Opinion ID: 1205031
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Defendant's age and prior felony convictions.

Text: (36) Defendant next asserts the trial court erred in determining that, although defendant's age (twenty years, three and one-half months at the time of the offense) could be a mitigating factor, the circumstances that defendant had been convicted of three prior felonies, had violated probation in March 1981, and was on parole at the time he committed the present offense, rendered defendant's age neither a mitigating nor an aggravating factor. Depending upon the circumstances of the crime, age properly can be considered either as a mitigating or an aggravating factor. ( People v. Mitcham, supra, 1 Cal.4th 1027, 1076; People v. Edwards, supra, 54 Cal.3d 787, 844.) It functions `as a metonym for any age-related matter suggested by the evidence or by common experience or morality that might reasonably inform the choice of penalty.' ( People v. Mitcham, supra, 1 Cal.4th 1027, 1076.) Therefore, in the present case the trial court was not obligated to treat defendant's age as a factor in mitigation. Moreover, we believe that although the court expressed itself somewhat imprecisely, in essence it weighed the two factors of defendant's age and his prior felony convictions in concluding, in light of defendant's prior record, that the circumstance that he was between 20 and 21 years of age at the time he committed the present offense was not entitled to much weight. The court properly weighed these factors in assessing whether the penalty was appropriate. (See, e.g., People v. Hamilton, supra, 48 Cal.3d at pp. 1186-1187.) [13]