Court Opinion

ID: 9746036
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 13:52:42.305715+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:08.265382
License: Public Domain

SIMS, Acting P. J., Concurring.
I concur in the majority opinion.
I write separately to explain the counterintuitive proposition that defendant was entitled to a claim-of-right defense instruction even though he used a gun in his attempt to reclaim his brother’s car.
In People v. Butler (1967) 65 Cal.2d 569 [55 Cal.Rptr. 511, 421 P.2d 703] (Butler), the defendant, armed with a handgun, went to his employer’s home to try to collect wages due the defendant for catering work. (id. at p. 571.) During an altercation, the defendant shot and killed his employer with the handgun. (Id. at pp. 571-572.) The defendant was convicted of felony murder. (Id. at p. 571.)
In an opinion by Chief Justice Traynor, a majority of the Supreme Court held that the trial court erroneously allowed the prosecutor to argue that a claim-of-right defense did not exist in these circumstances. (Butler, supra, 65 Cal.2d 569, 572.)
In People v. Tufunga (1999) 21 Cal.4th 935 [90 Cal.Rptr.2d 143, 987 P.2d 168], the court disapproved People v. Butler, supra, 65 Cal.2d 569, to the extent it allowed a claim-of-right defense to collect a debt. (Tufunga, supra, at pp. 953-954.) However, the Tufunga court held that Butler is still viable where a defendant tries to reclaim specific personal property, where the defendant in good faith believes he has a bona fide claim of ownership or title to the property. (Tufunga, supra, at p. 956.)
Here, defendant assisted his brother in trying to reclaim a specific item of personal property—a car. Tufunga teaches that, in these circumstances, Butler remains viable. Thus, a claim-of-right defense is available even though, as in Butler, defendant used a gun.
Justice Mosk dissented in Butler. (Butler, supra, 65 Cal.2d at pp. 576-578 (dis. opn. of Mosk, J.).) He said, “In a bucolic western scene or in the woolly atmosphere of the frontier in the nineteenth century, the six-shooter may have been an acceptable device for do-it-yourself debt collection. If the law permitted a might-makes-right doctrine in that milieu, it is of dubious adaptability to urban society in this final third of the twentieth century.” (Id. at p. 577 (dis. opn. of Mosk, J.).)
*1533Justice Mosk was right then. He would be even more right in this first third of the 21st century.
A petition for a rehearing was denied September 3, 2009, and appellant’s petition for review by the Supreme Court was denied December 2, 2009, S176710.