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Filed 5/24/21 CERTIFIED FOR PUBLICATION

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

FIRST APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION TWO

THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent,

v. FRANCISCO CARRILLO ESCARENO, Defendant and Appellant. A160209
(Napa County Super Ct. No. 20CR000557)

Francisco Carrillo Escareno pleaded no contest to two felonies, four misdemeanors and an infraction arising from a single incident of dri ving
under the influence of alcohol and without a valid license. He contends the trial court erred in refusing to dismiss the misdemeanor and infraction

counts pursuant to Vehicle Code section 41500 after sentenc ing him to prison on the felony counts. We will affirm the judgment.
BACKGROUND The following facts are taken from the preliminary hearing testimony
of Napa County Police Officer Kyle Cadena

. A bout 10: 07 p.m. , on February 29, 2020, Napa dispatch broadcast a lookout for a possible drunk driver at
State Rout e 29 and Oak Knoll Avenue

. A caller had reported a gold Toyota Avalon with California license plate No. 8CU W108 , driving at rapidly alternating speeds, crossing the double line into opposing lanes of traffic and
the solid line at the shoulder of the road

. About 40 minutes later, Ca dena was dispatched to Valle Verde and Shelter Creek , where the same vehicle2

had been observed parked, engine still running, with its lights on and the driver apparently asleep and unresponsive to knocking on his window.
When Officer Cadena arrived at the scene, paramedics had taken the keys from the driver

. Cadena contacted the driver, appellant , once the paramedics determined there was no medical emergency

. Appellant appeared impaired, likely due to alcohol: He was slurring his wo rds, repeating himsel f, and having difficulty balancing and walking steadily

. Appellant said he was driving home from work and had consumed 10 beers in the last seven hours, having stopped drinking within the last hour

. There

was an empty 12

- ounce can of beer in plain view on the floorboard of the front passenger seat. Appellant performed poorly on field sobriety tests , a preliminary screening of a breath sample indicated the presence of alcohol , and he was placed under arrest

. A blood sample was taken at 12:33 a.m. and subsequent testing found a blood alcohol level of .208. Appellant was on p ost

r elease c ommunity s upervision ( PRCS ) with alcohol and testing terms, and
his driver’s license was suspended. He had terms on his driv er’s license requiring use of an ignition interlock device but the Avalon was not equipped
with one. Appellant was charged by information filed on March 17, 2020, with felony driving under the influence of alcohol after two prior felony con victions for the same (Veh. Code, 1 §§ 23152, subd. (a) , 23550.5 ) (count 1); felony driving with .08 percent or higher blood alcohol after two prior felony convictions for the same (§§ 2315 2, subd. (b) , 23550.5) (count 2); misdemeanor unlawful operation of a vehicle no t equipped with a functioning ignition
interlock device (§ 23247, subd. (e)) (count 3) ; misdemeanor driving when

1 Further statutory references will be to the Vehicle Code except as otherwise specified.3

privilege suspended for driving under the influence , with priors (§ 14601.2, subd. (a)) (count 4); misdemeanor driving while lic e n se suspended or revoked , with priors (§ 14601.5, subd. (a)) (count 5); misdemeanor driving without a valid license (§ 12500, subd. (a)) (count 6) ; and possession of an open
container of alcoholic beverage while driving, an infraction (§ 23222, subd. ( a)) (count 7)

. It was alleged in connection with counts 1 and 2 that appellant ’s blood alcohol concentration was 0.15 percent by weight and more within the meaning of section 23 578. On March 23, 2020, appellant entered pleas of no contest to all counts
and admitted the special allegations and prior convictions. At sentencing on April 21, 2020, the court imposed the three

- year aggravated term on count 1 and the same sentence on count 2 , stayed pursuant to Penal Code section 654 ; the court imposed certain fees associated
with these felony counts and waived others . As the court turned to sentencing on the misdemeanors and infraction, defense counsel interjected that these counts had to be dismissed pursuant to se ction 41500 because the court was sentencing appellant to prison. The prosecutor disagreed and the court concurred, stating it did not read section 41500 as applying to charges filed concurrently with a pending felony case. Proceeding with the
misdemeanor counts , the court imposed a sentence of 104 days in county jail and a fine, both stayed pursuant to Penal Code section 654

. The court also stayed the fine on the infraction pursuant to Penal Code section 654. This appeal followed.
DISCUSSIO N Section 41500, subdivision (a), provides : “ A person shall not be subject to prosecution for a nonfelony offense arising out of the operation of a motor
vehicle

. . . that is pending against him or her at the time of his or her4

commitment to the custody of the Secretary of the Department of Correcti ons and Rehabilitation, the Division of Juvenile Justice in the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, or to a county jail pursuant to subdivision (h)
of Section 1170 of the Penal Code. ” This statute “ is an exception to the rule that all criminal offenses are subject to prosecution. ” ( Joseph v. Superior Court (1992) 9 Cal.App.4th 498,

503 .) “ ‘ [ T ] he re is . . . strong public policy that allows felons sentenced to state institutions to obtain relief from detainers that might render their
release d ate uncertain and thus adversely affect their eventual
rehabilitation. ’ ” ( People v. Lopez (2013) 218 Cal.App.4th Supp. 6, 11 ( Lopez ) , quoting People v. Freeman (1987) 225 Cal.App.3d Supp. 1, 4 ( Freeman ) .) “ A prisoner serving time often faces other charg es or proceedings when his term of imprisonment is completed. These are sometimes referred to as ‘ detainers ’

or ‘ holds. ’ They render the prisoner ’ s final date of release into the community uncertain, and often adversely affect his security classification thereby preventing his participation in various programs otherwise available to prisoners. ” ( Freeman
, at p. Supp. 4, fn. 2.)
Th e policy favoring relief from detainers “ ‘ was expressly a d verted to by the Legislature in the enactment of section 41500. In amending the section in 1972, the Legislature noted that the purpose of section 41500 is to allow prisoners to leave prison with a clean record. [Citation.] The Legislature further noted in 1975, when the section was amended to extend coverage to Youth Authority wards, that the rehabilitative process is aided by eliminating the interruptions due to arrest and prosecution for nonfelony
traffic violations . . . ,’ ” which occurred prior to commitment to the Youth Authority. ( Lopez , supra , 218 Ca l.App.4th at p. Supp. 11, quoting Freeman , supra , 225 Cal.App.3d at p. Supp. 4.) Furthermore, it is in the public interest5

that courts not be burdened with the prosecution of minor cases where the defendant has already been sentenced to serve a long term in prison or in the Youth Authority, and the additional prosecution will not substantially
increase that term. ( Freeman
, at p. Supp. 4 .)
In appellant ’s view, at the point he was sentenced to prison on the felony offenses, the nonfelony charges were pending against him because sentence had not yet been imposed on them. He characterizes the issue on this appea l as whether the se “pending” misdemeanor charges and infractio n were subject to the section 41500, subdivision (a), ban on prosecution , or were exempt from that ban pursuant to the statutory exception stated in section 41500, subdivision ( d) . Subdivision (d) provides: “ The provisions of this
section shall not apply to a nonfelony offense if the department is required by this code to immediately revoke or suspend the privilege of a person to drive a motor vehicle upon receipt of a duly certified abstract of the record of a court showing that the person has b een convicted of that nonfelony offense. ” Appellant contends none of the nonfelony offenses come within the subdivision (d) exception and, therefore, they should have been dismissed.
R espondent , by contrast, view s section 41500, subdivision (a), as inapplicable to the pres ent case because the misdemeanor s and infraction were charged and prosecuted together with the felonies as part of a single, unitary proceeding. As part of this argument, respondent maintains th e nonfelony offenses were not “pending” at the time of sentencing because they
had been resolved. Respondent notes the observation of the court in Joseph v. Superior Court, supra, 9 Cal.App.4th at p age 505, that “sentencing occurs at the end of proceeding s, not during their pendency.” Countering the suggestion that criminal charges are no longer pending once guilt or innocence ha s been determined

— i.e., after conviction

— appellant6

relies upon McAlpine v. Superior Court (1989) 209 Cal.App.3d 1 ( McAlpine ) to argue that criminal charges remain pending until judgment

. I n a criminal

case , the pronouncement of sentence is the judgment

. ( Id. at p. 7 ; People v.
V illatoro (2020) 44 Cal.App.5th 365, 36 9 .) McAlpine involved Government Code section 945.3, which to lls the statute of limitations on civil actions for police misconduct while related criminal “charge s are pending ” against the plaintiff. The plaintiff was shot by a police officer who had stopped him for questioning about a reported robbery and was subsequently convicted of robbery ; meanwhile, he filed a tort claim against the city, the denial of which triggered the six

- month statute of limitations for filing a civil action. ( McAlpine

. at p. 4.) The question in McAlpine was whether the criminal proceedings that served to toll the statute of limitations were “pending” only
until conviction

— in which case the complaint was untimely

— or remained “pending” until judgment was entered at sentencing

. Relying on a dictionary definition of “pending” as “ ‘ [b]egun, but not yet completed; during; before the conclusion of; prior to the completion of; unsettled; undetermined; in process of settlement or adjustment ’ (Black ’ s Law Dict. (5th ed. 1979) p. 1021, col. 1) , ” the city argued that “charges” are pending only until resolved by plea or verdict. ( McAlpine, supra, 209 Cal.App.3d at p. 6.) The court rejected this view on the basis of two factors : Code of Civil Procedure section 10 49 , which states that an “ ‘ action is deemed to be pending from the time of its commencement until its final determination upon appeal

. . . , ’ ” and language in Government Code section

945.3 stating, “ ‘ [f]or the purposes of this section, charges pending before a justice , municipal, or superior court do not include appeals

. . . . ’ ” Combined with the definition of “pending” in Code of Civil Procedure section 1049 , the
court reasoned , t he express exclusion of appeals in Government Code section7

945.3 , showed “ the Legislat ure intended the term ‘ pending ’ to include all proceedings leading to judgment. ” ( McAlpine, at p. 6.)
The McAlpine court did not purport to define the term “pending” for all

purposes , and relied upon statutory language specific to the Government Code section it was interpreting

. Even accepting for purposes of argument that an offense remains “pending” after the defendant’s guilt has been resolved by conviction, the question in the present case is whether the
reference in section 41500 to a “ nonfelony offense . . . that is pending” against

a person “at the time of his or her commitment” to prison was intended to

encompass offenses prosecuted in the same action as the offenses resulting in the prison sentence

. On this point, respondent has the better argument . The concerns
Freeman and Lopez described as underlying section 41500, subdivision (a), are not implicated where both felony and nonfelony offenses are charged and prosecuted in a single case. In this situation, prosecution of th e nonfelony
offenses threatens no detainer that might undermine the certainty of a defendant’s prison release date or interruption of the rehabilitative process. Instead, prosecution and sentencing of the nonfelony offenses is simultaneous with that of the felony offenses, and the sentence impose d is what the court deems appropriate for all the offenses together. 2 Describing the nonfelony offenses in the present case as “pending” when appellant was sentenced to prison creates an artificial distinction that does not serve the legislative

purpose behind section 41500, subdivision (a).

2 Here, as all the charged offenses arose from the same incident, the nonfelony offenses added neither custodial time nor financial penalty to the penal consequences o f the felony offenses: The jail terms and fines for the nonfelony offenses were stayed pursuant to Penal Code section 654.8

“ The main goal of statutory interpretation is to effectuate the Legislature ’ s intent. (See Riverside County Sheriff ’ s Dept. v. Stiglitz (2014) 60 Cal.4th 624, 630.) Thus, ‘ the “ plain meaning ” rule does not prohibit a court from determining whether the literal meaning of a statute comports with its purpose or whether such a construction of one provision is consistent with other provisions of the statute.

. . . Literal construction should not

p revail if it is contrary to the legislative intent apparent in the statute. The intent prevails over the letter, and the letter will, if possible, be so read as to conform to the spirit of the act. ’ ( Lungren v. Deukmejian (1988) 45 Cal.3d 727, 735; River side County Sheriff ’ s Dept. [, at p. ] 630; People v. Mullendore (2014) 230 Cal.App.4th 848, 854.) ” ( People v. Henderson (2020) 46 Cal.App.5th 533, 545 .)
In People v. Alwien (2017) 18 Cal.App.5th Supp. 9 , a probationer who

was temporarily placed in a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation diagnostic facility argued he was entitled to dismissal of traffic
offenses pursuant to s ection 41500, subdivision (a), because he was “commit[ted] to the custody of the Secret ary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation” as described in the statute. Rejecting this claim, Alwien
stated , “ a literal construction, as appellant asserts, would not further the legislative goal behind the statute

— to give people a fresh star t for rehabilitation upon release from a lengthy term of incarceration. ( People v. Lopez, supra , 218 Cal.App.4th at p. Supp. 6;

. . . Freeman, supra , 225 Cal.App.3rd at p. Supp. 4.) ” The same is true here. Applying section

41500 to a defendant being pro secuted in a single action for felony and nonfelony offenses arising out of a single incident would further none of the Legislature ’s purposes in section 41500. To the contrary, it would offer a windfall to a defendant who committed multiple offenses , contrary to the9

“ strong public policy that drinking drivers, particularly repeating drinking drivers, not drive a vehicle for specified periods of time, and not until they have complied with certain corrective conditions. ” ( Freeman
, at p. 4 .) 3 DISPOSITION The judgment is affirmed.

3 Our resolution of this issue makes it unnecessary for us to consider whether the nonfelony offenses would come within section 4150 0, subdivision (d), as appellant contends.10 _________________________ Kline, P.J.

We concur:

_________________________ Richman, J.

_________________________ Stewart , J.

People v. Escareno (A1 60209 )11

Trial Court: Napa County Superior Court
Trial Judge: Hon. Elia Ortiz

Attorney for Appellant: By Appointment of the Court of Appeal First District Appellate Project Stanley Dale Radtke
Attorneys for Respondent: Attorney General of California Xavier Becerra

Lance E. Winters Chief Assistant Attorney General
Jeffrey M. Laurence Senior Assistant Attorney General

Catherine A. Rivlin Supervising Deputy Attorney General

Rene A. Chacon Supervising Deputy Attorney General