Court Opinion

ID: 9532410
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:21:02.236702+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:45.519571
License: Public Domain

BURKE, J.
I dissent for the reasons set forth in my dissent in People v. Mutch, ante, p. 389 [93 Cal.Rptr. 721, 482 P.2d 633]. In my opinion the application for recall of the remittitur should be denied.
McComb, J., concurred.
ROTH, J.*
I dissent.
The majority in Mutch assume that the settled and accepted principles which govern a court’s power to construe and reconstrue the terms of a constitution (see Cardozo, Nature of the Judicial Process (1928)) extend to a statute which has already been definitively construed by the court.
There is considerable doubt, however, that a statute may be thus reconstrued. (James v. United States, 366 U.S. 213 [6 L.Ed.2d 246, 81 S.Ct. 1052], Black, J., dissenting;1 Douglass v. Pike County, 101 U.S. 677, 687 [25 L.Ed. 968, 971]; County of Los Angeles v. Faus, 48 Cal.2d 672, 681 [312 P.2d 680]; People y. Hallner, 43 Cal.2d 715, 719 [277 P.2d 343].) Realistically, it is difficult to amend a constitution. However, the Legislature is not similarly hampered in the case of a statute.
Assuming that the court has the power to reinterpret a statute, a definitive interpretation of which was reiterated for approximately 20 years (People v. Daniels, 71 Cal.2d 1119, 1128 [80 Cal.Rptr. 897, 459 P.2d *435225]), I cannot agree that a reinterpretation of the kidnaping statute should have retroactive application.
If the Legislature, acting within the scope of its function and responsibility, had changed the statute to meet the requirements of “a current of common sense” (People v. Daniels, supra, atp. 1127), the amended statute would in all probability be prospective in operation. (Pen. Code, § 3; People v. Durbin, 64 Cal.2d 474, 478 [50 Cal.Rptr. 657, 413 P.2d 433]; In re Estrada, 63 Cal.2d 740, 746 [48 Cal.Rptr. 172, 408 P.2d 948].)
Since it is the court that makes the change in the statute it should be governed by the same principles as would have ordinarily governed the Legislature; in the alternative, the court should be governed by the guidelines set forth in Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U.S. 618 [14 L.Ed.2d 601, 85 S.Ct. 1731] and its progeny to determine whether its new interpretation should have retroactive or prospective effect. These guidelines are discussed in the dissent of Burke, J., in People v. Mutch, ante, p. 389 [93 Cal. Rptr. 721, 482 P.2d 633]. I concur in that dissent. I believe the guidelines compel prospective application of the doctrine of Daniels.
In my opinion, the application for recall of the remittitur should be denied.
Respondent’s petition for a rehearing was denied April 22, 1971. Wright, C. J., and Mosk, J., did not participate therein. Kaus, J.,* and Roth, J.,* participated therein. Burke, J., and Roth, J.,* were of the opinion that the petition should be granted.

 Assigned by the Acting Chairman of the Judicial Council.

See the lucid analysis of Black’s dissent in James in Comment (1962) 71 Yale Law Journal 907 at page 925: “When the Court changed by judicial decision a statutory interpretation which Congress knew of for fifteen years and left standing for fifteen years, it ‘passed beyond the interpretation of the tax statute and proceeded substantially to amend it.’ [fn. omitted]. The thrust of this argument would appear to be that the first judicial interpretation of a statute gives a possibly ambiguous phrase a settled meaning and that any change in that meaning should be made by the legislature, particularly where the legislature can be said to have acquiesced in the substance of the judicial interpretation. For a court to change that meaning in such circumstances, in other words, is for it to amend a statute which Congress has declined to amend, [fn. omitted].”

 Assigned by the Acting Chairman of the Judicial Council.