Opinion ID: 2583928
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Court of Appeal Ruling

Text: The Court of Appeal reversed, [7] relying on its decision in Castello, supra, 65 Cal.App.4th 1242, 77 Cal.Rptr.2d 314. In Castello, the same Court of Appeal held that a Florida guilty plea constituted a strike under California law, despite the fact that the Florida court, after defendant's guilty plea, withheld the adjudication of guilt until after the defendant completed probation. Castello reasoned that for purposes of the three strikes law, a conviction occurs at the time of the guilty plea. ( Id. at pp. 1245, 1252-1253.) Castello noted that it was a matter of academic interest only that Florida courts might not consider the defendant's guilty plea a conviction in Florida because California law controlled. ( Id. at p. 1255.) Castello, however, did not discuss the full faith and credit clause. Under Castello, the Court of Appeal held that defendant was convicted at the time he entered his guilty plea to the Arizona offense. The Court of Appeal added: The fact of his completion of probation, and the subsequent dismissal of the charges, does not affect this central, and dispositive, fact.... [F]or purposes of the three strikes law, nothing in the subsequent history of the case in Arizona may now be interposed to require a contrary conclusion. Relying on People v. Shear (1999) 71 Cal.App.4th 278, 284-289, 83 Cal.Rptr.2d 707 ( Shear ), the Court of Appeal addressed defendant's full faith and credit argument. In Shear, the defendant was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm (§ 12021, subd. (a)), based on an Arizona prior felony conviction. Because Arizona law had restored his right to possess a firearm upon completion of probation, the defendant argued that the full faith and credit clause prohibited California from using that conviction to support a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm. The Shear court disagreed. Although state statutes arguably fall within the literal terms of the [full faith and credit] clause, the United States Supreme Court ... has significantly limited the clause's application to statutes. ( Shear, supra, 71 Cal.App.4th at p. 284, 83 Cal.Rptr.2d 707.) The Shear court relied extensively on Alaska Packers Assn. v. I.A.C. (1935) 294 U.S. 532, 55 S.Ct. 518, 79 L.Ed. 1044, in which the high court stated: It has often been recognized by this Court that there are some limitations upon the extent to which a state will be required by the full faith and credit clause to enforce even the judgment of another state, in contravention of its own statutes or policy. [Citations.] [¶] In the case of statutes, the extra-state effect of which Congress has not prescribed, where the policy of one state statute comes into conflict with that of another, the necessity of some accommodation of the conflicting interests of the two states is still more apparent. A rigid and literal enforcement of the full faith and credit clause, without regard to the statute of the forum, would lead to the absurd result that, wherever the conflict arises, the statutes of each state must be enforced in the courts of the other, but cannot be in its own. [¶] ... [¶] ... [T]he conflict is to be resolved, not by giving automatic effect to the full faith and credit clause, compelling the courts of each state to subordinate its own statutes to those of the other, but by appraising the governmental interests of each jurisdiction, and turning the scale of decision according to their weight. (294 U.S. at pp. 546-547, 55 S.Ct. 518.) Based on the foregoing authority, Shear held that the full faith and credit clause did not require California to substitute the Arizona statute for its own statute because California, as the forum state, has a significant state interest in applying its own law: There can be few more significant public policies of this state than that of protecting the safety of its citizens. ( Shear, supra, 71 Cal.App.4th at p. 288, 83 Cal.Rptr.2d 707.) Citing Shear, the Court of Appeal below held that defendant's full faith and credit argument was without substance.