Court Opinion

ID: 9797154
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:14:29.578492+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:52:48.349236
License: Public Domain

MORENO, J., Dissenting.
Law often is a complicated business, but that is not always the case. Sometimes the Legislature enacts a statute in simple language that can be easily applied. Unlike the majority, I think this is such a case. The majority concludes that the juvenile in this case committed grand theft from the person despite the fact that the stolen cell phone was taken from the ground, not from the person of the victim. I agree with the Court of Appeal that the juvenile committed an attempted robbery and petty theft, but did not commit a grand theft from the person of the victim.
Penal Code section 487, subdivision (c) states that theft is grand theft “When the property is taken from the person of another.” This court has applied this statute by its terms for more than 100 years. People v. McElroy (1897) 116 Cal. 583 [48 P. 718], held that the defendant did not commit grand theft from the person by taking money from the pocket of the victim’s pants, which the victim had removed and was using as a pillow. We held this was not grand theft from the person because the “garment from which the money was taken was not at the time on the person of [the victim] ...” *870(Id. at p. 586.) The statute “was not intended to include property removed from the person and laid aside, however immediately it may be retained in the presence or constructive control or possession of the owner while so laid away from his person and out of his hands.” (Ibid.)
The majority attempts to distinguish McElroy on the basis that, in the present case, the cell phone was in the victim’s pocket when defendant assaulted him, relying upon the fact that the victim did not voluntarily lay the phone aside but rather dropped it as he fled. The majority concludes that “McElroy does not answer the question” posed in the present case and relies instead on other authority. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 864.) But our seminal decision in McElroy cannot be so easily dismissed. If we examine the reasoning of our decision in McElroy, it is clear that the fact that the victim in the present case did not voluntarily lay the phone aside is a distinction without a difference.
We observed in McElroy that one reason that theft from the person is “treated as a much graver and more heinous offense than ordinary or common theft” is “because of the greater liability of endangering the person or life of the victim.” (People v. McElroy, supra, 116 Cal. 583, 584.) After reviewing cases that had required that the stolen property had actually been on the person of the victim when it was taken, we stated: “In view of these authorities and the origin of the statute, we think its obvious purpose was to protect persons and property against the approach of the pickpocket, the purse-snatcher, the jewel abstracter, and other thieves of like character who obtain property by similar means of stealth or fraud, and that it was in contemplation that the property shall at the time be in some way actually upon or attached to the person . . . ; that it was not intended to include property removed from the person and laid aside . . . .” (Id. at p. 586, italics added.)
This reasoning applies equally whether the victim has voluntarily laid aside the property, or dropped it accidentally while fleeing. Once the property no longer is attached to the person of the victim, the theft does not entail the type of increased danger to the person or life of the victim that this statute was designed to address. As the facts of this case demonstrate, neither does such a crime involve stealth or fraud like that employed by a pickpocket or purse snatcher.
Although the facts in McElroy áre not identical to those in the present case, the decision in that case remains controlling. We said in no uncertain terms that the statute means what it says, stating: “[t]he requirement of this offense is that [the property] shall be ‘taken from the person.’ ” (People v. McElroy, *871supra, 116 Cal. 583, 586, original italics.) The cell phone in the present case was not taken from the person of the victim, so the statute does not apply. It is as simple as that.
One Court of Appeal decision ruled that facts similar to those in the present case constituted a theft from the person, but the majority acknowledges that this case was wrongly decided. (In re Eduardo D. (2000) 81 Cal.App.4th 545 [97 Cal.Rptr.2d 38].) Eduardo D. accosted the victim in that case and punched him in the face, starting a fistfight. The victim eventually managed to pull away and fled, leaving behind his baseball cap and backpack. As he ran away, the victim saw Eduardo D. take the cap and backpack. The Court of Appeal ruled that the juvenile committed a theft from the person of the victim because the victim “did not gladly and of his own free accord remove his backpack and cap, place them on the ground, or relinquish possession of these items. Rather, it was as the direct result of the minor’s assault on [the victim] that the cap and backpack were removed or fell to the ground.” (Id. at p. 548.)
The majority correctly disapproves the decision in Eduardo D. but does so for the wrong reason, stating: “Because a crime requires a union of act and intent, under the Eduardo D. facts, if the perpetrator had no intent to steal while the property was still on the victim’s person, the perpetrator committed an assault followed by a theft, not a grand theft from the person.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 867.) Eduardo D. was wrongly decided not because of a lack of “union of act and intent,” but rather because Eduardo D., like the juvenile in the present case, took the victim’s property from the ground, not from the person of the victim.
Until the present case, Eduardo D. was the only published decision to hold that a theft from the person had occurred when the victim had not been in physical contact with the property when it was taken. (See, e.g., People v. Huggins (1997) 51 Cal.App.4th 1654 [60 Cal.Rptr.2d 177] [property touching the victim’s foot]; In re George B. (1991) 228 Cal.App.3d 1088 [279 Cal.Rptr. 388] [property being carried in shopping cart pushed by the victim]; cf. People v. Williams (1992) 9 Cal.App.4th 1465 [12 Cal.Rptr.2d 243] [no grand theft from the person where purse was stolen from passenger seat of vehicle and the victim was not touching the purse].) As we held in McElroy, grand theft includes theft from the person of the victim because taking property that is physically connected to the victim increases the danger to the victim and thus warrants greater punishment. (People v. McElroy, supra, 116 Cal. 583, 584.) Therefore, the statute did not apply in Eduardo D., and does not apply in the present case, because the property was not actually taken from the person of the victim.
*872Rather than be guided by our decision in McElroy, the majority relies upon two decisions by the Court of Appeal, which I believe are distinguishable. In People v. Carroll (1912) 20 Cal.App. 41 [128 P. 4], the defendant and two accomplices accosted the victim as he attempted to board a train; one accomplice blocked the victim’s path while the other pushed him from behind, allowing the defendant to approach the victim. The victim heard the defendant say “ T have got it’ ” and the victim found his pants pocket had been turned inside out and his wallet was missing. (Id. at p. 43.) The defendant argued on appeal that the trial court erred in refusing to instruct the jury on petty theft because the wallet may have fallen to the ground before the defendant took it. The court held; “In the case here the evidence leaves no rational inference that defendant picked up the purse from the ground and, even if he did so, the evidence shows that it could not have dropped to the ground but for the maneuvers of these men who were on the spot with the design to rob him. If the purse dropped, which is a mere surmise or possibility unsupported by any evidence, and it was caused to drop by these men in their effort to commit the larceny, it was in point of law and common sense a taking from the person. . . . The condition of [the victim]’s pocket when he put his hand down to it showed that it had been pulled out, which must have been done by the defendant. [The victim]’s testimony was that the defendant stood at his side and back of him when he said to his confederates, T have got it.’. . . We do not think the evidence showed that there was a reasonable probability or a reasonable possibility that the defendant picked up the purse from the ground or that it came out of [the victim]’s pocket otherwise than through defendant’s agency.” (Id. at p. 46, italics added.)
Thus, Carroll involved a garden-variety pickpocket. The defendant in Carroll took the wallet from the victim’s pocket either by seizing the wallet directly or turning the victim’s pocket inside out. This is precisely the type of situation at which the statute was aimed, and differs markedly from the circumstances in the present case.
The decision in People v. Smith (1968) 268 Cal.App.2d 117 [73 Cal.Rptr. 859], upon which the majority also relies, similarly involves facts that are very different from those in the present case. In Smith, “Glasco, defendant and [the victim] became involved in an argument; . . . Glasco grabbed [the victim] by the pants and a struggle involving all three persons ensued; while Glasco and defendant were ‘scuffling’ with [the victim] both of them were trying to get their hands into [the victim’s] pocket; in the struggle [the victim’s] wallet fell to the street and his pants were tom off of him; Glasco picked up the wallet and pants and, accompanied by defendant, carried them to the rear of a nearby hotel. Shortly thereafter the police arrived .... The back pockets of the pants had been tom down and the wallet was empty.” (Id. at pp. 118-119.) The Court of Appeal held this was grand theft from the person, explaining that a witness saw “Glasco and defendant put their hands in [the *873victim’s\ pockets, [the victim’s] wallet and pants fall to the street, Glasco pick them up and with defendant run to the rear of the hotel. It cannot fairly be denied that both wallet and pants were taken from the person of defendant, even though Glaseo picked them up from the street; clearly it was because of the conduct of defendant and Glasco in scuffling with [the victim], getting into his pockets and pulling on his pants, that the wallet and the pants fell to the street where Glasco immediately took possession of them, ending the struggle, and accompanied by defendant, ran away.” (Id. at p. 120, italics added.) In Smith, therefore, the defendant reached into the victim’s pocket and either removed the wallet, or ripped the pocket, causing the wallet to fall to the ground, where the defendant’s accomplice could pick it up.
The majority broadly characterizes Carroll and Smith as cases in which “defendant first attempted to take the property from the person but the property became separated before he gained possession.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 865.) This characterization is accurate, but it ignores the more important point that in both Carroll and Smith the defendant physically removed the property from the victim’s person. The defendants in both Carroll and Smith, therefore, stole property from the person of the victim.
The present case is very different from Carroll and Smith. The juvenile in the present case did not reach into the victim’s pocket. Rather, he simply caused the victim to run, which in turn presumably caused the cell phone to fall from the victim’s pocket to the ground where the juvenile’s accomplice could pick it up. In both Carroll and Smith the defendant took the property from the victim’s person by reaching into the victim’s pocket. Here, the juvenile took the property from the ground, not from the victim’s person.
In concluding that the juvenile in the present case committed grand theft from the person when his accomplice picked up the victim’s cell phone from the ground, the majority expands the statutory phrase “taken from the person of another” beyond its commonsense meaning as well as its historical bounds. Under the majority’s interpretation, a grand theft from the person will occur whenever a thief “wrongly cause[s] the [stolen property] to become separated from the person” of the victim. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 868.) In my view, this is an unwarranted expansion of the scope of the statute.
*874I prefer to apply the statute according to its plain, apparent meaning. If property is physically connected to the victim’s person when the thief takes it, it is theft from the person. If not, it is not.