People v. Wallace

Opinion

GOMES, J.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

One summer evening in Fresno, Anthony LeRoy Wallace’s wife of two months, Arlissa Pointer Wallace, caught him smoking crack cocaine, called him a crack head, and told him to leave the house she had bought six or seven years before the marriage and had refinanced shortly after the marriage. Although she had kept the house in her name, Wallace presumably had acquired a small community property interest through mortgage payments with community property funds.

Instead of leaving, however, Wallace began tearing up the house. Frightened, Pointer kept…