Court Opinion

ID: 9746097
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 13:58:26.525786+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:26:37.517712
License: Public Domain

*785BLEASE, Acting P. J.
I concur in the judgment and much of the opinion.
I add these words to stress the anomaly of the result.
Although the burglary statute, Penal Code section 459, is aimed at protecting a possessory interest of the occupant in property, neither the statute nor the cases which interpret it limit the offense to the situation in which that interest is invaded.1 With minor exceptions the cases interpret section 459, which defines burglary, quite literally: “Every person who enters any [defined structure], with intent to commit. . . any felony is guilty of burglary.”
The consequences are visited upon the defendant in this case. The offense of sale of fraudulent securities ordinarily, as here, poses no threat to the security or other property interest of the occupant of the structure in which the offense fortuitously is committed. Nonetheless the entry of the structure with the intent to do so is burglary. By this measure a burglary would occur in most cases of a completed security fraud since the commission of the fraud is most likely conducted indoors in a structure within the compass of the burglary statute.
Because Penal Code section 654 would require the staying of the penalty for the lesser offense, the penalty for the burglary offense would be applied only if greater than the target offense. The random workings of such a result strike me as arbitrary. That could be avoided if the specific property interests of the occupant in personal safety and the protection of the property and its contents were made the purpose of the burglary statute. I differ with my colleagues in their apparent conclusion that the sale of fraudulent securities to an unsuspecting occupant who consented to the entry invades a property interest in the structure entered. Another result of sweeping offenses such as security fraud into the domain of burglary is the untoward application of the serious felony sanctions (§ 667) and the limitation on discretion to grant probation (§ 462) which attend burglary of an inhabited dwelling. These heavy penalties are trivialized when they are imposed because of the happenstance that an offense, no more culpable by reason of the locale, occurs in a residence.
Nevertheless, the statute and the case law are to the contrary. The Supreme Court has carved out an exception from the language of Penal Code section 459 (“any felony”) only in cases where the entrant has an interest in the property. That is made clear in People v. Pendleton (1975 [158 Cal.Rptr. 343, 599 P.2d 649]), which states that anyone who enters a structure with the intent to commit a felony therein may be convicted of burglary “provided he [the entrant] does not have an unconditional possessory right to enter.” *786(25 Cal.3d at p. 382, italics added.) People v. Superior Court (Granillo) (1988) 205 Cal.App.3d 1478 [253 Cal.Rptr. 316] adds a further exception where the “victim” endorsed the felonious intent of the entrant. Neither circumstance is present here, and I am compelled to conclude that the section 995 order setting aside the burglary counts must be reversed.
Respondent’s petition for review by the Supreme Court was denied April 2, 1992. Mosk, J., was of the opinion that the peition should be granted.

References to a section are to the Penal Code unless otherwise specified.