Filed 10/13/22 P. v. Kroupa CA2/2

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS

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IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION TWO

THE PEOPLE,

Plaintiff and Respondent,

v.

ROGER ROYAL KROUPA,

Defendant and Appellant.

 B322611

 (Madera County

 Super. Ct. No. MCR059249)

APPEAL from the judgment of the Superior Court of 

Madera County, Dale J. Blea, Judge. Affirmed.

Donn Ginoza, under appointment by the Court of Appeal,

for Defendant and Appellant. 

Rob Bonta, Attorney General, Lance E. Winters, Chief 

Assistant Attorney General, Michael P. Farrell, Assistant 
2

Attorney General, Julie A. Hokans and Doris A. Calandra, 

Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

* * * * * *

Roger Royal Kroupa (defendant) was convicted of first 

degree burglary with a person present (Pen. Code, § 459)1 and 

was sentenced to a “third strike” sentence of 25 years to life. On 

appeal, defendant does not challenge his convictions. Instead, he 

argues that his sentence is invalid because the trial court erred 

(1) in not granting his motion to dismiss one or both of his prior 

“strike” offenses, (2) in not assessing his ability to pay before 

imposing $1,300 in fines and assessments, and (3) in imposing a 

$960 fine under section 672. Because these arguments lack 

merit, we affirm.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

I. Facts

On a Friday morning in April 2018, defendant was a 51-

year-old man who had been recently released from incarceration 

and was walking from Madera to Fresno, California. He 

approached the side door of the mobile home owned by 66-yearold Linda Bosch (Bosch). Bosch saw him, and asked him if he 

was lost and needed any help. Defendant ignored her questions 

and continued toward the side door. Bosch told him not to “come 

any further” because she did not “know [him],” but defendant 

again ignored her, walked into her mobile home, and pushed 

Bosch out of his way after she told him not to “come in[side].” 

Over the next several hours, defendant proceeded to make 

himself at home in Bosch’s mobile home. He helped himself to 

cereal and carved up a chicken. He used—and clogged up—her 

1 All further statutory references are to the Penal Code 

unless otherwise indicated.
3

toilet. He went through her medicine cabinet and her purse. He 

left his dirty clothes strewn on the ground. He took a shower. He 

went through her clothes, and even put on a pair of sweatpants.

And then he took a nap on her sofa. By the time he was done, 

Bosch’s home was trashed.

Defendant did not heed anyone’s pleas or warnings to stop. 

He ignored Bosch’s initial pleas to not enter and to leave. When 

Bosch soon thereafter left her home to tell her 73-year-old brother 

about Bosch’s entry, the brother went into the home to confront 

defendant. Defendant was at that moment carving the chicken, 

and with a knife in his hand told the brother, “These knives have 

killed people” or “I kill people with these knives.” After Bosch 

and her brother then summoned the police, the police asked 

defendant to exit—both over a public address system and by 

calling defendant on Bosch’s cell phone, which was still inside her 

house. Defendant refused the police’s initial requests to leave 

and then ignored all further police contact, leading to a four-hour 

standoff that ended when a SWAT team breached the mobile 

home’s exterior to find defendant asleep on Bosch’s living room 

sofa. 

II. Procedural Background

The People charged defendant with (1) first degree burglary 

for entering the inhabited portion of a residence (§ 459), (2) 

assault with a deadly weapon (for defendant’s threats with the 

knife to Bosch’s brother) (§ 245, subd. (a)(1), (3) making criminal 

threats (for his statements to the brother) (§ 422), and (4) 

misdemeanor battery (for pushing Bosch) (§ 242). The People 

alleged that defendant had two convictions that constituted 

“strikes” within the meaning of our Three Strikes Law (§§ 

1170.12, subds. (a)-(d), 667, subds. (b)-(i))—namely, a (1) 1990 
4

conviction for first degree burglary, and (2) a 1993 conviction for 

robbery.

A jury convicted defendant of the first degree burglary and 

misdemeanor battery counts, but hung on the assault with a 

deadly weapon and criminal threat counts. In a bifurcated 

proceeding, the jury also found true the “strike” allegations.

The matter proceeded to sentencing. 

Defendant moved the court to dismiss one or both prior 

“strike” allegations. The trial court denied the motion with a 

lengthy oral explanation. The court examined “the nature of the 

current offenses.” Specifically, the court noted that defendant 

“gain[ed] access” to Bosch’s residence by ignoring her entreaties 

and then pushing the 66-year-old woman out of the way, which 

placed Bosch “in fear for her life.” The court examined 

defendant’s criminal history and prospects. That history 

included not only the two prior strikes but also five other felony 

convictions and 14 misdemeanor convictions (three of which were 

initially felonies that had been later reduced to misdemeanors by 

changes in the law). That history also included “11 violations of 

post-conviction supervision.” To the court, defendant’s 

“continuing and persistent criminal history with no indication of 

abatement” reflected “either an inability or [an] unwillingness to 

participate in rehabilitation” and “le[d the court] to the 

conclusion that the likelihood of [defendant] re-offending is 

substantial.” The court examined defendant’s “background and 

character.” Specifically, the court looked at the effect of a head 

trauma injury defendant suffered several years prior and 

defendant’s “drug history,” but found that neither of them 

substantially mitigated the severity of defendant’s crime because 

a psychologist who had examined defendant indicated he “was 
5

able [to] appreciat[e] the wrongfulness of his actions” and because 

“there was no evidence that [defendant] was under the influence

of a controlled substance at the time” of the crimes. The court 

summed up by noting that defendant “is a habitual criminal” and 

hence “the very type of criminal at whom the [Three Strikes] 

sentencing scheme is directed.” Because “[t]he present case is not 

outside of the spirit or intent of the Three Strikes sentencing 

scheme,” the court concluded that “the interest of justice would 

not be served by striking” any prior “strikes.” 

The court then imposed the third strike sentence dictated 

by the Three Strikes Law—namely, 25 years to life for the 

burglary; the court also imposed a time-served sentence for the 

misdemeanor battery. The court imposed a $960 fine for the 

burglary count, a $40 fine for the misdemeanor battery count,

and a $300 restitution fine; the court imposed but suspended a 

$300 parole revocation fine. The court then dismissed the two 

counts on which the jury hung.

Defendant filed this timely appeal.2

DISCUSSION

I. Motion to Dismiss “Strikes”

Defendant argues that the trial court erred when it denied 

his motion to dismiss the prior “strike” allegations. We review 

such denials for an abuse of discretion. (People v. Carmony

(2004) 33 Cal.4th 367, 373 (Carmony).) 

A trial court has the discretion to dismiss a “strike” 

allegation under California’s Three Strikes Law. (§ 1385, subd. 

(a); People v. Williams (1998) 17 Cal.4th 148, 162.) In deciding 

2 On August 9, 2022, our Supreme Court transferred this 

matter from the Fifth Appellate District to the Second Appellate 

District.
6

whether to exercise this discretion, the court is instructed to 

“‘consider whether, in light of the nature and circumstances of 

[the defendant’s] present felonies and prior serious and/or violent 

felony convictions, and the particulars of his background, 

character, and prospects, the defendant may be deemed outside 

the [Three Strikes] scheme’s spirit, in whole or in part, and hence 

should be treated as though he had not previously been convicted 

of one or more serious and/or violent felonies.’” (Carmony, supra, 

33 Cal.4th at p. 377.) There is a “strong presumption” against 

granting a motion to dismiss a strike. (Id. at p. 378.) 

Because the trial court’s thorough explanation of why it 

was denying defendant’s motion touched on all of the aboveenumerated factors relevant to such motions, defendant offers 

two broad categories of reasons why, in his view, the court’s 

denial nevertheless constitutes an abuse of discretion.

First, defendant argues that the trial court’s analysis 

contains several legal errors that invalidate its exercise of 

discretion. (E.g., In re Marriage of Wendt & Pullen (2021) 63 

Cal.App.5th 647, 658 [“legal error is abuse of discretion”].) To 

begin, defendant asserts that the trial court did not explicitly 

reject each and every one of the arguments he raised in his 

motion. This assertion is factually unsound because the trial 

court stated that it “considered the arguments made in [the] 

motion to strike” and is legally unsound because trial courts are 

deemed to have considered all relevant factors unless the record 

indicates otherwise and here it does not (People v. Myers (1999) 

69 Cal.App.4th 305, 310; People v. Kelley (1997) 52 Cal.App.4th 

568, 582). Notably, some of the considerations defendant on 

appeal accuses the trial court of not addressing—such as his 

motivation for the crime (namely, that he was homeless) and the 
7

unfortunate circumstances of his early life (namely, that his 

mother died of a heroin overdose and that his father was 

murdered in front of him when he was three years old)—were 

never argued in his motion; a trial court is certainly not at fault 

for failing to address an argument never made to it. Further, 

defendant contends that the trial court impermissibly gave 

“overwhelming, yet uncritical weight” to defendant’s prior record 

“to the exclusion” of all other factors, and hence did not consider 

“the mitigating circumstances of [defendant’s] current offense 

and personal circumstances.” To the extent defendant is arguing 

that the court committed a legal error by refusing to consider any 

mitigating aspects of defendant’s current offense and his personal 

circumstances, the record is to the contrary and there is no legal 

error.

Second, defendant expresses his disagreement with how

the trial court weighed the relevant circumstances. 

As a threshold matter, all of these arguments effectively 

ask us to weigh the factors differently than the trial court, but 

there is no abuse of discretion as long as the trial court’s 

weighing is reasonable—even if we might weigh the factors 

differently. (Carmony, supra, 33 Cal.4th at p. 377.) 

More to the point, the trial court’s weighing of the factors 

defendant assails on appeal was reasonable.

Defendant asserts that the trial court gave insufficient 

weight to his drug addiction, and suggests that People v. Garcia

(1999) 20 Cal.4th 490 (Garcia)—in conjunction with the bevy of 

recent laws allowing for prosecutorial diversion of persons with 

drug addictions—require courts to give a defendant’s drug 

problems dispositive weight. But the court, based on defendant’s 

own admission that he was not using drugs or alcohol at the time 
8

of the charged crimes and that his heroin addiction had been 

“steadily declin[ing]” in recent years, reasonably concluded that 

defendant’s seemingly “erratic and at times bizarre” “behavior” 

was not the product of a drug addiction and hence the addiction 

had “no effect on his actions or his responsibility for his actions.”

And Garcia merely holds that drug history is relevant to a motion 

to dismiss prior “strikes” (id. at pp. 494, 503); neither Garcia nor 

any recent laws make such history dispositive. 

Defendant asserts that the trial court gave insufficient 

weight to his mental health issues arising out of a head injury a 

few years before, contending that the court was wrong to rely on 

a psychologist’s report finding defendant competent to stand 

trial. This assertion misreads the record. The psychologist’s 

report was not about competency to stand trial, but instead

indicated that defendant “was capable of appreciating the 

wrongfulness of his actions” “at the time of the instant offenses.” 

(Italics added.) Thus, the court acted reasonably in concluding 

that defendant’s mental health was not a mitigating factor.

Defendant asserts that the trial court gave insufficient 

weight to the mitigating factors relevant to the current offenses 

and his criminal history. Defendant asserts that the current 

offenses “involved” “little true violence,” and that his only use of 

violence was pushing Bosch after she pushed him, such that this 

crime is only “technically a burglary.” (Italics added.) The trial 

court reasonably rejected defendant’s characterization of the 

primarily charged crime. Not all first degree burglaries involve 

the use of violence; indeed, it is the potential for violence when a 

person breaks and enters into a residence when someone is home 

that makes such burglaries a “serious” and “violent” felony in the 

nomenclature of the law. (§§ 1192.7, subd. (c)(18), 667.5, subd. 
9

(c)(21).) That does not make them “technical” burglaries. The 

trial court also considered the age of defendant’s two prior 

strikes—in 1990 and in 1993—but determined that their age was 

of less importance given defendant’s steady stream of convictions 

between his release from prison on the 1993 conviction and his 

criminal conduct in this case. This was entirely reasonable. 

(People v. Gaston (1999) 74 Cal.App.4th 310, 321-322 [age of prior 

strikes relevant when defendant “led a crime-free life” in the 

interim, but not when he has “committed an unending series of 

felonies, as well as other crimes . . .”].)

In sum, the record showed defendant to be a lifelong 

criminal who took what he wanted when he wanted—and 

regardless of the consequences. The trial court did not abuse its 

discretion in concluding that he was a dangerous repeat offender 

falling within the heartland of the Three Strikes Law whose 

conduct in this case did not warrant a lower sentence.

II. Imposition of Fines and Fees

A. Lack of finding of ability to pay

Defendant argues that the trial court erred in imposing 

$1,300 in fines and assessments without first determining that 

he had the ability to pay them.3 For support, he cites People v. 

Dueñas (2019) 30 Cal.App.5th 1157 (Dueñas). These are 

constitutional questions resting on undisputed facts, so our 

review is de novo. (People v. Ramos (1997) 15 Cal.4th 1133, 

1154.) We reject defendant’s argument for three reasons.

3 Although the court also imposed an additional $300 as a 

parole revocation fine, that amount was suspended, so it is not 

currently an outstanding fine or assessment. We accordingly do 

not consider it in our analysis.
10

First, defendant has forfeited this challenge. His 

sentencing occurred more than 20 months after Dueñas was 

handed down, yet he did not raise this issue. This constitutes a 

forfeiture. (People v. Flowers (2022) 81 Cal.App.5th 680, 687.) 

Defendant responds that the failure to assess his ability to pay 

means that the resulting imposition of fines and assessments 

constitutes an “unauthorized sentence” that can be attacked at 

any time. He is wrong. (People v. Torres (2020) 44 Cal.App.5th 

1081, 1085 [imposition of fines and assessments without an 

ability-to-pay finding is not an “unauthorized sentence”], revd. on 

other grounds, In re G.C. (2020) 8 Cal.5th 1119; People v. Avila

(2009) 46 Cal.4th 680, 729 [same].)

Second, and even if we were to overlook this forfeiture,4 we 

have held that Dueñas is wrongly decided and have declined to 

follow it. (People v. Hicks (2019) 40 Cal.App.5th 320, 322.) 

Third, and in the event our Supreme Court endorses

Dueñas in its pending review of that decision in People v. Kopp,

review granted Nov. 13, 2019, S257844, we conclude that 

defendant has not established a violation of Dueñas. Defendant 

“points to no evidence in the record supporting his inability to 

pay.” (People v. Gamache (2010) 48 Cal.4th 347, 409.) Rather, 

evidence in the record indicates that defendant had some ability 

to pay at the time of sentencing. Although defendant was 

described as “homeless” and “unemployed” at the time of the 

incident, he was “living off the proceeds of a prior legal 

settlement.” Further, the court may consider future prison wages 

when assessing ability to pay. (People v. Montes (2021) 59 

4 Our decision to reach the merits notwithstanding the 

forfeiture obviates the ineffective assistance of counsel claim 

defendant makes.
11

Cal.App.5th 1107, 1122; People v. Hennessey (1995) 37 

Cal.App.4th 1830, 1837.) Even at the lowest-wage prison job 

(which pays $12 per month), defendant has the ability to earn 

$1,300 as prison wages during his minimum incarceration as it 

would take him approximately nine years and one month to earn 

that amount. (See People v. Johnson (2019) 35 Cal.App.5th 134, 

139 [“The idea that [defendant] cannot afford to pay $370 while 

serving an eight-year prison sentence is unsustainable.”].) And 

to the extent defendant argues that the fines and assessments 

constitute cruel and unusual punishment, we reject the claim 

that the monetary obligations here are “grossly disproportional to 

the gravity of [defendant’s] offense.” (See United States v. 

Bajakajian (1998) 524 U.S. 321, 334, superseded by statute on 

other grounds as stated in United States v. Jose (1st Cir. 2007) 

499 F.3d 105, 109-110.) Applying these factors, we conclude that 

the $1,300 obligation imposed in this case is not out of proportion 

to the seriousness of first degree burglary and misdemeanor 

battery.

B. Imposition of fine under section 672

Defendant argues that the $960 fine, comprised in part of a 

$200 base fine, imposed pursuant to section 672 is unauthorized. 

Specifically, he argues that section 1202.5 sets a maximum $10 

base fine for burglary and precludes the imposition of any further 

fine, including one under section 672. Because this argument 

turns on a question of statutory interpretation, our review is de 

novo. (Union of Medical Marijuana Patients, Inc. v. City of San 

Diego (2019) 7 Cal.5th 1171, 1183.)

Section 672 provides that a “court may impose a [base] fine” 

of up to $10,000 “[u]pon conviction for any crime punishable by 

imprisonment.” (§ 672.) This statute authorizes the trial court’s 
12

imposition of a $200 base fine for the first degree burglary 

conviction to which defendant was sentenced to 25 years to life in 

prison. Defendant urges that section 1202.5 precludes the 

imposition of any fine under section 672 because section 1202.5 

requires a court to “order the defendant to pay a fine” of $10 “[i]n 

any case in which [the] defendant is convicted of” burglary. (§ 

1202.5, subd. (a).) The flaw in defendant’s argument is that it 

utterly ignores that the $10 base fine due under section 1202.5 is 

to be “in addition to any other penalty or fine imposed.” (Ibid.) 

Given the fact that section 1202.5 is on its face cumulative to

other fines, the argument that section 1202.5 somehow precludes 

a fine under section 672 is without merit. (People v. Uffelman

(2015) 240 Cal.App.4th 195, 197 (Uffelman) [so holding].) 

Defendant urges us to reject Uffelman and instead to follow 

People v. Breazell (2002) 104 Cal.App.4th 298 (Breazell), which 

held that a fine may not be imposed under section 672 when a 

provision of the Health and Safety Code already required the 

imposition of a fine up to $20,000. (Id. at pp. 302-305.) Because 

the secondary fine imposed under section 1202.5 in this case by 

its very terms contemplates that it is “in addition” to other fines, 

Breazell is inapt and we find Uffelman to be persuasive.
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DISPOSITION

The judgment is affirmed.

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS.

______________________, J.

HOFFSTADT

We concur:

_________________________, P. J.

LUI

_________________________, J.

CHAVEZ