Court Opinion

ID: 9627704
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:51:15.403574+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:38:54.540385
License: Public Domain

WERDEGAR, J., Dissenting.
In this case the “Three Strikes” law does not appear to increase the amount of time that defendant, a second strike offender with a life sentence, must serve before becoming eligible for parole. This result seems counterintuitive, since a stated purpose of the Three *103Strikes law is “to ensure longer prison sentences and greater punishment for those who commit a felony and have been previously convicted of serious and/or violent felony offenses.” (Pen. Code, § 667, subd. (b); except as noted, all further statutory citations are to this code.) A careful examination of the Three Strikes law, however, shows the appearance to be accurate: although the law generally requires the doubling of a second strike offender’s “minimum term” (§ 667, subd. (e)(1)), in some cases there simply is no minimum term to double. In such cases, the Three Strikes law leaves unchanged the discretion of the Board of Prison Terms to determine when, if ever, after any statutory period of parole ineligibility, defendant and other similarly situated life prisoners may be released.
The majority seems dissatisfied with the Legislature’s and the electorate’s apparent decision to allow the Board of Prison Terms to retain this measure of discretion. Casting about for a source of judicial sentencing power, the majority fixes upon section 3046, a statute directing the Board of Prison Terms not to grant parole to life prisoners until they have served “at least seven calendar years." The majority would require trial courts to treat section 3046 as articulating a “minimum term” to be doubled and imposed as a sentence. This conclusion, however, cannot fairly be drawn from section 3046 or reconciled with the language of the Three Strikes law. Considered as an attempt to ensure longer sentences, the majority’s holding is unnecessary because the Board of Prison Terms in any event can require a life prisoner to serve far more than seven, or even fourteen, years before being released on parole. The majority’s holding also invades the powers of the board and the Governor, who share, to the exclusion of the courts, the discretion to determine when, if ever, parole shall be granted. (§§ 3040, 3041.2; see also Cal. Const., art. V, § 8, subd. (b).)
While the popular understanding of the Three Strikes law is that a second strike results in a doubled sentence and a third strike in life imprisonment, the actual words of the law are far more complex. As judges, we must look for the law’s meaning in its words. The author of the majority opinion, on an earlier occasion, persuasively explained why this is so: “[I]n construing the Three Strikes law, it is not enough to say that because the Legislature and the electorate wished to impose tougher penalties on repeat violent offenders, we should therefore give that enactment the harshest possible construction. Judges are constrained by the law. For the sake of the predictability and stability of the law, our guideposts in interpreting the Three Strikes law must be the usual principles of statutory construction that apply in every case, not our projections of the hopes and fears that led to the statute’s enactment. . . . ‘For judicial construction to stick close to what the legislation says and not draw prodigally upon unformulated purposes or directions *104makes for careful draftsmanship and for legislative responsibility. . . . Judicial expansion of meaning beyond the limits indicated is reprehensible because it encourages slipshodness in draftsmanship and irresponsibility in legislation. It also enlists too heavily the private . . . views of judges.’ ” (People v. Davis (1997) 15 Cal.4th 1096, 1115 [64 Cal.Rptr.2d 879, 938 P.2d 938] (dis. opn. of Kennard, J.), quoting Frankfurter, Foreword, Symposium on Statutory Construction (1950) 3 Vand. L.Rev. 365, 367-368.) Today, in my view, the majority disregards this wisdom.
Speaking technically, in the language of sentencing, the precise question before the court is how to sentence a second strike offender whose current offense is punishable by the indeterminate term of life imprisonment without a stated minimum term. The Three Strikes law directs courts to sentence second strike offenders by doubling “the determinate term or minimum term for an indeterminate term.” (§ 667, subd. (e)(1).) This language, applied to the case before us, permits no doubling, because the statute prescribing the punishment for attempted premeditated murder (§ 664, subd. (a)) sets out neither a determinate term nor a minimum term for the indeterminate life sentence.
The majority, as mentioned, purports to find a minimum term in section 3046, which makes life prisoners ineligible for parole for “at least seven calendar years.” The majority has misread section 3046. The section merely places a limit on the discretion of the Board of Prison Terms; it is not addressed to courts and does not purport to play any role in judicial sentencing. In pronouncing sentence for attempted premeditated murder, the court simply sentences to life in prison. The court does not impose, or even mention, the period set out in section 3046. Indeed, section 1168, subdivision (b), which does speak to courts at the time of sentencing, expressly directs the court not to set a minimum term when the indicated punishment is a straight life sentence. Thus, from the court’s perspective at the time of sentencing, the crime at issue here simply does not carry a minimum term.
To double the seven-year period mentioned in section 3046, as the majority would, also appears contrary to the intent of the drafters of the Three Strikes law. While the drafters did make use of section 3046 in computing the sentence for a third strike defendant, the manner in which they did so strongly indicates they could not have intended the result the majority reaches. Under the Three Strikes law, the sentence prescribed for a third strike defendant’s current offense is “an indeterminate term of life imprisonment with a minimum term of the indeterminate sentence calculated as the greater of: [f] (i) Three times the term otherwise provided as punishment for each current felony conviction ...[;] HQ (ii) Imprisonment in the state *105prison for 25 years [; or] [ft] (iii) The term determined by the court pursuant to Section 1170 for the underlying conviction, ... or any period prescribed by Section 190 or 3046.” (§ 667, subd. (e)(2)(A), italics added.)
Three things can be said with certainty about how the drafters used section 3046 in calculating the sentence of a third strike defendant:
First, the drafters clearly knew how to refer to section 3046 when that is what they wished to do. They did not refer to the section in calculating the sentence of a second strike defendant (see § 667, subd. (e)(1)), and we are not free to add what they omitted. (E.g., In re Hoddinott (1996) 12 Cal.4th 992, 1002 [50 Cal.Rptr.2d 706, 911 P.2d 1381]; see generally, Code Civ. Proc., § 1858.)
Second, that the drafters made use of section 3046 in defining the punishment for a third strike offender does not mean that section 3046 prescribes a “minimum term for an indeterminate term” (§ 667, subd. (e)(1)) within the meaning of the provision defining the punishment for a second strike offender {ibid.). If the drafters had understood section 3046 as defining a “term,” they would not have mentioned the section at all, because they would have assumed that courts would automatically refer to the section in calculating a third strike offender’s sentence under section 667, subdivision (e)(2)(A)(i) (prescribing a minimum term of “[t]hree times the term otherwise provided as punishment for each current felony conviction”). (Italics added.)
Third, even when the drafters did make use of section 3046, they did not require the court to multiply the seven-year period of parole ineligibility set out therein. For the rare third strike case not covered by another provision of the Three Strikes law, the drafters apparently were satisfied to rely on the Board of Prison Terms to decide when, if ever, after the period set out in section 3046, such an offender would be released on parole. How can we justify doubling the period set out in section 3046 for a second strike defendant when the drafters left the same period unmultiplied for a third strike defendant? To be sure, section 3046 itself multiplies the seven-year parole ineligibility period when a defendant is sentenced to multiple consecutive life sentences. (§ 3046 [second sentence].) But the drafters of the Three Strikes law simply accepted “any period prescribed by Section . . . 3046” (§ 667, subd. (e)(2)(A)(iii)) without further multiplication.
The majority would justify its conclusion as a way to avoid the “anomalous result” (maj. opn., ante, at p. 97 et seq.) of punishing attempted *106premeditated, murder less harshly than attempted unpremeditated murder. The anomaly, however, predates the Three Strikes law. The lower, middle and upper terms for attempted unpremeditated murder are five, seven and nine years, respectively. (§ 664, subd. (a).) A person convicted of attempted premeditated murder must serve at least seven calendar years before becoming eligible for parole. (§ 3046.) Thus, only those attempted unpremeditated murderers sentenced to the lower term of five years will become eligible for parole earlier than an attempted premeditated murderer. The anomaly also survives the majority’s interpretation of the Three Strikes law. If all terms and periods are doubled for second strike offenders, only those attempted unpremeditated murderers sentenced to the doubled lower term of 10 years will become eligible for parole earlier than an attempted premeditated murderer (who, under the majority’s holding, would receive a 14-year minimum term). Other attempted unpremeditated murderers will not become eligible for 14 or 18 years—as late or later than attempted premeditated murderers. Thus, the majority’s holding does not avoid anomalies and cannot rationally be justified as an effort to do so.1
At oral argument, the People expressly conceded that the seven-year period of parole ineligibility set out in section 3046 “is not part of the sentence which the court must necessarily articulate . . . .” The People went on to argue that “there is nothing preventing the court from articulating it.” But the latter argument appears to have been based on the notion that the court, by referring to section 3046, would simply be providing information to the public and to “the victims and the families of the victims” about defendant’s prospects for release on parole. Indeed, the People specifically endorsed the conclusion that the court might properly enter a straight life sentence, without articulating a minimum term, leaving the determination of any parole release date to the Board of Prison Terms: “[I]n this particular case, for example, the court could have simply said that the defendants have been found guilty of attempted premeditated murder, the appropriate term for that is life with the possibility of parole, further, the criminal street gang act enhancement was found to be true, and said nothing more on the matter.”
*107If it is true, as the People conceded, that the application of sections 3046 and 186.22, subdivision (b)(4) (see fn. 1, ante) falls within the jurisdiction of the Board of Prison Terms, then a sentencing court has no business doubling and imposing as a sentence the periods of parole ineligibility set out in those statutes. To do so is to purport, without authority, to bar the board from granting parole for 14 years (section 3046, doubled), or 30 years (section 186.22, subdivision (b)(4), doubled), when those sections by their terms expressly confer upon the board the power to grant parole after 7 or 15 years. This violates the constitutional separation of powers. (Cal. Const., art. Ill, § 3.) The power to grant parole, and to determine whether and when it shall be granted, belongs to the Board of Prison Terms and to the Governor, to the exclusion of the judiciary. (Cal. Const., art. V, § 8, subd. (b); §§ 3040, 3041.2.) “ ‘[Ojnce [a] conviction has been obtained and sentence imposed, it is the duty of other departments of government to enforce the sentence and to determine when and under what circumstances the prisoner will be eligible for release. Therefore, when the judiciary attempts to anticipate the rules of the legislative and executive departments relating to the parole of prisoners and attempts, in effect, to circumvent those rules it infringes upon the prerogatives of other departments of government.’ ” (People v. Morse (1964) 60 Cal.2d 631, 646 [36 Cal.Rptr. 201, 388 P.2d 33, 12 A.L.R.3d 810], quoting Broyles v. Commonwealth (Ky. 1954) 267 S.W.2d 73, 76 [47 A.L.R.2d 1252].)
The People also contended at oral argument that, if the court did sentence defendant to life imprisonment without stating a minimum term, then “the Board of Prison Terms would be forced by operation of law” to double the applicable statutory periods of parole ineligibility. We have no occasion to consider this argument because our only role in this case is to review the judgment, including the sentence. For the reasons already discussed, however, the argument that the Three Strikes law directly compels the board to double any applicable periods of parole ineligibility, even if true, would not support the conclusion that the trial court may enter an order purporting to tell the board what to do.
In conclusion, I fear the majority has gone astray searching for a minimum term to double, when defendant’s current offense simply does not carry a minimum term. (§ 664, subd. (a).) Nor can we properly double the indeterminate straight life sentence, as the majority acknowledges (maj. opn, ante, at p. 102), because the Three Strikes law authorizes us to double only a “determinate term or minimum term for an indeterminate term” (§ 667, subd. (e)(1)). Under these circumstances, the most correct application of the Three Strikes law in this case appears to be simply to commit defendant to prison for life, subject to release if and when the Board of Prison Terms and/or *108the Governor see fit to grant parole after any statutory period of parole ineligibility.
I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeal.
Mosk, J., concurred.

The majority would also find a minimum term for defendant’s current offense in section 186.22, subdivision (b)(4), which affects the parole eligibility of a defendant convicted of committing a felony in association with a criminal street gang. The subdivision provides that “[a]ny person who violates this subdivision in the commission of a felony punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for life, shall not be paroled until a minimum of 15 calendar years have been served.” {Ibid.) The subdivision does not set out a term to be imposed by a court; other subdivisions of section 186.22 do. Subdivision (a), which defines a crime, provides for a term of sixteen months, or two or three years, and subdivision (b)(1) provides for an enhancement of one, two or three years. Subdivision (b)(4), on which the majority relies, like section 3046, is directed to the Board of Prison Terms and simply overrides the Legislature’s usual instruction to the board not to consider parole for at least seven years (§ 3046).