People v. Wallace CA3

I. BACKGROUND

A. The Underlying Conviction We take the facts from our 1998 unpublished opinion affirming defendant’s convictions in Wallace, supra, C027310:

with the crime. (People v. Wallace (Dec. 21, 1998, C027310) [nonpub. opn.] (Wallace).) However, neither these convictions, nor defendant’s sentence related to them, are relevant to this appeal.

2 Around 3:00 a.m. on November 16, 1994, Scott Lewis was awakened by armed intruders in his apartment and shot to death by one of them. Lewis shared the apartment with his sister Kowana, her six-month-old child, and her boyfriend Billy Stack (who was not there at the time). Less than a week before the shooting, Larry Freeman had accused Stack of stealing a stereo out of Freeman’s car. Shortly thereafter Stack was shot in the leg by an acquaintance of Freeman’s, while Freeman was present. Albert Rhine, who earlier entered a negotiated guilty plea to voluntary manslaughter stemming from Lewis’s death, testified about his involvement in the incident. Rhine stated that on the evening of the murder, he was with Freeman and Chris Dupree. Freeman had talked about Stack threatening Freeman’s mother, in retaliation for being shot in the…