## Facts

- William Clinton Clark planned an attempted robbery of a CompUSA electronics store with Nokkuwa Ervin and other accomplices, including Clark’s brother.
- Before the crime, Clark surveilled the store and helped an accomplice obtain a fraudulent driver’s license to rent a truck intended to haul away stolen merchandise.
- On October 18, 1991, after the store closed, Ervin and others entered armed, confronted employees, and handcuffed the employees in the restroom while the attempted robbery proceeded.
- Clark did not enter the store; he waited in a car in a nearby parking lot and was driving toward the loading dock area during the attempted robbery.
- Kathy Lee approached the store to pick up her son, an employee. Ervin shot and killed Lee outside the store. Clark was not the shooter.
- As Ervin ran out of the store and tried to get into Clark’s car, Clark drove away. Police arrived and arrested Ervin.
- Separately, Ardell Williams had testified before a grand jury about Clark’s involvement in the CompUSA incident and was expected to testify in criminal proceedings.
- In the early morning of March 13, 1994, Williams was shot and killed in Gardena by either Antoinette Yancey (Clark’s girlfriend at the time) or by someone acting at her direction. Clark was not the shooter.
- The prosecution’s theory was that Clark conspired with Yancey to have Williams killed to prevent her testimony.
- A jury convicted Clark of the first degree murders of Lee and Williams and found true five special circumstances, including two felony-murder special circumstances tied to Lee’s death (burglary-murder and attempted-robbery-murder), as well as witness-killing, lying in wait, and multiple-murder special circumstances.
- The first penalty jury deadlocked. A new penalty-phase jury later returned a death verdict, and Clark received a death sentence followed by an automatic appeal.

## Issues

1. Whether substantial evidence supported the burglary-murder and attempted-robbery-murder special-circumstance findings for Lee’s killing when Clark was a nonkiller accomplice.
2. Whether substantial evidence supported the witness-killing and lying-in-wait special-circumstance findings for Williams’s killing.
3. Whether other asserted errors (including jury selection, evidentiary rulings, prosecutorial conduct, and instructions) required reversal of the convictions or penalty judgment.
4. Whether the death judgment could stand if the two felony-murder special-circumstance findings were set aside.

## Decision

- The California Supreme Court vacated the burglary-murder and attempted-robbery-murder special-circumstance findings for insufficient evidence.
- The Court otherwise affirmed the judgment, including both first degree murder convictions.
- The Court affirmed the witness-killing, lying-in-wait, and multiple-murder special-circumstance findings.
- The Court rejected Clark’s remaining claims of reversible error and affirmed the death sentence.

## Legal Principles

- For felony-murder special circumstances applied to a nonkiller accomplice, the prosecution must prove more than participation in the felony; it must show the accomplice was a major participant and acted with reckless indifference to human life (under Enmund/Tison standards as applied to Penal Code § 190.2(a)(17)).
- Reckless indifference to human life is a fact-specific inquiry that may consider, among other things, the defendant’s role in planning, use and awareness of weapons, presence at the scene, ability to restrain or stop violence, and actions after lethal force is used.
- When evidence is legally insufficient to support a special-circumstance true finding, the proper remedy on appeal is to vacate that finding.
- The witness-killing special circumstance is supported when the evidence shows the victim was a witness (or expected witness) and the killing was committed to prevent testimony in a criminal proceeding.
- The lying-in-wait special circumstance requires evidence of a planned concealment and waiting period followed by a surprise attack.
- A multiple-murder special circumstance is supported when the defendant stands properly convicted of more than one first degree murder.
- A death judgment may be affirmed when at least one special circumstance remains valid and no prejudicial guilt- or penalty-phase error is shown.

## Conclusion

The California Supreme Court held that, although Clark helped plan the CompUSA attempted robbery, the record did not provide substantial evidence that this nonkiller accomplice acted with the level of reckless indifference required to sustain the burglary-murder and attempted-robbery-murder special circumstances for Kathy Lee’s death, so those two findings were vacated; because the remaining special circumstances (including witness-killing and lying in wait for Ardell Williams’s murder) were supported and no reversible trial or penalty error was found, the Court affirmed Clark’s murder convictions and death sentence.


People v. Clark, 63 Cal. 4th 522, 372 P.3d 811 (2016)