Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/california/supreme-court/4th/12/826.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 13:47:45+00:00

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DENNIS PINEDA BALUYUT et al., Petitioners, v. THE SUPERIOR COURT OF SANTA CLARA COUNTY, Respondent; THE PEOPLE, Real Party in Interest.
Bruce W. Nickerson for Petitioners.
Sean M. SeLegue as Amicus Curiae on behalf of Petitioners.
Petitioners below are defendants charged with violation of Penal Code section 647, subdivision (a) (section 647(a)), fn. 1 in the Municipal Court for the Santa Clara Judicial District. They sought dismissal of the charges on the ground that the Mountain View police who arrested them engaged in a pattern of discriminatory arrest and prosecution of homosexuals under this statute, thereby denying them equal protection of the law. The municipal court judge found that defendants fn. 2 had established all of the factors necessary to establish constitutionally impermissible discriminatory prosecution except a specific intent on the part of the Mountain View police to punish defendants for their membership in a particular class, an element which the court believed was required by People v. Smith (1984) 155 Cal. App. 3d 1103 [203 Cal. Rptr. 196] (Smith).
We conclude that the Court of Appeal correctly held that showing a specific intent on the part of law enforcement to punish the defendant for [12 Cal. 4th 830] membership in a particular class is not necessary to establish discriminatory prosecution. Inasmuch as the petition for writ of mandate is now moot, however, we shall reverse the judgment with directions to dismiss the petition for writ of mandate.
In support of their motion to dismiss, defendants presented 10 arrest reports spanning a 2-year period. The reports described decoy officers' arrests of men in and outside an adult bookstore in Mountain View for violations of section 647(a). The arrests involved a decoy officer who had engaged a person in small talk. In five of the arrests, after the person eventually made it clear that he was interested in a sexual encounter the officer suggested that the person accompany the officer to the officer's car. Once at the officer's car, the person was arrested for soliciting a lewd act to be performed in a public place. In the remainder, the person suggested going to a place which, while public or open to the public, was not clearly one at which the person knew or should know there would be other persons who might observe and be offended by the suggested conduct (see Pryor v. Municipal Court (1979) 25 Cal. 3d 238, 256 [158 Cal. Rptr. 330, 599 P.2d 636]), but the person was also arrested for soliciting a lewd act to be performed in a public place. Other evidence was offered that the modus operandi of the decoy officers was typical of a "cruising" pattern of homosexual men and that it invited homosexual men to make contact with the decoy officer.
Mountain View police records for the two years prior to the arrest of defendants were reviewed by the municipal court which also heard testimony about the decoy operation. fn. 5 The court concluded that the operation was focused solely on persons who had a proclivity to engage in homosexual conduct.
The court summarized its factual and legal conclusions: "[T]he Court does come inevitably to the conclusion that there was discrimination ... evidenced by the officers' method of operation; that their method of operation was designed to ferret out homosexuals or those who were likely to engage [12 Cal. 4th 831] in homosexual acts, and that it did so without any relationship to the alleged problems at that location for which the citizen complaint had been initially lodged."
[1a] Based on these factual conclusions, and applying this court's decision in Murgia v. Municipal Court (1975) 15 Cal. 3d 286 [124 Cal. Rptr. 204, 540 P.2d 44] (Murgia), the municipal court ruled that defendants had established there was improper selectivity-discrimination-in prosecution and that the discrimination had an invidious basis. It was unjustifiable, arbitrary, and without a rational relationship to legitimate law enforcement interests. Notwithstanding these conclusions and the court's belief that the complaints should be dismissed, the court felt bound by Smith to deny the motion to dismiss because defendants had not established that the Mountain View police had a specific intent to punish the defendants for their membership in a particular class.
We again explained the necessary showing in People v. Superior Court (Hartway) (1977) 19 Cal. 3d 338, 348 [138 Cal. Rptr. 66, 562 P.2d 1315] (Hartway): "The elements of the defense of discriminatory enforcement were set forth in Murgia v. Municipal Court, supra. To establish the defense, the defendant must prove: (1) 'that he has been deliberately singled out for prosecution on the basis of some invidious criterion'; and (2) that 'the prosecution would not have been pursued except for the discriminatory design of the prosecuting authorities.' "
[1b] Nothing in Murgia, Hartway, or the controlling decisions of the United States Supreme Court supports the imposition of this additional burden on a defendant. Showing an intent to punish for membership in a group or class is not necessary to establish a violation of an individual's right to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. There must be discrimination and that discrimination must be intentional and unjustified and thus "invidious" because it is unrelated to legitimate law enforcement objectives, but the intent need not be to "punish" the defendant for membership in a protected class or for the defendant's exercise of protected rights.
The People contend, however, that a "specific intent" akin to that which is an element of some criminal offenses may be an element of a discriminatory prosecution showing. The People argue that a specific intent requirement may be found in Murgia because Murgia indicates that more than mere selective enforcement of a law which produces a discriminatory result is needed. Therefore, they reason, the Smith court correctly denominated the intent element to be a specific intent to punish. Understood in this manner, the "specific intent to punish" element is a corollary to the question of whether the police acted permissibly, i.e., on a nonarbitrary and noninvidious basis.
We agree with the premise that if the police single out a group or member of a group for arrest and prosecution with the intent to punish the defendants for membership in the group rather than simply for violation of the law, the prosecution is arbitrary and lacks a legitimate law enforcement purpose. Thus the discrimination in singling out those defendants is invidious. It does not follow, however, that a specific intent to punish for membership in a particular classification is a necessary element of a discriminatory prosecution showing. Murgia did not so hold.
The suggestion in Smith that Murgia somehow implied that discriminatory enforcement is not established unless the defendant establishes that the law enforcement officers responsible had a specific intent to punish the defendants for their membership in a particular classification finds no support in these expressions of the elements of the defendant's burden. Rather, the purpose or intent that must be shown is simply intent to single out the group or a member of the group on the basis of that membership for prosecution that would not otherwise have taken place. When there is no legitimate law enforcement purpose for singling out those persons for prosecution, the prosecution is arbitrary and unjustified and thus results in invidious discrimination.
Even were this a case of first impression, this court would not be free to add the gloss suggested by Smith to the test of discriminatory prosecution. Federal constitutional constraints preclude our doing so. Subsequent to Murgia and the United States Supreme Court decisions on which it relied, the high court again visited the question and reaffirmed the factors which establish a violation of a defendant's right to equal protection, noting that ordinary equal protection principles apply in assessing discriminatory prosecution claims. In Wayte v. United States, supra, 470 U.S. 598, the court considered a "passive enforcement" policy under which the federal government prosecuted persons who failed to register for the draft. Under that policy the government prosecuted only persons who reported themselves as unwilling to register. Those who reported themselves were known by the government as likely to be persons who for moral or religious reasons were vocal opponents of the registration requirement. At the time the policy existed, the Selective Service system was unable to develop a more active enforcement system.
Wayte, the petitioner, was one of the first persons indicted under the passive enforcement policy. He claimed to be a victim of selective or discriminatory enforcement and asserted that the indictment violated his First Amendment rights. The district court dismissed the indictment, ruling that the government had not rebutted Wayte's prima facie case of selective prosecution. Although it agreed that Wayte had shown that others similarly situated had not been prosecuted for the same conduct, the court of appeals reversed on the ground that Wayte failed to show that the government focused its investigation on Wayte because of his protest activities.
We are not free to adopt a narrower construction of the protection afforded by the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment than that enunciated by the United States Supreme Court. Requiring a defendant to show that the government had a specific intent to punish a person singled out as a member of a class for criminal prosecution finds no support in the controlling precedent of the United States Supreme Court cases.
The judgment of the Court of Appeal is reversed with directions to dismiss the petition for writ of mandate as moot.
Lucas, C. J., Mosk, J., Kennard, J., George, J., Werdegar, J., and Arabian, J., fn. * concurred.
FN *. Retired Associate Justice of the Supreme Court sitting under assignment by the Chairperson of the Judicial Council.
FN 1. Section 647: "Every person who commits any of the following acts is guilty of disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor: [¶] (a) Who solicits anyone to engage in or who engages in lewd or dissolute conduct in any public place or in any place open to the public or exposed to public view."
FN 2. For clarity, as the People are the petitioner in this court, we will refer to the mandate petitioners as "defendants," their status in the underlying criminal prosecution.
FN 3. An order of the superior court denying a petition for writ of mandate directed to the municipal court is not appealable, but may be reviewed on petition for writ of mandate. (Code Civ. Proc., § 904.1.) The Court of Appeal may have overlooked the procedural posture of the case as its judgment directed the municipal court to grant defendants' motion to dismiss, rather than directing issuance of a peremptory writ of mandate to the respondent superior court ordering the superior court to set aside its order denying relief and to grant the petition filed in that court.
FN 5. The arrest records submitted as exhibits to the petition do not reveal the name of the persons arrested, but two apparently relate to the arrests of the defendants. In one of these arrests, the officer suggested going to his car. In the other, the defendant suggested going to the officer's car.
FN 6. Because review was granted to decide only the "intent to punish" question and the petition is moot, we do not reach the People's argument that petitioners failed to establish other elements of discriminatory prosecution.

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