Opinion ID: 1179151
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: reduction of degree of robbery

Text: Defendant's reliance on In re Candelario, supra, 3 Cal.3d 702, for the proposition that the degree of the robbery must be reduced, is misplaced. In Candelario a defendant who admitted a prior felony conviction for possession of marijuana was convicted by a jury of selling heroin. Under the then prevailing statutes the prior conviction substantially augmented the minimum term without possibility of parole for the substantive crime. However, there was no recitation of a finding of the prior conviction in either the court minutes or the original abstract of judgment. We held that an amended abstract of judgment, purporting to include a finding of the prior conviction, was ineffective for that purpose. In so holding we noted that judicial as distinguished from clerical errors cannot be corrected by court amendment. The distinction between clerical and judicial error is `whether the error was made in rendering the judgment, or in recording the judgment rendered....' [¶] An amendment ... may not be made by the court under its authority to correct clerical error, therefore, unless the record clearly demonstrates that the error was not the result of the exercise of judicial discretion. [Citations.] ( Id., at p. 705.) In addressing the question of the significance of the court's omission to make and recite a finding of the prior conviction in Candelario, we stated: Reference to the prior conviction must be included in the pronouncement of judgment for if the record is silent in that regard, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it may be inferred that the omission was an act of leniency by the trial court. In such circumstances the silence operates as a finding that the prior conviction was not true. ( In re Candelario, supra, 3 Cal.3d 702, 706.) We further stated: Similar benefits accrue to the defendant when the trier of fact fails to specify the degree of a crime. In such circumstances, even on a plea of guilty, the crime is deemed to be of the lesser degree. (Pen. Code, §§ 1157, 1192.) ( Id., fn. 2; italics added.) In Candelario the trier of the crucial fact was the trial judge, not the jury as in the instant case. Although the defendant in that case admitted the prior conviction, it was nevertheless incumbent upon the judge to make a finding on that fact (see In re Candelario, supra, 3 Cal.3d 702, 706), and to pronounce judgment accordingly. Having failed to make such a finding and pronouncement we deemed in the circumstances of that case that the error, if any, was not clerical and that the purported amendment of the abstract of judgment was ineffective. (4) In the instant case the jury found not only that defendant had committed the robbery but also that the robbery was of the first degree. There was no act or omission on the part of the trier of fact which could be construed as an act of leniency, as there was in Candelario. Moreover, the abstract of judgment reflects the jury's verdicts including the jury's finding that the robbery was of the first degree. [5] The omission occurred only in the oral pronouncement of judgment. [6] We stated in Candelario that an inference that an omission was an act of leniency could be predicated, inter alia, on a record which was silent in regard to a finding of the critical fact. ( Id., at p. 706.) The record in the instant case is not silent in regard to the finding of the degree of the robbery and, absent other record evidence to the contrary, Candelario does not support defendant's claim that an inference of leniency is permissible in the circumstances of this case. [7]