People v. Chilton CA3

FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS

At around 9:00 a.m. on January 30, 2013, Eleanor Taylor, alone at home on Hamsted Drive in Galt, heard someone ring the doorbell and knock on her front door. She had not been expecting visitors and did not want anyone to know she was home. Instead of answering the door, she peeked through her dining room blinds and saw a white car parked in the street in front of the house. Going to the living room to get a better look, she saw three young African-American men in the car. She had not seen them at her front door. Because they had been there for a while, she was “petrified” and called 911 from her cell phone. (The recording of the 911 call was played for the jury, and a transcript was provided but not admitted in evidence.) As Taylor recalled, while she spoke to the 911 dispatcher, two men--the driver and the person who had been sitting in the driver’s side rear seat--got out of the car and came back to her front door, while the third man remained in the car. She told the dispatcher that she was sure the men at the door would try to break in because they had pulled up their hoods as they approached the house. Then she saw the bottom of the front door “cave…