Source: https://caselaw.lexroll.com/2019/01/28/people-v-colbert-no-s238954-cal-1-24-2019/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 06:35:53+00:00

Document:
Justice Kruger authored the opinion of the court, in which Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye and Justices Chin, Corrigan, Liu, Cuéllar, and Tangeman* concurred.
In approving Proposition 47, the 2014 voter initiative that reclassified certain theft-related and drug-related felonies as misdemeanors, voters created a new misdemeanor offense called “shoplifting.” (Pen. Code, § 459.5.) Shoplifting is defined as the act of entering a commercial establishment with intent to steal property while the establishment is open during regular business hours, where the value of the property taken or intended to be taken is $950 or less—an act that had formerly been punishable as felony burglary. (Ibid.; see id., § 459.) This case presents a question concerning the line separating shoplifting from burglary: If a person enters a store during regular business hours but then proceeds to a private back office with intent to steal therefrom, which crime has he or she committed? We conclude that entering an interior room that is objectively identifiable as off-limits to the public with intent to steal therefrom is not shoplifting, but instead remains punishable as burglary.
On four separate occasions in 1996 and 1997, defendant Mark Anthony Colbert, acting with an accomplice, stole money from the back offices of various convenience stores and a gas station. On each occasion, defendant and his accomplice employed the same modus operandi. They entered the stores during regular business hours, and while one of them distracted the store clerk by purchasing or redeeming lottery tickets, the other either slipped or broke into the back offices to steal money he found there.
Defendant was charged with four counts of second degree burglary, an alternative felony-misdemeanor (also known as a “wobbler”) (Pen. Code, §§ 459, 460, subd. (b)). For the first three counts, the People alleged that defendant and his accomplice took, respectively, $300, $318, and $3,000 in cash; no money was taken in count 4, because the accomplice was confronted by an employee while in the back office. A jury found defendant guilty and he was sentenced to an aggregate prison term of two years and eight months, to run consecutively to a six-year prison term for an unrelated robbery.
In 2014, California voters approved Proposition 47, the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act, which reclassified as misdemeanors certain drug-related and theft-related offenses that had previously been classified as felonies or wobblers. As relevant here, Proposition 47 added a section to the Penal Code creating a new offense of misdemeanor shoplifting. Section 459.5, subdivision (a) provides, in pertinent part: “Notwithstanding Section 459 [the burglary statute], shoplifting is defined as entering a commercial establishment with intent to commit larceny while that establishment is open during regular business hours, where the value of the property that is taken or intended to be taken does not exceed nine hundred fifty dollars ($950). Any other entry into a commercial establishment with intent to commit larceny is burglary.” With certain exceptions not relevant here, the offense is punishable as a misdemeanor. (Pen. Code, § 459.5, subd. (a).) Subdivision (b) limits a prosecutor’s discretion in charging: “Any act of shoplifting as defined in subdivision (a) shall be charged as shoplifting. No person who is charged with shoplifting may also be charged with burglary or theft of the same property.” The effect of the provision is to reclassify as misdemeanors certain crimes that were formerly punishable as felony burglary.
Justice Rushing dissented. In his view, the statute’s plain language compels the conclusion that defendant committed shoplifting by entering the stores with intent to commit larceny. He opined that nonpublic areas form part of the “commercial establishment” covered by the shoplifting statute and thus disagreed with the majority that defendant exited the establishment by venturing into a nonpublic interior room.
We granted defendant’s petition for review to resolve the conflict about the application of section 459.5 to offenses involving entries into interior rooms that are off-limits to the public with intent to steal therefrom.
For more than a century before Proposition 47, entry into a store with intent to steal was understood to constitute burglary under California law, regardless of whether the defendant entered the store during its regular business hours. (People v. Gonzales (2017) 2 Cal.5th 858, 872 (Gonzales); see People v. Barry (1892) 94 Cal. 481, 483 (Barry).) The reasons for this understanding lie in the early history of California’s burglary law. At common law, the crime of burglary had been understood to require (among other things) a breaking and entering with intent to commit larceny or any felony. When the California Legislature enacted the present-day burglary statute in 1872, however, it dispensed with the common law requirement of a breaking, instead defining burglary simply as entry into a specified structure (including a “store”), a room, or a vehicle with intent to commit larceny or any felony. (Pen. Code, § 459; see People v. Gauze (1975) 15 Cal.3d 709, 713.) Of course, as this court would later confirm, the burglary statute did preserve the basic principle underlying the common law breaking requirement: “that in order for burglary to occur, ‘The entry must be without consent.’ ” (Gauze, at p. 713; see id. at pp. 713–714 [“ ‘If the possessor actually invites the defendant, or actively assists in the entrance, e.g., by opening a door, there is no burglary.’ ”].) But in Barry, at page 483, this court interpreted the burglary statute to apply to a thief’s entry into a store during regular business hours, despite the fact the owner had opened the door to the general consuming public. The court reasoned: “[A] party who enters with the intention to commit a felony enters without an invitation. He is not one of the public invited, nor is he entitled to enter.” (Ibid.) The effect of this holding was to extend the coverage of the burglary statute to a class of offenses that might colloquially be described as “simple shoplifting” (Descamps v. United States (2013) 570 U.S. 254, 264), rendering them punishable as felonies (Pen. Code, §§ 459, 460, 461, subd. (b)).
Both parties in this case agree that defendant entered a “commercial establishment” when he first entered the stores from which he stole. Defendant argues that is the end of the story, because the shoplifting statute draws no distinction between entering a store with intent to steal property from areas open to the public and entering a private back office with intent to steal property therefrom. The Attorney General argues, and the Court of Appeal agreed, that the shoplifting statute applies to entries with intent to steal from commercial establishments open to the public during regular business hours only to the extent the establishments are open to the public during those hours. In the Attorney General’s view, if a defendant enters a commercial establishment open during regular business hours, but then proceeds to enter an interior room that is off-limits to the public with intent to steal property there, the crime is punishable as burglary and not shoplifting.
This question concerning the meaning of Proposition 47 is a matter of statutory interpretation, and we employ familiar principles to resolve it. (See Robert L. v. Superior Court (2003) 30 Cal.4th 894, 900–901.) We begin by examining the words of the statute, affording them “their ordinary and usual meaning and viewing them in their statutory context” (Fluor Corp. v. Superior Court (2015) 61 Cal.4th 1175, 1198), for “ ‘if the statutory language is not ambiguous, then . . . the plain meaning of the language governs’ ” (People v. Montes (2003) 31 Cal.4th 350, 356). Defendant argues that the statutory text clearly resolves this question in his favor—and indeed, suggests we have already said as much in a prior case. He is wrong on both counts.
The notion that our precedent resolves the question here is easily disposed of. Defendant points to our decision in Gonzales, in which we interpreted section 459.5 to apply to an entry into a commercial establishment with intent to commit forms of theft other than larceny, including theft by false pretenses. (Gonzales, supra, 2 Cal.5th at p. 862.) In so holding, we rejected the Attorney General’s argument that it “would be absurd for the shoplifting statute to encompass any form of theft other than larceny of openly displayed merchandise” because, if it did, the statute “would require a person to be prosecuted for shoplifting even if he enters a commercial establishment to commit a theft from an area of the store closed to the public, ‘like a back office or a private locker room . . . .’ ” (Id. at p. 873.) Our rejection of the Attorney General’s argument, however, was cabined to the issue before us. Without addressing the premise of the Attorney General’s argument about the statute’s application to back offices, we explained that section 459.5, by its text, is not limited to theft of openly displayed merchandise. While another statute, Penal Code section 490.5, prescribes penalties for “petty theft involving merchandise taken from a merchant’s premises” (id., subd. (a)), section 459.5 applies to entries with intent to commit theft of “property” more broadly. (See Gonzales, at p. 874.) We had no occasion to decide whether and how section 459.5 applies to entries into back offices or other private interior rooms with intent to steal property therefrom.
Turning back to the statutory text, defendant points to section 459.5’s unadorned reference to entering a “commercial establishment” during regular business hours to argue that the plain language of section 459.5 applies to his criminal conduct. He argues that the shoplifting crime was complete once he first entered the stores in question with intent to steal money from the private back offices; in his view, the later entry into these interior offices to steal the money has no legal significance other than supplying evidence that he entered the stores with an intent to steal.
Still, defendant’s proposed interpretation of section 459.5 is not clearly correct. While it may be more consistent with casual usage to read “commercial establishment” to refer to a store’s entire physical plant, it is also possible to read section 459.5, in context, in the more specialized way the Attorney General proposes. Under that reading, the term “commercial establishment” would refer only to that portion of the physical plant that is used for “commerce”—a term both parties understand to mean the buying and selling of goods—and to exclude private interior rooms in which no goods or services are sold to the public.
The Attorney General’s narrower reading has several points in its favor. It is certainly more consistent with the ordinary understanding of “shoplifting.” (Cf., e.g., Leocal v. Ashcroft (2004) 543 U.S. 1, 11 [resolving interpretive dispute about defined term by reference to the term’s ordinary meaning].) But more importantly, the reading fits with the surrounding language of section 459.5. The statute limits shoplifting to those entries into a commercial establishment made “while that establishment is open during regular business hours.” (§ 459.5, subd. (a).) As the Attorney General notes, this language evinces some intent to limit the scope of shoplifting based on the extent to which the establishment is “open” to the public—which is to say, to the parameters of a commercial establishment’s invitation to enter to peruse the goods and services on offer.
This history supports a reading of section 459.5 that distinguishes between initial entries into stores and subsequent entries into certain interior rooms. But that is not all; the history also lends support to the specific distinction we are asked here to adopt, between entering a store while it is open during regular business hours and entering an interior room within the store that is off-limits to the public. The reason for this particular distinction lies in the same general principle articulated by Blackstone and reflected in Young: Just as the common law of burglary was not prepared to punish a person who walked through an open door, neither was it prepared to punish a person who walked through a door at the express invitation of the owner or occupant. (See People v. Gauze, supra, 15 Cal.3d at pp. 713–714; LaFave, Substantive Criminal Law (3d ed. 2018) § 21.1(a), p. 269.) But the law was prepared to punish the person who exceeded the scope of his or her invitation by entering an internal room without consent. A person might be authorized to enter a building, but “[w]hen the authority granted was restricted to certain portions of the structure or times of day, there was a breaking”—and hence a burglary—“when the structure was opened in violation of these restrictions.” (LaFave, at p. 269; see 4 Blackstone, supra, at pp. 226–227 [explaining that servant commits burglary if he enters his master’s chamber without authorization and with felonious design]; see also, e.g., State v. Rio (1951) 38 Wn.2d 446 [citing authorities for proposition that at common law burglary may be committed by house guest or invitee who, with the requisite intent, enters a room that he has no right to enter].) As translated to this context, the common law approach would mean that (1) a customer invited to enter a store or other place where goods and services are sold could not be convicted of burglary, but (2) a person who exceeded the scope of the invitation by venturing into off-limits interior rooms would commit burglary if he or she did so with the requisite unlawful intent.
Because the whole point of section 459.5 is to redefine a class of burglary offenses as shoplifting, the history of the burglary statute and its judicial construction alone cannot be dispositive of the question here: whether an offense involving an entry into an off-limits room within a store remains punishable as burglary. The history does, however, leave us with two possible conclusions about the meaning of section 459.5. It is possible that section 459.5 does not speak more clearly to the problem of entries into off-limits interior rooms because it is designed to revoke the traditional distinction between structures into which a defendant has been invited and internal rooms to which he or she has not been invited. Alternatively, it is possible that section 459.5 does not speak more clearly to the issue because it simply presumes the continuing validity of the traditional distinction. A closer examination of the purposes underlying the burglary statute and the changes made by section 459.5 persuades us that the second option is the correct one.
In enacting the shoplifting statute as part of Proposition 47, the electorate signaled that these interests do not apply in the same way when a person intends to steal property in a place where he or she has been invited to peruse the goods and services that are on offer. Store owners and employees do not, of course, consent to the theft of property. But the core of the crime of burglary is not theft but physical intrusion, and owners and employees have every reason to expect that members of the public will enter where they have been invited.
For these reasons, we conclude that entering an interior room that is objectively identifiable as off-limits to the public with intent to steal therefrom is not punishable as shoplifting under section 459.5, but instead remains punishable as burglary. This interpretation of section 459.5 makes it unnecessary for us to consider the Attorney General’s alternative argument that defendant’s entries into the back offices at issue are punishable as burglary under the rule of People v. Garcia, supra, 62 Cal.4th 1116. In that case, we interpreted Penal Code section 459 to permit multiple burglary convictions based on a defendant’s initial entry into a structure and a subsequent entry into a room within the structure if “the subsequently entered room provides a separate and objectively reasonable expectation of protection from intrusion relative to the larger structure.” (Garcia, at p. 1120.) For purposes of identifying the line dividing shoplifting from burglary after Proposition 47, we conclude it is enough that defendant entered an interior room objectively identifiable as off-limits to the public. We need not decide whether entries into these rooms would also have supported multiple burglary convictions under the distinct test articulated in Garcia.
In this case it is undisputed that defendant’s burglary convictions were based on entries into back offices that were objectively identifiable as off-limits to the public, with an intent to steal therefrom. Had Proposition 47 been in effect at the time of defendant’s offenses, it would have made no difference; he would still be guilty of burglary and not shoplifting. (See Pen. Code, §§ 459.5, 1170.18, subd. (f).) We conclude that defendant therefore is not entitled to redesignate his burglary convictions as misdemeanors under Proposition 47.
Kimberly Taylor, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Appellant.
Kamala D. Harris and Xavier Becerra, Attorneys General, Gerald A. Engler, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Jeffrey M. Laurence, Assistant Attorney General, René A. Chacón, Seth K. Schalit and Victoria Ratnikova, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
The Court of Appeal also briefly addressed the trial court’s third alternative ground for denial—that is, that the use of the same modus operandi in each incident suggested that defendant intended to take more than $950 in each theft. The court rejected the argument, explaining that the record neither demonstrated that the commercial establishments routinely stored more than $950 in their back offices nor that defendant held such belief; the court therefore concluded that the amount taken in each theft was a matter of circumstance, as opposed to intent. The Attorney General has not asked us to reconsider that conclusion.
Defendant, for his part, does not dispute that the conviction stemming from count 3 involved theft of more than $950 and is therefore ineligible for redesignation as a misdemeanor under Penal Code sections 459.5 and 1170.18, subdivision (f). We therefore limit our consideration to the remaining three burglary convictions.

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