Court Opinion

ID: 9940297
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-13 21:03:35.391153+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:44:43.506608
License: Public Domain

Filed 2/13/24 P. v. Little CA4/2

                      NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
 California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for
publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication
                                     or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.

           IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

                                   FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT

                                                 DIVISION TWO

 THE PEOPLE,

          Plaintiff and Respondent,                                      E079702

 v.                                                                      (Super.Ct.No. FVI22000326)

 JESSE SCOTT LITTLE,                                                     OPINION

          Defendant and Appellant.

         APPEAL from the Superior Court of San Bernardino County. Shannon L.

Faherty, Judge. Affirmed.

         Jason Szydlik, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and

Appellant.

         Rob Bonta, Attorney General, Lance E. Winters, Chief Assistant Attorney

General, Charles C. Ragland, Assistant Attorney General, and Steve Oetting and Daniel

J. Hilton, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

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       After a jury convicted Jesse Scott Little of driving with willful or wanton

disregard for safety while evading a peace officer, Little requested the court exercise its

discretion to strike a prior strike. The court declined to do so. On appeal Little argues

that recent changes in the law required the court to consider mitigating circumstances

before declining to strike the strike. We disagree and affirm.1

                                       BACKGROUND

       In June 2022, a jury convicted Little of driving with willful or wanton disregard

for safety while evading a peace officer. (Veh. Code, § 2800.2, subd. (a).) In a

bifurcated trial, the court found Little had a prior strike.

       In August 2022, Little filed a request for the court to dismiss the prior strike

conviction under People v. Superior Court (Romero) (1996) 13 Cal.4th 497 (Romero).

The court denied Little’s request and sentenced him to the upper term of three years,

doubled due to the prior strike.

                                        DISCUSSION

       Little argues the trial court erred by denying his request that it strike his strike.

Specifically, Little argues that Senate Bill No. 81 changed the law such that trial courts

must consider mitigating circumstances before declining to strike a strike. The People

argue Senate Bill No. 81 does not apply to strikes. We agree with the People and affirm.

       1 Little also requests that we take judicial notice of certain legislative history
materials. We grant this request for judicial notice. (Evid. Code, § 452, subd. (c).)

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       Penal Code section 13852 governs a trial court’s discretion to dismiss various

elements of an action or sentence on its own motion. This includes the ability to dismiss

all or any portion of an action, including enhancements and prior strikes. (§ 1385,

subds. (a)-(c); Romero, supra, 13 Cal.4th at p. 508.) In 2022, Senate Bill No. 81

amended section 1385 to include a series of mitigating circumstances and required courts

to “consider and afford great weight to evidence offered,” to prove those mitigating

circumstances. (Stats. 2021, ch. 721, § 1; § 1385, subd. (c)(2).) Moreover, “[p]roof of

the presence of one or more of these circumstances weighs greatly in favor of dismissing

the enhancement, unless the court finds that dismissal of the enhancement would

endanger public safety.” (§ 1385, subd. (c)(2).)

       In People v. Burke (2023) 89 Cal.App.5th 237 (Burke) our colleagues in the Third

District Court of Appeal considered whether the changes enacted by Senate Bill No. 81

applied to prior strikes as well as enhancements. They concluded Senate Bill No. 81 did

not apply to strikes. In so holding, Burke argued that “[t]he term ‘enhancement’ has a

well-established technical meaning in California law,” specifically, that it is “ ‘ “an

additional term of imprisonment added to the base term.” ’ ” (Id. at p. 243.) Meanwhile

“[i]t is equally well established that the Three Strikes law is not an enhancement; it is an

alternative sentencing scheme for the current offense.” (Ibid., citing Romero, supra, 13

Cal.4th at p. 527.) Burke “presume[d] the Legislature was aware of, and acquiesced in,

both this established judicial definition of enhancement and the distinction between an

       2 Unlabeled statutory citations refer to this code.

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enhancement and an alternative sentencing scheme such as the Three Strikes law.”

(Burke, at p. 243.) Therefore, because “[t]he Legislature did not otherwise define the

word ‘enhancement’ in section 1385,” and “the statutory language is clear and

unambiguous,” Burke opted to follow that language without considering any legislative

history materials. (Id. at p. 243.)

       We agree with Burke and conclude that “section 1385, subdivision (c)’s provisions

regarding enhancements do not apply to the Three Strikes law.” (Burke, supra, 89

Cal.App.5th at p. 244.)

       Nevertheless, Little argues we should reject Burke and decline to follow its

reading of section 1385. Little notes one of the mitigating circumstances a court must

consider is whether “[t]he defendant was a juvenile when they committed the current

offense or any prior offenses, including criminal convictions and juvenile adjudications,

that trigger the enhancement or enhancements applied in the current case.” (§ 1385,

subd. (c)(2)(G).) He further notes there are no enhancements that can be triggered by

previous juvenile adjudications, but they can constitute prior strikes. (§§ 667,

subd. (d)(3), 1170.12, subd. (b)(3); People v. West (1984) 154 Cal.App.3d 100, 103.)

According to Little, interpreting section 1385, subdivision (c), so that it does not apply to

strikes would render this phrasing surplusage, making the statute ambiguous and

justifying consideration of legislative history materials to resolve its meaning.

       We disagree. The distinction between an enhancement and a strike is well-

established and (as discussed more below) well known to the Legislature. If the

                                              4
Legislature had meant to include strikes, it would have said so directly. Indeed, the

distinction between an enhancement and a strike is so well-established that it would be

preferable to read certain portions of section 1385 as surplusage rather than abandon that

distinction. Canons of statutory construction are rules of thumb to assist in the

interpretation of unclear statutory language. As such, they are discretionary and should

not be used to override the plain language of a statute. (See, e.g., Mejia v. Reed (2003)

31 Cal.4th 657, 663 [“When the plain meaning of the statutory text is insufficient to

resolve the question of its interpretation, the courts may turn to rules or maxims of

construction ‘which serve as aids in the sense that they express familiar insights about

conventional language usage.’ ”].) Here, the statutory use of the term “enhancement” is

so clear that the surplusage canon of construction does not warrant interpreting it contrary

to its accepted meaning.

       People v. Olay (2023) 98 Cal.App.5th 60 (Olay) recently analyzed the legislative

history of Senate Bill No. 81 and found it supports the conclusion that the Legislature

intended “enhancement” to accord with its accepted meaning. That court, like ours, was

“skeptical the Legislature would have expressed an intent to reject the well-established

legal meaning of ‘enhancement’ in such a roundabout manner by obliquely referencing

‘juvenile adjudications’ as one of the relevant mitigating circumstances” and that “[t]he

legislative history confirms the Legislature had no such intent.” (Id. at p. 67.) The court

noted that the legislative history includes a statement that “[a]n enhancement differs from

an alternative penalty scheme,” and “[t]he presumption created by this bill applies to

                                             5
enhancements, but does not encompass alternative penalty schemes.” (Assem. Com. on

Public Safety, Analysis of Sen. Bill No. 81 (2021-2022 Reg. Sess.), as amended Apr. 27,

2021, pp. 5-6.) “A more unambiguous statement of the Legislature’s intent to adopt the

legal meaning of enhancement for section 1385, subdivision (c) can hardly be imagined.”

(Olay, at p. 67.) Moreover “subsequent history makes no reference whatsoever to the

Three Strikes law or any other alternative sentencing scheme.” (Id. at p. 68.)

       Little argues this legislative history is ambiguous, in accord with a footnote from

Burke stating, “much of the legislative history [of Senate Bill No. 81] is inconsistent with

this plain language and suggests that the term enhancement includes the Three Strikes

law.” (Burke, supra, 89 Cal.App.5th at p. 243, fn. 3.) Olay responded to Burke’s

footnote by concluding that “a closer look at that legislative history reveals that there is

no ambiguity and that the Legislature did not intend for that term to include prior strikes.”

(Olay, supra, 98 Cal.App.5th at p. 348.) The legislative history materials which created

this alleged ambiguity were a report from the Committee on the Revision of the Penal

Code (CRPC) from February 2021 which “repeatedly refers to ‘Strikes’ as enhancements

rather than using the technical legal meaning and does not separate ‘Strikes’ from

inclusion in its recommendation.” (Burke, at p. 243, fn. 3.) But as Olay points out, “the

June 2021 bill analysis makes it clear that Senate Bill [No.] 81 only codified the CRPC’s

‘recommendation [on the application of] sentence enhancements’ [citation]—which does

not encompass alternative sentencing schemes like the Three Strikes law.” (Olay, at

p. 69, italics omitted.) Thus “to the extent the legislative history may have been unclear

                                              6
about the meaning of the term enhancement before June 2021, the June 2021 bill analysis

cleared up that confusion.” (Id. at p. 69.)

       Accordingly, we conclude Senate Bill No. 81 does not apply to prior strikes, and

therefore the trial court did not err when it declined to exercise its discretion to strike

Little’s prior strike without considering mitigating circumstances.

                                       DISPOSITION

       We affirm the judgment.

       NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS

                                                                  RAPHAEL
                                                                                              J.
We concur:

MILLER
                 Acting P. J.

FIELDS
                           J.

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