Palacios

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

1. The crimes2 On January 3, 2000, police found Ricardo Rios dead inside his Bellflower apartment. Rios was lying on the living room floor; his head was bloody and his body was cold to the touch. Various items were missing from his apartment, including a CD player, a DVD player, a VCR, and a receiver for a television satellite dish. There were two sets of bloody shoe prints, neither of which matched any of Rios’s shoes. A set of brass knuckles was on the floor. A semi-automatic pistol was lying under a tipped-over stereo speaker. A plastic knife handle missing its blade was found under the living room couch. A backpack containing CDs and a DVD was sitting on a staircase. A Sunbeam clothes iron was on the floor of an upstairs bedroom; the iron was missing its electric cord. Bloody clothes—a sweatshirt and a T-shirt— were found in the garage. The medical examiner testified Rios had an electric cord wrapped around his neck and he could have been strangled

Palacios’s arguments on appeal do not concern the facts of his crimes. Therefore, we take those facts from the opinion on direct appeal by another panel of this court. (See People v.…