Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

In 2003, Anh The Duong was sentenced to death by a jury, after being found guilty of multiple murders. In 2015, Duong filed a habeas corpus appeal, and in 2020, his conviction and sentence were upheld by the California Supreme Court. However, his habeas corpus petition was transferred to the Los Angeles County Superior Court. Following an agreement with the district attorney, his death sentence was vacated, and he was a resentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Despite this, Duong sought to appeal the denial of the remaining claims in his habeas corpus petition, arguing that he was entitled to do so under the Death Penalty Reform and Savings Act of 2016 (Proposition 66).The Court of Appeal of the State of California, Second Appellate District, Division One, dismissed Duong's appeal. The court interpreted Proposition 66, which expedites the appellate process in death penalty cases, as being applicable only to individuals who are under a death sentence at the time of their appeal. Since Duong's death sentence had been vacated and he was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole when he filed his appeal, the court found that he was not entitled to the benefits of Proposition 66. View "In re Duong" on Justia Law

The case involves Michael Earl Mosby III, an African-American man charged with multiple murders, including a drive-by shooting, by the Riverside County District Attorney's Office in California. The District Attorney sought the death penalty in Mosby's case. Mosby filed a motion claiming that the decision to seek the death penalty violated the California Racial Justice Act of 2020, which prohibits the state from seeking or obtaining a criminal conviction or sentence on the basis of race. The motion was denied by the trial court, which ruled that Mosby had failed to make a prima facie showing of a violation as required under the Act.Mosby then petitioned the Court of Appeal of the State of California, Fourth Appellate District, Division Two, for a writ of mandate directing the superior court to vacate its order denying his request for a hearing on his Racial Justice Act claim and to enter a new order granting an evidentiary hearing. The appellate court agreed in part with the trial court that Mosby was required to present not only statistical evidence of racial disparity in the charging of the death penalty by the District Attorney but also evidence of nonminority defendants who were engaged in similar conduct and were similarly situated but charged with lesser offenses, to establish a prima facie case.However, based on the evidence presented in this case, which included factual examples of nonminority defendants who committed murder but were not charged with the death penalty in cases involving similar conduct and who were similarly situated, e.g., had prior records or committed multiple murders, and statistical evidence that there was a history of racial disparity in charging the death penalty by the District Attorney, the appellate court concluded that Mosby met his burden of establishing a prima facie case under section 745, subdivision (a)(3). Therefore, the appellate court granted the writ petition and directed the trial court to conduct an evidentiary hearing. View "Mosby v. Super. Ct." on Justia Law

In this case from the Court of Appeal of the State of California Second Appellate District Division Two, defendant Carlos Chavez was indicted with violent felonies and a gang enhancement. However, after the indictment, the California Legislature amended the definition of the gang enhancement, adding new elements. Chavez moved to dismiss the gang enhancement allegations, arguing that the evidence presented to the grand jury did not support these newly added elements. The issue was whether dismissal was required. The Court held that it was not. The Court found that a trial court has the inherent authority to reserve ruling on a motion to dismiss, to resubmit gang allegations to the grand jury for the prosecution to present evidence bearing on the new elements, and to thereafter rule on the motion by reviewing the sufficiency of that new evidence. Because the trial court here—in substance, if not form—followed this procedure, the Court denied Chavez's petition for a writ of mandate. View "Chavez v. Superior Court" on Justia Law

A sex offender, who was convicted in the 1980s and had lived a law-abiding life for 37 subsequent years, petitioned the trial court to be removed from California’s registry of sex offenders. The People opposed the petition, arguing that one of the offender’s sex crimes would render him ineligible for removal from the registry if prosecuted today under a statute enacted 21 years after his conviction. The court had to decide whether a petition for removal from the sex offender registry could be denied on the grounds that the offender's underlying sex crime also constitutes a different, later-enacted sex crime that requires lifetime registration. The Court of Appeal of the State of California Second Appellate District Division Two held that the trial court erred in giving controlling weight to the nature of the underlying sex offenses and ignoring the defendant's lack of reoffending over the years. The court's decision was reversed, and the defendant was ruled eligible for removal from the registry. View "People v. Franco" on Justia Law

In San Diego, California, Kevin Eugene Cartwright was convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances, robbery, burglary, being a felon in possession of a firearm, and owning or possessing ammunition as a prohibited person. Cartwright appealed the judgment, arguing that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress video footage from the City of San Diego's "City IQ" streetlight camera program and evidence derived from the footage. Cartwright contended that the police conducted a warrantless search when they accessed the streetlight camera footage and any evidence obtained as a result of the footage should be considered "fruit of the poisonous tree."The Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District, Division One, State of California, disagreed with Cartwright's argument. The court held that Cartwright did not have an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy when he traversed a public right of way in downtown San Diego in the middle of a business day. The court found that the streetlight cameras only captured short-term movements and did not create a retrospective database of everyone's movements across the city. The court concluded that the police did not conduct a "search" when they accessed footage from the City of San Diego's streetlight cameras, and there was no violation of the Fourth Amendment. Therefore, the court affirmed the judgment against Cartwright. View "People v. Cartwright" on Justia Law

In California, a man named Clifford James Smyth, who was categorized as a tier two sex offender, sought to be removed from the California sex offender registry. However, at the time of his petition, he was living and registered as a sex offender in Oregon, not California. The Superior Court of Glenn County denied his petition, stating that he was not currently registered as a sex offender in California. On appeal, Smyth argued that the denial of his petition violated equal protection and was contrary to the legislative intent of California's sex offender registration laws.The Court of Appeal of the State of California Third Appellate District affirmed the lower court's decision. The court found that the California law, which was restructured to establish three tiers of registration for sex offenders, only allowed people registered in California to petition for termination from the California sex offender registry. The court disagreed with Smyth's argument that excluding out-of-state registrants from obtaining relief was contrary to the legislative intent and was absurd. The court reasoned that as someone not registered in California, the legislative concerns did not apply to Smyth.Furthermore, the court rejected Smyth's equal protection claim, concluding that out-of-state registrants are not similarly situated to California registrants for purposes of the California law, as they do not contribute to the problems identified by the Legislature when it decided to adopt the statute. The court also noted that even if out-of-state registrants were similarly situated, the distinction between the two groups would survive the requisite degree of scrutiny as there was a rational relationship between the disparity of treatment and a legitimate governmental purpose. View "People v. Smyth" on Justia Law

In this appeal, the defendant, Francisco Gonzalez, was challenging the court's decision that his previous conviction constituted a "strike" under the "Three Strikes" law, following amendments to the law by Assembly Bill No. 333. The Fifth Appellate District Court of Appeal in the State of California affirmed the lower court's decision. The court concluded that the defendant's previous conviction, which was for a gang-related felony, remained a "strike" under the Three Strikes law, despite changes to the law. The court made this decision based on the language of the law, which stipulates that the status of a prior conviction as a strike is determined by whether the prior offense qualified as a strike at the time of the prior conviction.The defendant also contended that the court's decision to impose upper-term sentences based on specified factors in aggravation was unauthorized. The court rejected this argument, stating that the court had properly considered the defendant's prior convictions as factors relating to the defendant and that this did not involve an unconstitutional delegation of power. Therefore, the court affirmed the judgment against the defendant. View "P. v. Gonzalez" on Justia Law

In this case, the defendant, Vincent Medrano, appealed an order denying his second Penal Code section 1172.6 petition for resentencing. Medrano had been convicted in 1991 of two counts of first degree murder, two counts of attempted first degree murder, and one count of conspiracy to commit first degree murder. He was sentenced to prison for 50 years to life plus one year for a firearm enhancement. In 2019, he filed his first section 1172.6 petition, which was denied and affirmed on appeal. He then filed a second section 1172.6 petition, which was also denied, prompting this appeal.The Court of Appeal of the State of California affirmed the denial of Medrano's second resentencing petition. The court concluded that its earlier decision that relief under section 1172.6 is unavailable to a petitioner concurrently convicted of first degree murder and conspiracy to commit first degree murder involving the same victim represented the law of the case. This holding conclusively established at the prima facie stage that Medrano was not entitled to resentencing based on his second 1172.6 petition. The court found that any new evidence that Medrano could introduce at a potential hearing would not affect this principle of law. Therefore, the court affirmed the order denying Medrano's resentencing petition. View "People v. Medrano" on Justia Law

This case involves a dispute over the use of electronic information evidence in a murder trial. The defendant, Christian Steve Campos, was charged with premeditated murder and convicted of second-degree murder. He argued that electronic evidence, obtained by the government from his Facebook account and cellphone records under the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (CalECPA), should have been suppressed because he was not properly notified of its acquisition. The Court of Appeal of the State of California, Fifth Appellate District, agreed that the government did not properly notify the defendant pursuant to the CalECPA, but concluded that suppression of the evidence was unwarranted. The court also rejected a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel and affirmed the judgment. The court found that while the government did violate the CalECPA's notice provisions, the purpose of the CalECPA was achieved despite the notice error because the efforts of law enforcement to obtain the defendant's electronic information were eventually made known to him before trial began. As a result, the court concluded that suppression of the evidence was not the appropriate remedy for the notice violations. View "People v. Campos" on Justia Law

In this case, the defendant, James McCray, appealed from a 2022 order that recommitted him for another one-year term under a statutory scheme governing violent offenders with mental health disorders. McCray argued that there was insufficient evidence that he represented a substantial danger of physical harm to others due to a severe mental health disorder, that he voluntarily absented himself from his recommitment trial, and that the trial court failed to obtain from him a knowing and intelligent waiver of his right to a jury. The California Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, Division Four, found that McCray's appeal was moot due to his subsequent recommitment in 2023. However, the court decided to address the trial court's failure to engage in a robust enough oral colloquy with McCray to establish that he knowingly and intelligently waived his right to a jury trial. The court concluded that the record is insufficient to support the determination that McCray made a valid waiver of his right to a jury. Therefore, the court dismissed the appeal as moot but found that McCray's waiver of his right to a jury trial was not knowing and intelligent. View "People v. McCray" on Justia Law