People v. Williams CA2/3

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

1. The murders, trials, appeals, and habeas petition2 On August 31, 1984, police found Ebora Alexander, age 58, dead in her Los Angeles home from multiple gunshot wounds to the head. Alexander apparently had been shot while sitting

References to statutes are to the Penal Code. On January 12, 2021, Williams filed a notice of appeal from the denial of his petition for resentencing. (B310320.) On February 8, 2021, Williams filed a notice of appeal from the denial of his motion for reconsideration. (B310963.) We ordered the two appeals consolidated under case number B310320. We take our procedural history in part from the California Supreme Court’s opinion in Williams I, as well as from our 2018 opinion in Williams’s appeal from a later resentencing, People v. Williams (Nov. 29, 2018, B287899) [nonpub. opn.] (Williams III). In his opening brief, Williams quotes extensively from the statement of facts in Williams I. We take some facts from Williams I but recite them not for their truth but only for the basis of Williams’s conviction. (See People v. Woodell (1998) 17 Cal.4th 448, 459-460.)

2 at her kitchen table having breakfast. Police…