People v. Gonzales

At issue was what relationship, if any, must exist between a person’s convictions for forgery and identity theft for the identity theft conviction to result in denial of the relief an individual could otherwise receive under Cal. Penal Code 473(b).Defendant pled guilty to multiple offenses, including four counts of check forgery and one count of identity theft. After Proposition 47 was enacted, Defendant filed a petition to reduce his forgery convictions to misdemeanors under section 473(b). The trial court denied the petition because forgery is therefore ineligible for reclassification as a misdemeanor for “any person who is convicted both of forgery and of identity theft.” The Court of Appeal reversed, concluding that section 473(b) precludes relief only if the identity theft offense is “transactionally related” to a forgery conviction. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that there must be a connection between both the forgery and the identity theft convictions to disqualify an offender from resentencing. Because Defendant’s offenses were unrelated, they were not subject to exclusion under section 473(b), and Defendant was eligible for resentencing. View "People v. Gonzales" on Justia Law