People v. Deering CA1/1

BACKGROUND

The People’s case was largely established by the testimony of the victim, Sheila Lewis. Lewis started dating Deering about six or seven months before New Year’s Eve 2013. While they were dating, he often spent weekends at her house in San Pablo and had moved in about 18 days before New Year’s Eve. Lewis and Deering planned to attend a New Year’s Eve party, but Lewis began to develop a migraine headache in the afternoon of December 31. At around 9:00 p.m. Lewis told appellant that the pain was too great and that she needed to go to the hospital for treatment. Deering refused to take her so she drove herself to the hospital. At the hospital, she was treated with morphine due to the severity of the migraine. Because Lewis had been to the hospital for migraines a couple of times recently, hospital staff asked her if she was “under stress” or “being abused.” Lewis arrived home from the hospital some time after 1:00 a.m. on January 1, 2014. Deering was in the living room having a drink and had a bottle of Jack Daniels on the table next to him. He began questioning Lewis about how long she had been gone and why she had ruined “the arrangement for the New Year celebration.”…