Watson Implied Malice Murder Conviction Affirmed

At about 2:15 p.m. on Saturday, February 17, 2018, a man was sitting in his car outside his grandmother’s house in Orange County looking at his phone.  He looked up when he heard a man loudly slam his car door of a 1990 Toyota 4Runner.  The man was Maximo Delgado Lagunas.

The man watched Mr. Lagunas start his car and drive away down the center of the road at about 40 miles per hour, which the man sitting in his car described as “unresponsible, too fast, dangerous.” 

As Lagunas approached a T-intersection, he tried to make a right hand turn.  The man watched as Mr. Lagunas failed to make the turn and drove up onto a sidewalk in front of a house.  The man then lost sight of Mr. Lagunas, but he heard screeching, a small boy crying and a crash.  The man ran toward the area and saw that Mr. Lagunas had crashed into a car.  The man approached Mr. Lagunas was incoherent and he could not understand what he was trying to say.

Neighbors who heard the crash came out of their houses and saw a six-year old girl laying on a lawn next to the sidewalk.  She was bleeding profusely.  The girl was transported to a hospital where she later died due to multiple vehicular blunt force injuries.

Police arrived at the scene and arrested Mr. Lagunas.  Police determined that he was under the influence of alcohol.  Mr. Lagunas explained that his vehicle’s brakes locked up and he could not control the car.  He did not know he had hit anyone.  He admitted to drinking three 24 ounce cans of beer earlier.  He said, “I shouldn’t have driven. . . Yes, I was drunk.”

Mr. Lagunas had been convicted of DUI in 2007 and 2015.

The Orange County District Attorney’s Office filed a felony complaint against Mr. Lagunas for second degree implied malice murder, also known as a “Watson murder” (People v. Watson (1981) 30 Cal. 3d 290).

At the jury trial that followed, an experienced traffic investigator testified that he went to the intersection near the accident scene and observed centrifugal tire friction marks, meaning marks made by a tire while it was still rotating (as opposed to skid marks made by a tire being braked).  The investigator opined that Mr. Lagunas was accelerating into the turn, hitting the curb and then hitting the six-year old girl.  Another investigator testified at trial that Mr. Lagunas’ brakes were “working well.”

A forensic scientist testified that Mr. Lagunas’ blood alcohol content (BAC) was 0.158 percent, but this was measured roughly five hours after the collision, so at the time of the collision, his BAC would have been between 0.22 and 0.23 percent.

The jury found Mr. Lagunas guilty of murder in the second degree and the judge imposed a sentence of 15 years to life.

On appeal to the California Court of Appeal for the Fourth District, Mr. Lagunas argued that there was insufficient evidence to convict him of murder.

The Fourth Appellate District explained that under California’s murder statutes, “malice may be express or implied” (Penal Code § 188(a)).  “Malice is implied when an unlawful killing results from a willful act, the natural and probable consequences of which are dangerous to human life, performed with conscious disregard for that danger.”  People v. Elmore (2014) 59 Cal. 4th 121, 133.

The Fourth Appellate District then explained that malice can be implied in a DUI context by reference to the four-part test set forth in People v. Autry (1995) 37 Cal. App. 4th 351, at 358: “(1) blood-alcohol level about the 0.08 percent legal limit; (2) a predrinking intent to drive; (3) knowledge of the hazards of driving while intoxicated; and (4) highly dangerous driving.”

Here, an expert opined that Mr. Lagunas’ BAC was between 0.22 and 0.23 percent.  Mr. Lagunas further told police that he drove to his worksite alone, took alcohol with him and then drank at the worksite, so it could be inferred that he had a predrinking intent to drive while drunk.  Third, he had prior convictions for DUI in which he was explicitly warned about the dangers of driving while drunk and told he faced a murder charge if he drove drunk and a person was killed.  Lastly, he drove at an excessive speed for condition and was accelerating through a ninety degree turn on a residential street.  In short, malice could be implied, so the conviction was affirmed.