Court Opinion

ID: 9721538
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:02:03.025655+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:26.826486
License: Public Domain

*659HOLMDAHL, J., Concurring and Dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion, part I (the § 12022.1 enhancements).
I would prefer to reach a result consistent with People v. Superior Court (Price) (1984) 150 Cal.App.3d 486 [198 Cal.Rptr. 61] and “consistent with the obvious intent of the Legislature.” (Id., at p. 489.)
The majority states the “language of section 12022.1 could not be more specific” in its use of the words “pending trial,” especially when, “as here, guilty pleas had already been entered in the prior offense, and where, necessarily, no trial was therefore pending.” That specificity, however, will become quite ambiguous in future cases when “pending trial” felonies are shaded between those which will have been committed between the first and second days of a 10-day trial, or on the fifth day of a 10-day trial, or on the last day of a 10-day trial. On which of these was the trial still “pending”? Is trial still “pending,” once it has commenced?
Far more compatible with the apparent legislative purpose and in resolution of the ambiguity inherent in use of the words “pending trial,” would be to view those words as relating to the trial process as a whole, to and including the imposition of sentence.
Applying the Price rule that Penal Code section 12022.1 applies through “trial court judgment” (People v. Superior Court (Price), supra, 150 Cal.App.3d 486, 489), I would uphold the enhancement allegations against both petitioners.
In all other respects, I concur in the majority opinion.