Opinion ID: 2809282
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Any person who commits a second or subsequent

Text: violation of subdivision (a) shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail for not more than one year. Cal. Penal Code § 417.26. COQUICO V. LYNCH 7 2 Further, though a laser pointer projects a light beam—as laser targeting systems do—California’s legislature has made clear that laser pointers, and the beams they project, are innocuous. Under Cal. Penal Code § 417.27, shining a laser pointer “directly or indirectly into the eye [] of another person or into a moving vehicle with the intent to harass or annoy” is punished merely by a fine of $50 or four hours of community service. Cal. Penal Code §§ 417.27(c), 417.27(e). Further, § 417.27 permits the possession of laser pointers on elementary school premises for instructional or school-related purposes. Cal. Penal Code § 417.27(b). If the California legislature considered laser pointers, and the pointers’ beams, to give “the appearance or facade of the use of a deadly weapon,” it would not have allowed students to take them to school, nor would it have imposed such minor penalties for their use “with the intent to harass or annoy.” Not only do other Cal. Penal Code provisions show that using a laser pointer is not equivalent to terrorizing someone with a laser targeting device, but § 417.26 does not include any “appears-to-be-a-deadly-weapon” element. If California wanted § 417.26 to include such an element, it could have done so, as it did in § 417.4, which prohibits drawing an “imitation firearm . . . in such a way as to cause a reasonable person apprehension or fear of bodily harm.” Cal. Penal Code § 417.4. “Imitation firearms” are defined as those “so substantially similar in coloration and overall appearance to an existing firearm as to lead a reasonable person to perceive that the device is a firearm.” Cal. Penal Code § 16700(a) (emphasis added). The California legislature could have drafted § 417.26 as an analogue to § 417.4, and required the laser pointer be used in such a way as to lead reasonable 8 COQUICO V. LYNCH persons to believe they were being targeted by a firearm. It did not. Therefore, the BIA’s importation of an “appearance of a deadly weapon” element into § 417.26 is incorrect. 3 As the BIA has failed to identify the elements of the crime correctly, its CIMT analysis is not entitled to deference. Uppal, 605 F.3d at 715 (“Because the BIA failed to identify the elements of [the state crime] correctly, its CIMT analysis, in which it compares the elements it has identified to the generic definition of moral turpitude, is misdirected and so merits no deference from this Court.”).2