Small Town News

Kristi Lunbery brought back to Shasta County to face new murder trial

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Story garners los angeles times coverage

Kristi Lunbery was in Shasta County Superior Court Monday, possibly facing a retrial for the killing of her husband April 17, 1992.

Lunbery was moved from Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla Aug. 23, where she has resided the past six years, arriving at the county jail in Redding two days later.

The killing, her trial and the subsequent overturning of her conviction on May 25 drew the attention of the Los Angeles Times in a story Tuesday analyizing the series of events that began 18 years ago.

Reporter Carol J. Williams met with Lunbery's parents about two weeks ago in Burney after researching documents and tapes dealing with the case, said Kristi's father Ron Conley.

He and about 18 other supporters were in the courtroom Monday as two defense attorneys each argued their right to represent Kristi in the new trial in the killing of her husband Charles Albert Bateson.

Shasta County public defender Jeff Gorder said he is legally bound to represent her in the new trial.

But San Francisco attorney Juliana Drous, who represented Lunbery in the appeal process, said she wants to continue as Lun-bery's lawyer.

She told Superior Court Judge Wilson Curie that Gorder, who served as Lun-bery's attorney in the first trial, has a conflict of interest in the case and that Kristi's conviction was partly the result of ineffective trial counsel.

Conley said Tuesday he would prefer Drous handle his daughter's defense since she was the one who sought and won the appeal before a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that began reviewing the case in January.

Lunbery was convicted in 2004 after confessing she murdered her husband.

Following her 2001 confession, Lunbery, who remarried two years after the murder, recanted her statement and appealed the conviction stating the confession was coerced and she had ineffective counsel.

The most recent ruling stated, "as of May 6, 1992, the police had four independent sources connecting the murder to drugs. A motive for the murder had been provided.

THE APPEAL RULING

Below are excerpts from the May 25 appeal ruling.

At approximately noon on Friday, April 17, 1992, Charlie Bateson (Charlie) was discovered dead. He had been shot in the head with a single bullet discharged four to six inches from his head.

His death by violence had been caused by another jerson. The time of his death s not established by the ecord on appeal.

A neighbor, Belinda Strickland, discovered the body in a bed in Charlie's home.

Detectives examined the house. Blood had splattered on the floor and wall of the bedroom and on the outside of the door frame leading to a hall. No weapon was found. No bloodstained clothes were found. No signs were found of any clothes or area having been recently washed.

Fingerprints, when they were taken, were of the present and recent tenants, plus some unidentified prints and an unidentified palm print. A medical examiner performed a field investigation at the house and four days later conducted an autopsy.

The house was unlocked. It was the last house on a cul-de-sac, and the detectives found footprints and tire tracks in the wooded area at the end of the street. The detectives also found a note to Charlie on the refrigerator from his wife, telling him that she was taking their two daughters to go shopping in Redding and would be back by 1 p.m. or so.

Sheriffs officers found Charlie's wife, Kristi, at the Mt. Shasta Mall in Redding with her two children and her grandfather. She was visibly upset by the terrible news the detectives brought her. She immediately consented to a search of her car, parked nearby.

The detectives found no bloodstains and no weapon. Kristi herself had no apparent bloodstains on her clothes.

The detectives escorted Kristi to the Sheriffs office where she gave an account of her day. Charlie worked on the swing shift, 5 p.m. to 3 a.m., at Sierra Pacific Mill. The couple had two children, Kayla, aged 3 and Kelsey, aged about four months. The children went to bed in the single bedroom in the small house. Kristi greeted Charlie when he returned from work, and they talked to about 3:30 a.m. Then, as ususal, they went to sleep together on a hide-away bed in the living room.

As usual, the children woke around 6:30 a.m. Charlie moved from the living room to the bed they had occupied.

Kristi got up, dressed the children and got breakfast for them.

She had told Charlie about the plan to go to Redding and left the note to remind him. She and the children left the home about 7:40 a.m. She left the house unlocked, as she usually did when Charlie was home.

Kristi drove to her parents' home in Burney. Her parents were out of town, but she talked to her grandfather, who was visiting there. He told her that he was planning to go to Redding, too. She then drove to the Mt. Shasta Mall, about an hour's distance.

She and the children window-shopped at the mall. At about 11 a.m., when she went to move her car, she discovered it had a flat tire. Neither she nor her grandfather could change it.

She decided to call Charlie and ask for him to come with his truck. She called two times but got no answer. It was her habit to turn off the ringer while Charlie slept. She then called Belinda Strickland and asked her to go to the house to wake him.

Forensic tests established that the fatal bullet could have been discharged by twenty-seven different weapons. Fourteen such weapons were found in the course of the investigation, and two could not be ruled out as the murder weapon. They carried no identifying marks. Charlie himself had a rifle given to him by his wife's grandmother, and the model was the most common of the twenty-seven possible murder weapons.

The gun had last been seen just over a week earlier in Charlie's truck. This gun was not found.

Charlie and Kristi had lived in the small house (a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, a hall and a bathroom) for two weeks. It was located at 20292 Fir Street, Burney. It belonged to Kristi's grandmother, Margaret

Excerpts from appeal ruling note evidence was obmitted

Beaman, who let Kristi and Charlie have it rent-free, so they could save money for a house of their own.

According to Margaret Beaman, her house had been previously occupied by Cindy Ellis and Ellis's ex-husband Frank Delgado, a known drug dealer.

After Ellis and Delgado moved in, Beaman noticed an increase in traffic to and from the house at all hours of the day and night in a relatively rural area -- traffic consistent with drug sales -- and she evicted them because of that activity.

The Sheriffs investigators interviewed an acquaintance of Delgado, Oney Rhoades, who had stayed with Delgado at the Fir Street house in late February 1992.

Rhoades reported that he had seen Delgado and Henry Garza in that house in possession of "dope" worth $40, 000.

A confidential informant told Sheriffs detective Willie Cox on April 20, 1992, three days after the murder., that he felt the killing had been a mistake.

The intended victim had been Delgado because he had "ripped off several people in town over drug dealings."

A neighbor on Fir Street, John Voet, had been up in the early morning of April 17, taking his mother to the hospital.

When he returned to Fir Street around 3 a.m., he had observed a 78 or 79 Ford Fiesta with a distinctive orange stripe enter the cul-de-sac.

Voet watched the car turn around at the end of the street, park in front of the Bateson house, switch off its lights and engine, and after twenty to thirty seconds depart at a high rate of speed.

This deliberate maneuver reminded Voet that he had seen the same car a week earlier enter the cul-de-sac and drive in and out around midnight.

Voet also saw the car a second time on the day of the murder, parked in the parking lot of a pizza parlor, Half Time Pizza. A confidential informant linked the car to both Garza and Delgado.

On May 6, 1992, Rory Keim informed Sheriffs deputy Compomizzo that on Sunday night following the murder, he and two friends were in Half Time Pizza discussing Charlie's death.

Henry Garza approached their table and said: "That's a bummer. My partners blew away the wrong dude."

As of May 6, 1992, the police had four independent sources connecting the murder to drugs.

Amotiveforthe murder had been provided. A connection between the intended victim and Garza had been established. Garza had admitted knowledge of the murderers and of their mistake.

No further information on the case was obtained until December 2001.

Two years later, Kristi married Troy Lunbery, a man she had dated occasionally before her marriage to Charlie. She and Troy have one child.

In December 2001, the investigation of the crime reopened. Detectives Steve Grashoff and Cliff Blanken-ship interviewed Troy on December 20, 2001.

Later that day, at about noon, they dropped in on Kristi at her home. They told her they wanted to discuss Charlie's death.

She could tell them to leave at any time. The interview was recorded.

For the first hour and one half, the detectives' approach was low-key, touching on various aspects of Kristi's life with Charlie and the events of April 17, 1992. .

Kristi was providing care to Jim, a man with severe mental retardation and epilepsy, and at various points in the interview his interruptions and inarticulate noises may be heard.

Kristi's children were not home.

The interview became intense when the detectives showed her a FBI profile of the case and told her that a secret witness had inculpated her.

Detective Grashoff then said, "Kristi, we think you did it.

She denied it.

The detectives said they

'No evidence of premeditation was produced'

knew she had done it and only wanted to know why. Was it because he was abusive? "For God's sake, tell the truth, Grashoff urged.

Eventually, Grashoff

asked, "Did you shoot Charlie?" She answered, "Yes."

Kristi was indicted for "open murder, " permitting conviction for murder in the first degree. She was not taken into custody. In preparation for the trial, Kristi's two lawyers accepted her statement that she had confessed falsely to the crime.

They set about to see whether there was evidence of persons confessing to crimes they had not committed. They came in contact with Richard Of she.

Ofshe holds a doctorate in psychology from Stanford University and is a professor of social psychology at the University of California at Berkeley.

He has been an expert witness both for prosecutors and for defendants on the psychology of interrogations and the psychology of false confessions.

At counsel's request, Ofshe interviewed Kristi. He reported that she had described to him "a well-recognized type of confession -- a stress compliant false confession.

Ofshe suggested to counsel that they have Kristi further examined by a clinical psychologist familiar with the Gudjohnsson Suggestibility Test.

The author of this test was Gisli H. Gudjonsson, a faculty member of the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London, who had written The Psychology of Interrogation and Confessions (2003).

In that treatise, Gudjonsson had reported on the basis of research that some confessions of crime were false.

The false confessions were made either to shield another suspect or to end the stress of interrogation. There was no information on the number of false confessions. That they occurred was an established fact.

Counsel located one psychologist in the Redding area who had never heard of the Gudjonsson test, and another local psychologist who had heard of it but had never used it. Counsel did not investigate further.

They entered into their trial file a memorandum stating their belief that Ofshe's testimony would be inadmissible and, if admitted, would have a negative impact on the jury because of its lack of substance.

Trial counsel sought pre-trial rulings to permit the introduction of the evidence that the murder had been committed by Garza's partners. The trial court ruled against them.

At trial, the state suggested motives for murder -- Charlie's $15, 000 life insurance; the existence of an old boyfriend; Charlie's "controlling" conduct.

However, one-third of the insurance had gone for Charlie's funeral; Kristi, as the mother of two little children, was dependent on Charlie's income.

The ex-boyfriend was the man Kristi married two years later; he was not on the scene in 1992.

That Charlie was abusive to Kristi was suggested to her by the detectives throughout the 2001 interview, and Kristi appeared to adopt that reasoning as her own when she confessed to the crime. There was no evidence of physical abuse.

The popular psychological term "controlling" was picked up by the detectives as an alternate description of Charlie's conduct.

When Kristi gave the detectives an example of Charlie being controlling, the story she told was not about Charlie at all but about his father.

Kristi denied her guilt and repudiated her confession. Witnesses testified to her gentle disposition.

The prosecution attempted to show that the murder had been planned, but produced no evidence of premeditation.

It became the prosecution's burden to persuade the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that Kristi, at some time between 6:30 a.m. and 7:40 a.m., during which she had dressed and fed their children, had shot her husband and then had disposed of the murder weapon and any incriminating spots of blood.

The sole significant evidence against her was her confession. The jury found her guilty of second degree murder.

The centerpiece of the appeal was the evidence of third party culpability that the trial court had excluded.

The California Court of Appeal for the Third Appellate District issued an unpublished opinion. As the Supreme Court of California summarily denied review, this unpublished opinion is the final judgment that in this habeas proceeding we review.

The court of appeal declared that "the only real evidence" that someone else had killed the victim was Rory Keim's report of Henry Garza's admission.

That report was hearsay but admissible if three conditions were met. The first condition was that the declarant be unavailable. The condition was met.

Garza was dead. The second was that the statement was against Garza's "penal interest." This condition, the court ruled, was not met.

The third was that the declarant have "sufficient knowledge of the subject." This condition, too, the court of appeal said, had not been met.

The court found that the statement "may have been nothing more than boasting or the mindless remark of someone under the influence of liquor and deemed the statement inadmissible.

Once Garza's statement was ruled out, the court of appeal in a single paragraph dispose of the other evid dence of Garza's connection to the murder, ruling that "it lacked sufficient probative value to raise a reasonable doubt of defendant's guilt." Kristi's appeal was denied.

On December 7, 2006, Kristi filed a petition for habeas corpus with the Supreme Court of California.

This petition included a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. The petition was summarily denied.

On June 11, 2007, Kristi filed the present petition pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 in the district court.

Habeas counsel interviewed Kristi's two defense lawyers as to why they had not offered Ofshe's testimony or investigated the false confession further. Each reported that the other had made the decision.

A magistrate judge recommended denial of the petition, and the district court denied it. This appeal followed.

Because they failed to call Professor Ofshe and failed to investigate further the validity of Kristi's confession, these failures, if established, constitute errors requiring the grant of the petition.

Lunbery's court appearance is scheduled for Sept. 8 in Shasta County Superior Court.



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© 2011 The Intermountain News Burney, California. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from DAS.

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