Court Opinion

ID: 9727245
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:27:39.62744+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:35.461483
License: Public Domain

FRIEDMAN, J.
I dissent, albeit with considerable uncertainty as to the result required by decisions of the State Supreme Court. Undeniably, the majority opinion finds substantial support in Kellett v. Superior Court (1966) 63 Cal.2d 822 [48 Cal.Rptr. 366, 409 P.2d 206]. On the other hand, I am unable to find a valid distinction between this appeal and People v. Warren (1940) 16 Cal.2d 103 [104 P.2d 1024]. In the latter case Warren (an ex-convict) and two codefendants were tried for armed robbery. Testimony elicited the fact that Warren had possessed a gun found in his codefendants’ apartments. The codefendants were convicted and Warren acquitted. Warren was then charged and convicted of violating the statute prohibiting gun possession by an ex-convict. The court rejected Warren’s claim of multiple prosecution, stating: “ ‘ “A single act may be an offense against two statutes; and if one statute necessitates proof of a different circumstance or element from that which the other requires, an acquittal or conviction under either statute does not exempt the defendant from prosecution and punishment under the other.” ’ ” (People v. Warren, supra, 16 Cal.2d at p. 111.)
Unfortunately, the Kellet opinion did not cite the Warren decision and gives no indication of its present vitality.
The problem here is a practical one. Despite heavy evidence of defendant’s complicity in the holdup staged by his two companions, the jury foolishly and naively acquitted him. Yet the evidence showed that he had bought the pistol his companions used in the holdup; he admitted owning it; he was arrested in possession of bullets fitting it; he drove the two principals to and from the holdup. After a district attorney is stunned *125by such a barbaric verdict, he is not guilty of harassment when he files a second charge, this time under Penal Code section 12021.
There is a tangible distinction between Kellett and this case. In Kellett the defendant admitted his guilt of the first charge, then resisted later prosecution under the gun law. Here the defendant asserted his innocence of the first charge and the jury agreed with him. If, as found by the jury, he did not participate in the robbery, he did not, within the meaning of Penal Code section 654, indulge in an “act or omission which is made punishable in different ways by different provisions of this Code. . . .” If his own testimony and the jury’s verdict in the robbery case are taken at face value, defendant was guilty—completely and undebatably—of only one act, an act which violated Penal Code section 12021.
The problem is not earth-shaking, because a prosecutor may easily guard his case against untoward results by charging all crimes, including the violation of section 12021, in a single complaint. Nevertheless, I would not permit this defendant to blow hot and cold by denying his participation in the criminal course of conduct for one purpose and admitting it for another. While somewhat discomfited by the Kellett decision, I would affirm the conviction under the authority of People v. Warren, supra.
Respondent’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied October 28, 1970. Wright, C. J., McComb, J., and Burke, J., were of the opinion that the petition should be granted.