People v. Kronemyer2/11/1987
COURT OF APPEAL OF CALIFORNIA, FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT, DIVISION ONE
No. D000062
1987.CA.40971 ; 189 Cal. App. 3d 314; 234 Cal. Rptr. 442
February 11, 1987
THE PEOPLE, PLAINTIFF AND RESPONDENT,
v.
ROBERT E. KRONEMYER, DEFENDANT AND APPELLANT
Superior Court of San Diego County, No. CR 58931, Donald W. Smith, Judge.
Ball, Hunt, Hart, Brown & Baerwitz, Anthony Murray and Donn Dimichele for Defendant and Appellant.
John K. Van de Kamp, Attorney General, Steve White, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Keith I. Motley, Robert M. Foster, Frederick R. Millar, Jr., and M. Howard Wayne, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
Opinion by Work, J., with Wiener, Acting P. J., concurring. Separate concurring opinion by Staniforth, J.
Work
Attorney Robert Kronemyer appeals a judgment convicting him of four counts of perjury (Pen. Code, § 118) and eleven counts of grand theft (§ 487, subd. 1), with true findings two thefts exceeded $25,000 (§ 12022.6, subd. (a)) and two others exceeded $100,000 (§ 12022.6, subd. (b). After making full restitution to the estate of the client from whom he was found to have stolen more than $936,000, he was sentenced to prison for eight years, and fined $80,000.
Kronemyer's convictions arose from acts he committed while the attorney and conservator for an elderly man, Dr. Joshua L. Baily, Jr. The theft charges concerned municipal bonds, savings accounts and money Kronemyer allegedly embezzled from Baily during 1977. The perjury charges arose from conservatorship accountings Kronemyer filed in 1977 and 1978 which omitted the stolen property. The People argued Baily became senile after an illness in June 1977, enabling Kronemyer to steal the assets and conceal the theft by omitting the property from the conservatorship accountings. Kronemyer claims Baily gave him the property in consideration for lifetime care, a condition he claims to have fulfilled. His defense to the perjury charges was that he did not interpret the estate accounting to require including Baily's gifts to him which were complete before the conservatorship was established.
With the exception of one count, Kronemyer does not argue that substantial evidence does not support the judgment. Rather, he contends that because the record provides substantial evidence in support of acquittal, delaying prosecution until after Baily died precluded his corroborating Kronemyer at trial. This procedure, coupled with numerous trial court
errors, allegedly deprived him of a fair trial. He further claims a multitude of errors in pretrial and voir dire rulings, evidentiary rulings, in jury instructions, and errors in sentencing compel reversal.
For the reasons which follow, we conclude there is no statute of limitations bar to prosecuting any of the crimes charged. We affirm the four convictions for perjury and one count of grand theft based on the larceny of funds from Dr. Baily's four bank accounts. We reverse eight convictions for theft of property entrusted to Kronemyer, because of a material defect in the instruction defining embezzlement. We find no other reversible error.
Factual Background
The posture of this appeal requires we detail the extensive and convoluted history of the Baily-Kronemyer relationship.
Before becoming a clien
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 California Classifieds
Classified Postings
|