Filed 3/14/24 P. v. Spengler CA2/2

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS

California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions 

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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.

MICHAEL R. SPENGLER,

Defendant and 

Appellant.

 B331068, consolidated with

B331084

 (Los Angeles County

 Super. Ct. Nos. KA075833 

& KA099426)

APPEAL from orders of the Superior Court of Los Angeles 

County, Douglas Sortino and Rubiya Nur, Judges. Dismissed.

Murray Kamionski, under appointment by the Court of 

Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
2

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

Assistant Attorney General, Susan Sullivan Pithey, Assistant 

Attorney General, Noah P. Hill and Steven E. Mercer, Deputy 

Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent. 

* * * * * *

Michael Spengler (defendant) purports to appeal two orders 

denying him a refund of the fines and assessments he already 

paid for two felony convictions he sustained back in 2006 and 

2013. We lack jurisdiction to entertain this appeal, so dismiss it. 

The appeal also lacks merit.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

I. Defendant’s 2006 Drug Conviction

A. Plea and sentence

In August 2006, and as pertinent here, defendant pled no 

contest to a single count of possession of methamphetamine as a 

felony (Health & Saf. Code, § 11377, subd. (a)).1 The trial court 

placed defendant on three years of probation pursuant to the 

then-existing “Proposition 36” drug rehabilitation program (Prop. 

36, as approved by voters, Gen. Elec. (Nov. 7, 2000)). When 

defendant violated that probation (and committed a new crime), 

the trial court sentenced him to two years in prison. The court 

also imposed a $200 restitution fine (pursuant to Penal Code 

section 1202.4, subd. (b)),2 a $20 court security assessment 

(pursuant to Penal Code section 1465.8, subd. (a)(1)), and a $160 

1 Defendant also entered a plea to a misdemeanor count of 

vandalism and admitted he had a prior prison term.

2 All further statutory references are to the Penal Code 

unless otherwise indicated.
3

lab fee (pursuant to Health and Safety Code section 11372.5, 

subd. (a)). The court imposed but stayed an additional $200 

parole revocation fine (pursuant to Penal Code section 1202.45).

B. Redesignation as a misdemeanor

In July 2017, defendant filed a petition pursuant to section 

1170.18 asking to have his 2006 felony drug conviction 

redesignated as a misdemeanor. The trial court granted his 

petition on August 3, 2017.

II. Defendant’s 2013 Drug Conviction

A. Plea and sentence

In January 2013, and as pertinent here, defendant pled no 

contest to a single count of possession of methamphetamine as a 

felony (Health & Saf. Code, § 11377, subd. (a)). When defendant 

did not report to a live-in drug rehabilitation center to serve a 16-

month sentence, the trial court in April 2013 sentenced 

defendant to 16 months in jail. The court also imposed a $280 

restitution fine, a $40 court security assessment, a $30 criminal 

conviction assessment (Gov. Code, § 70373), and a $205 lab fee. 

B. Redesignation as a misdemeanor

In July 2017, defendant filed a petition pursuant to section 

1170.18 asking to have his 2013 felony drug conviction 

redesignated as a misdemeanor. The trial court granted his 

petition on August 7, 2017.

III. Defendant’s Request For a Refund of Paid Fines and 

Fees

In both of the above-described cases, defendant in 

September 2022 filed a letter with the trial court (1) asserting 

that the fines and assessments he previously paid were “invalid” 

in light of reduction of the felonies to misdemeanors, and (2) 

requesting that the amounts he paid be refunded to him (by 
4

crediting those amounts to pay his other outstanding fines and 

assessments in his prison account).

The trial court construed the letters as motions, and denied 

each of them. 

IV. Appeal

Defendant filed timely notices of appeal to each denial. 

Those appeals were initially routed to the appellate division of 

the superior court because the underlying offenses had been 

redesignated as misdemeanors. However, the appellate division 

transferred both appeals to this court after realizing that the 

cases had originally been charged as felonies. We subsequently 

consolidated the two separate appeals.

DISCUSSION

Defendant argues that the trial court erred in denying his 

request for a refund of the fees and assessments he paid. His 

argument lacks merit for two reasons.

First and foremost, we lack jurisdiction to entertain this 

appeal. An appellate court must dismiss an appeal when the 

trial court lacked jurisdiction to entertain the order being 

appealed. (People v. King (2022) 77 Cal.App.5th 629, 639-640;

People v. Hodges (2023) 92 Cal.App.5th 186, 190; People v. 

Burgess (2022) 86 Cal.App.5th 375, 381; People v. E.M. (2022) 85 

Cal.App.5th 1075, 1085.) Here, the trial court lacked jurisdiction 

to entertain defendant’s motions for a refund of fees and 

assessments. That is because no procedural vehicle exists by 

which defendant could seek a refund of his fees and assessments. 

(People v. Escobedo (2023) 95 Cal.App.5th 440, 448 [requiring a 

“‘“specific statutory avenue[]”’” for relief]; Burgess, at p. 381.) A 

petition for a writ of habeas corpus is unavailable to defendant 

because he is no longer in custody on the 2006 and 2013 
5

convictions. (§ 1473; cf. People v. Villa (2009) 45 Cal.4th 1063, 

1069 [“custody” includes probation, parole, or a fine under 

penalty of imprisonment].) A petition for relief under section 

1473.7 is unavailable to defendant because that statute only 

provides a vehicle for out-of-custody defendants on specified 

grounds, and because a request for a refund of paid fees and 

assessments is not one of those grounds. (§ 1473.7, subd. (a).) A 

petition for relief under section 1170.18 itself is unavailable to 

defendant because he already petitioned and obtained relief 

under that provision back in 2017; section 1170.18 provides no 

vehicle for subsequent petitions. All defendant is left with are his 

“freestanding motion[s],” but such motions are “not a proper 

procedural [vehicle] to seek relief.” (King, at p. 640; Escobedo, at 

pp. 448-449.)3 Because defendant lacked a procedural vehicle, the 

trial court lacked jurisdiction, and hence, so do we; this appeal 

must therefore be dismissed.4

3 Although People v. Codinha (2023) 92 Cal.App.5th 976, 985 

parted ways with this authority by holding that a trial court may 

entertain a freestanding motion to correct an unauthorized 

sentence, defendant here provides no authority for the 

proposition that the imposition of fees and assessments attendant 

to a felony conviction that was authorized at the time somehow 

becomes unauthorized when the felony offense is redesignated as 

a misdemeanor. As discussed in the text below, the law seems to 

the contrary.

4 To the extent defendant on appeal is seeking to appeal the 

trial court’s denial of his 2013 habeas corpus petition challenging 

the prison officials’ failure to grant him access to various records, 

we also dismiss that appeal because an order denying habeas 

corpus relief cannot be appealed in a noncapital case. (Robinson 

v. Lewis (2020) 9 Cal.5th 883, 895.)
6

Second, defendant’s motions for a refund lack merit even if 

we were to entertain his appeals. 

As a threshold matter, the factual premise of defendant’s 

entire argument is incorrect. Defendant suggests that, once his 

convictions were reduced from felonies to misdemeanors, he 

would not have been obligated to pay any fines or assessments. 

He is wrong. The court security assessment and criminal 

conviction assessments apply to both misdemeanors and felonies 

(Pen. Code, § 1465.8; Gov. Code, § 70373); because defendant 

remains convicted of misdemeanors, he still owed those 

assessments. The parole revocation fine for the 2006 conviction 

was stayed, so defendant never paid it (and thus is not entitled to 

a refund of an amount he never paid). And a restitution fine is 

also owed for misdemeanors, albeit at half the amount as for 

felonies—so defendant would at most be entitled to a refund of a 

total of $240—that is, $100 (one half the $200 fine) for the 2006 

conviction and $140 (one half of the $280 fine) for the 2013

conviction. 

Further, the legal premise of defendant’s argument is 

unsupported. Defendant broadly asserts that “due process” and 

the “Excess [sic] Fines” clause of the Eighth Amendment entitle 

him to a refund, while simultaneously and freely admitting that 

he can find no statutory or decisional basis for his assertions. 

Nor have we found any. The statute that provides for the

redesignation of certain felony offenses to misdemeanors—section 

1170.18—does not provide for a complete resentencing (which 

might include a recalculation of fines and assessments) when, as 

here, the felony sentence “has [been] completed.” (§ 1170.18, 

subds. (f) & (g).) Although that statute also provides that a 

redesignated offense “shall be considered a misdemeanor for all 
7

purposes” (id., subd. (j)), it does not expressly provide for a refund 

of previously paid fines and assessments. This “misdemeanor for 

all purposes” language is not a panacea that completely hits the 

reset button: In In re C.B. (2018) 6 Cal.5th 118, 129, for example, 

our Supreme Court held that the redesignation of a felony as a 

misdemeanor did not entitle a defendant to have his DNA 

expunged from the statewide database (even though the DNA 

was initially entered because the offense was initially a felony), 

because the collection of the DNA sample was effectively a “done 

deal” and nothing in section 1170.18 required expungement. In 

re C.B.’s logic applies with equal force here. Any fines or 

assessments defendant already paid are a “done deal,” and 

nothing in section 1170.18 mandates their refund. What is more, 

because our Legislature has in other circumstances explicitly 

addressed the issue of whether a defendant must pay outstanding 

fines and assessments after the repeal of those fines and 

assessments (People v. Lopez-Vinck (2021) 68 Cal.App.5th 945, 

949-954), we must give effect to our Legislature’s silence with 

regard to unpaid or already paid fees when relief is granted 

under section 1170.18 (People v. Trevino (2001) 26 Cal.4th 237, 

242 [Legislature’s use of different language in different 

provisions addressing the same subject connotes a different 

meaning]).

The authority defendant does provide is irrelevant. He 

cites Nelson v. Colorado (2017) 581 U.S. 128, but Nelson holds 

that a defendant is entitled to a refund of criminal fines and fees 

when his convictions are vacated (id. at p. 130); Nelson does not 

help defendant because his convictions were not vacated—they 

were redesignated as misdemeanors. Defendant also cites section 
8

1297, but that statute provides for a refund of money a defendant 

himself puts up for bail; the issue here is not bail. (§ 1297.) 

DISPOSITION

For all these reasons, we dismiss this appeal.

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS.

______________________, J.

HOFFSTADT

We concur:

_________________________, P. J.

LUI

_________________________, J.

CHAVEZ