Opinion of the Court by Groban, J. purely transactional, not romantic. Ijames got the impression defendant was uneasy about Gallego’s request and that he would turn her down. Gallego and Ijames broke up in late 1998, and Gallego went back to Brazil. She returned to the United States in late 1999. Ijames and defendant stopped living together in November 1999, and about six months after that, defendant told his friend Leilani Kaloha that he was moving in with Gallego. Defendant told Kaloha that he had known Gallego previously, that he planned to marry her in exchange for money, and that they were moving in to make their marriage appear plausible. A month or two after defendant told Kaloha he planned to marry Gallego, Kaloha asked defendant if that was still the case, and defendant said it was not. Marilyn Powell, defendant’s ex- girlfriend, learned defendant and Gallego no longer planned to marry some months after moving in together, and Powell thought defendant was upset about the change in plans. Gallego held two jobs while living with defendant. She was a server at Yakimono restaurant and a supervisor at Café Chloe. Several days before her disappearance, Gallego told Eudes De Crecy, the owner of Café Chloe, that she wanted to change her life and move out of the apartment she shared with defendant. De Crecy observed that …
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