People v. Williams CA2/3


Filed 3/30/23 P. v. Williams CA2/3 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.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 THREE THE PEOPLE, B306974 Plaintiff and Respondent, Los Angeles County Super. Ct. No. A080152-01 v. EDWARD CHARLES WILLIAMS, Defendant and Appellant. APPEAL from an order of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Mark E. Windham, Judge. Affirmed. Marc J. Zilversmit, 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, Assistant Attorney General, Charles S. Lee and Blythe J. Leszkay, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent. _________________________ Defendant and appellant Edward Charles Williams appeals from the superior court’s order denying his petition to vacate his murder conviction under Penal Code section 1172.6.1 We conclude substantial evidence supports the court’s finding, after an evidentiary hearing and beyond a reasonable doubt, that Williams was a major participant in an attempted robbery and he acted with reckless indifference to human life. We affirm. FACTS AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND 1. The attempted robbery and murder2 1 References to statutes are to the Penal Code. Effective June 30, 2022, former section 1170.95 was renumbered to section 1172.6 with no change in text. (Stats. 2022, ch. 58, § 10.) 2 We take our statement of facts from several sources: (1) The testimony at Williams’s April 1990 trial. These reporter’s transcripts are contained in the supplemental clerk’s transcript filed December 8, 2020, after Williams’s counsel asked the superior court to augment or supplement the clerk’s transcript in this appeal. (2) The record on appeal in Case No. B247801, consisting of 80 volumes of clerk’s and reporter’s transcripts. We previously granted Williams’s request for judicial notice of this record. (3) The exhibits submitted by the prosecution in the evidentiary hearing in the superior court, including the preliminary hearing testimony of Carol Croce. We previously granted Williams’s request to augment the record with these exhibits. (4) The April 29, 2004 minute order as well as findings and conclusions by the Honorable Arjuna T. Saraydarian following a hearing on Williams’s petition for writ of habeas corpus in Williams v. Taylor, Case No. 001898, Riverside County Superior Court, including a summary of an October 16, 2002 parole board hearing. We previously granted the Attorney General’s unopposed motion to augment the record with this court record. 2 On the morning of February 16, 1980, Carol Croce was working at a check cashing business on Venice Boulevard in Westwood called C.C.’s Original. C.C.’s was inside Croce’s hamburger take-out restaurant. Bruce Horton, who owned C.C.’s, and a teenager named Keith Sarazinski, who helped “clean up the store,” were there as well.3 Sarazinski had gone outside …

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