Court Opinion

ID: 9788457
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:54:39.388163+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:11.338441
License: Public Domain

KENNARD, J., Dissenting
Our Penal Code provides that certain defined murders are “of the first degree” while “[a]ll other kinds of murders are of the second degree.” (Pen. Code, § 189.) The Penal Code also provides that whenever a crime is “distinguished into degrees,” the jury “must” find the degree of the crime of which the defendant is guilty. (Pen. Code, § 1157; hereafter section 1157.) If the jury fails to so determine the degree, the crime “shall be deemed to be of the lesser degree.” (Ibid.)
The majority holds that, contrary to the plain language of these statutes, an unwritten exception exists to section 1157: According to the majority, murder is not always a crime divided into degrees, and a defendant should be convicted of first rather than second degree murder notwithstanding the jury’s failure to determine the degree if the prosecution presents evidence that would support only a first degree murder conviction and the court so instructs the jury.
I disagree. The majority disregards not only the plain language of section 1157, which admits no exceptions, but also this court’s consistent interpretation of section 1157 as requiring the jury to determine the degree regardless of the evidence or the instructions it receives. Rather than rewriting section 1157 to create a novel exception, I would follow its clear command.
I
Defendants Cruz Alberto Mendoza and Raul Antonio Valle were tried by means of the simultaneous presentation of evidence to two separate juries, which separately convicted each defendant of murder, robbery, and burglary. Each jury also found true robbery-murder and burglary-murder special circumstances. Each jury recorded its decisions on written verdict forms, but *930the forms did not specify the degree of murder for either defendant. In the case of Mendoza but not Valle, the court polled the jury, asking each juror whether “that was your vote on the charge of murder 187 first degree.” (Italics added.) Each juror individually answered “yes.” The trial court pronounced judgment sentencing each defendant to life without parole, the punishment for first degree murder with a special circumstance.
On appeal, both defendants contended that section 1157 required the reduction of their murder convictions to second degree murder. The Court of Appeal disagreed, holding that, even if the jury’s failure to determine degree in the verdict forms violated section 1157, the harmless error provision of article VI, section 13 of the California Constitution applied to the error. The Court of Appeal concluded the errors here were harmless on the ground that the evidence and instructions supported only a conviction for first degree murder under a felony-murder theory, and not a second degree murder conviction.
II
At issue here is section 1157: “Whenever a defendant is convicted of a crime or attempt to commit a crime which is distinguished into degrees, the jury, or the court if a jury trial is waived, must find the degree of the crime or attempted crime of which he is guilty. Upon the failure of the jury or the court to so determine, the degree of the crime or attempted crime of which the defendant is guilty, shall be deemed to be of the lesser degree.” The prosecutor and the trial court bear responsibility for ensuring that the jury or the court complies with section 1157. (Pen. Code, § 1164, subd. (b); People v. Superior Court (Marks) (1991) 1 Cal.4th 56, 77 [2 Cal.Rptr.2d 389, 820 P.2d 613].)
To properly understand the function of section 1157, it is first necessary to recognize two federal “constitutional protections of surpassing importance: the proscription of any deprivation of liberty without ‘due process of law,’ Amdt. 14, and the guarantee that ‘[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury,’ Amdt. 6. Taken together, these rights indisputably entitle a criminal defendant to ‘a jury determination that [he] is guilty of every element of the crime with which he is charged, beyond a reasonable doubt.’ ” (Apprendi v. New Jersey (2000) 530 U.S. 466 [120 S.Ct. 2348, 2355-2356, 147 L.Ed.2d 435], fn. omitted.) Section 1157 safeguards this right not to be convicted of the higher degree of a crime unless the trier of fact, whether judge or jury, has found all the elements constituting the higher degree of the crime. Although it might be constitutionally acceptable in cases where the trier of fact has not *931expressly stated the degree of the crime to reconstruct its intent from the evidence presented, the jury instructions, the arguments, the information, and other sources, the Legislature has chosen a higher degree of protection, as is its prerogative.
Murder is a crime divided into degrees. Penal Code section 189 divides murder into murders of the first degree and murders of the second degree. First degree murders as defined in section 189 include what are commonly referred to as felony murders—murders “committed in the perpetration of, or attempt to perpetrate,” certain other crimes, including robbery. As we have previously recognized, in many homicides the evidence before the jury would permit it to return either a verdict of first degree murder under a felony-murder theory or a second degree murder verdict, in addition to other possible verdicts, depending upon what evidence the jury finds credible. (People v. Jeter (1964) 60 Cal.2d 671, 674-676 [36 Cal.Rptr. 323, 388 P.2d 355].)
The prosecution argues that section 1157 does not apply to a jury’s failure to determine degree when, as here, the only theory of murder presented to the jury in the instructions and supported by the evidence was first degree murder based on a felony-murder theory. I disagree.
By its plain language, section 1157 applies without regard to the evidence the prosecution has presented in support of the crime or the instructions that the jury has received. Whenever the jury fails to determine the degree of a crime, the conviction by operation of law is “deemed to be of the lesser degree.” {Ibid.) As the word “deemed” makes clear and as the entirety of section 1157 confirms, in such cases section 1157 makes no inquiry into what determination of degree the jury made or could have made under the facts of the case. Instead, to protect the constitutional rights of defendants the Legislature has created a bright-line rule that when the court and the prosecution fail in their duty to ensure that the jury expressly determines the degree of the crime, the conviction becomes one for the lesser degree of the crime. This is a policy judgment of the Legislature’s that we are bound to respect.
Nor is the conclusion that section 1157 contains no exceptions novel. In People v. McDonald (1984) 37 Cal.3d 351 [208 Cal.Rptr. 236, 690 P.2d 709, 46 A.L.R.4th 1011], the prosecution asserted that a verdict form finding the defendant guilty of murder without specifying the degree could nonetheless be construed as a first degree murder conviction under section 1157. It argued, as does the prosecution here, that the jury had impliedly found the defendant guilty of first degree murder, given that the jury was instructed only on first degree murder and given that it found true a robbery-murder special circumstance.
*932In an opinion Justice Mosk wrote for a unanimous court, we rejected that argument: “This precise contention has been rejected in a long line of decisions which require that the degree be explicitly specified by the verdict.” (People v. McDonald, supra, 37 Cal.3d at p. 380.) We continued: “[T]he statute applies to reduce the degree even in situations in which the jury’s intent to convict of the greater degree is demonstrated by its other actions .... [T]he key is not whether the ‘true intent’ of the jury can be gleaned from circumstances outside the verdict form. . . . [U . . . RD . . . [T]he terms of the statute are unambiguous. No special exception is created for the situation presented by this case; had the Legislature chosen to make section 1157 inapplicable to cases in which the jury was instructed on only one degree of a crime, it could easily have so provided. The statute requires that ‘if the jury shall find the defendant guilty, the verdict shall specify the degree of murder .... It establishes a rule to which there is to be no exception, and the Courts have no authority to create an exception when the statute makes none.’ ” (People v. McDonald, supra, 37 Cal.3d at p. 382, quoting People v. Campbell (1870) 40 Cal. 129, 138.)
III
Applying section 1157 to the facts of this case yields these results: In the case of defendant Valle, the jury made no determination of the degree of the murder of which it found him guilty. Therefore, section 1157 deems his conviction to be one of second degree murder. In the case of defendant Mendoza, although the written verdict form did not specify the degree of murder, when the court subsequently polled the jurors and asked them whether their verdict was for “murder 187 first degree,” they each responded “yes.” This oral statement by the jury that Mendoza committed first degree murder is sufficient to satisfy section 1157, for there is no general requirement that the jury give its verdict in written form. (See Pen. Code, §§ 1149, 1164.) Accordingly, his conviction is for first degree murder.
IV
To rescue the prosecution in this case from its failure to insist that the jury state its finding as to degree in the case of defendant Valle, the majority is forced to adopt a novel and unsupported interpretation of section 1157 that is contrary to the statute’s plain language. The majority holds that in a murder case in which the prosecution presents evidence supporting only a first degree murder verdict, murder becomes a crime no longer divided into degrees. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 900.)
The effect of the majority’s holding is to treat felony murder as though it were a separate crime. It is not, of course. Rather, it is only one of various *933alternative means by which one degree of murder may be committed. Doubtless, the Legislature could have chosen to create felony murder as a separate crime, rather than a form of one degree of murder; equally doubtless, it did not.
The majority ignores a fundamental principle of statutory construction: In determining legislative intent, we begin with the language of the statute, however unwise, ill-crafted, or imprudent we may think it to be. When the statutory language on its face answers the question before us, that answer is binding unless we conclude the language is ambiguous and its plain meaning does not correctly reflect the Legislature’s intent. (People v. Broussard (1993) 5 Cal.4th 1067, 1071-1072 [22 Cal.Rptr.2d 278, 856 P.2d 1134]; Burden v. Snowden (1992) 2 Cal.4th 556, 562 [7 Cal.Rptr.2d 531, 828 P.2d 672].)
In People v. McDonald, supra, 37 Cal.3d 351, 382, this court concluded that section 1157 is unambiguous and applies to every murder case, regardless of the evidence or instructions presented to the jury. In rejecting this conclusion, the majority here makes no claim that section 1157 is ambiguous. Rather, it makes the much more remarkable and far-reaching claim that the sole “plain and commonsense meaning” of section 1157 is that whether murder is a crime distinguished into degrees varies, depending on the factual theory of murder that the prosecution pursues. Nothing in section 1157, in section 189, or elsewhere in the Penal Code, however, even hints that whether a crime “is distinguished into degrees” depends on the evidence presented in a particular case rather than on whether the Legislature defined the crime in the Penal Code as a crime divided into degrees. Nor is there any suggestion in the Penal Code that the Legislature intended section 1157 to apply only to some and not all cases in which a jury has failed to determine the degree, depending on the evidence presented in support of the crime charged. The majority’s rendering of section 1157 is not a plausible reading of section 1157, much less the sole plausible reading.
Even if the majority’s eccentric reading of section 1157 were plausible enough to create a statutory ambiguity, however, the reasons presented by the majority would be insufficient to demonstrate that the majority’s reading correctly reflects the Legislature’s intent. In section 1157, the Legislature sought to advance justice and protect the rights of defendants. The means it chose was a bright-line rule that does not seek to discover what the jury actually but unspokenly decided as to the degree of the crime charged. Instead, under section 1157 á jury “must” in every case determine the degree. If it fails to, section 1157 “deem[s]” that as a matter of law the defendant may only be convicted of the lesser degree. The statute makes no exceptions to its rule.
*934Section 1157 by its very nature may result in convictions for the lesser degree of the charged crime in some cases where the jury has probably intended to convict defendant of the greater crime but has failed to expressly state that finding. The Legislature, however, has chosen not to have courts make a case-by-case inquiry into the jury’s unstated conclusions to attempt to divine what degree of crime the jury found.
The majority’s position is founded on the fallacy that it is absurd and contrary to section 1157’s purpose for the Legislature to advance its goal of protecting defendants by means of a bright-line rule. That the Legislature has chosen a bright-line rule that may result in a conviction for the lesser degree in some cases in which the jury would have convicted of the greater degree, however, does not make it absurd to apply the rule to those cases nor does it authorize us to rewrite the rule. There is nothing absurd in deferring to the plain language of Penal Code section 1157 and concluding that the Legislature intended the section to apply to all murder convictions, not just convictions based on certain theories of murder and not others. And it is fully consonant with, not contrary to, section 1157’s purpose of protecting the rights of defendants to require in every case that a defendant not be convicted of the highest degree of a crime except when a jury expressly so finds on the record.
By judicially inventing an exception to section 1157 that the Legislature has chosen not to enact, the majority usurps the Legislature’s authority. Had the Legislature intended such an exception, it could have easily enacted one, as this court noted in People v. McDonald, supra, 37 Cal.3d 351, and as proposed legislation that the Legislature considered and rejected in 1990 and 1998 illustrates.
In 1990, a bill introduced in the Legislature would have permitted the following if the jury failed to expressly determine the degree: “[T]he trial court or an appellate court may fix the degree . . . if it is able to determine from other jury findings in the same case the degree the jury intended to fix. If this determination cannot be made, . . . [on timely motion] the defendant shall be entitled to a hearing . . . before a new jury to determine the degree . . . .” (Sen. Bill No. 2572 (1989-1990 Reg. Sess.) § 1.) This bill was not enacted, and instead the Legislature amended Penal Code section 1164 in 1990 to require trial courts, before discharging a jury, to verify on the record that the jury has determined the degree of the crime.
In 1998, another bill introduced in the Legislature would have permitted the trial court to determine the degree from the “admitted evidence, the charging instrument, jury instructions given, or other jury findings that were *935made” and to “set the degree at the higher level where there is clear and reliable evidence to support such a determination.” (Assem. Bill No. 2402 (1997-1998 Reg. Sess.) § 1.) If the court was not able to determine the degree, it could then “either set the degree at the lower level or order a new trial, the sole issue of which shall be the determination of degree.” {Ibid.) The bill was then amended to provide that section 1157 “shall only apply to the situation where the finder of fact has a choice as to the degree” and that “If the crime ... for which the defendant was convicted is a specified degree as a matter of law, upon the failure of the jury to determine the degree . . . , the court may fix the degree as specified. In determining whether the degree of the offense is a specified degree as a matter of law, the court may refer to the descriptive substantive definitions contained in the charging document, any factual finding contained in the verdict form, the fact that the jury was only instructed on a specified degree and not any lesser degree, or the fact that the jury was only instructed on one theory of the case.” (Assem. Amend, to Assem. Bill No. 2402 (1997-1998 Reg. Sess.) Apr. 29, 1998.) This bill too was never enacted.
The majority also rejects as dictum this court’s conclusion in People v. McDonald, supra, 37 Cal.3d 351, that section 1157 applies in murder cases prosecuted under a felony-murder theory. Whether or not it is dictum is irrelevant, for it is soundly reasoned and reaches the most sensible interpretation of section 1157. Moreover, this interpretation finds support in 150 years of California law, as I discuss next.
Section 1157 derives from a statute originally enacted in 1856 that accomplished several purposes. (Stats. 1856, ch. 139, § 2, p. 219; hereafter the 1856 statute.) The 1856 statute was the first to divide the crime of murder into degrees; previously, murder had been a unitary crime. In doing so, the 1856 statute assigned murder committed in the course of certain felonies to the category of first degree murder. {Ibid.) Finally, it required the jury to determine the degree of murder. It accomplished all of this in a single sentence: “All murder which shall be perpetrated by means of poison, or lying in wait, torture, or by any other kind of willful, deliberate and premeditated killing, or which shall be committed in the perpetration or attempt to perpetrate any arson, rape, robbery or burglary, shall be deemed murder of the first degree; and all other kinds of murder shall be deemed murder of the second degree; and the jury before whom any person indicted for murder shall be tried, shall, if they find such person guilty thereof, designate by their verdict, whether it be murder of the first or second degree . . . .” {Ibid.)
There is no doubt, and the majority does not dispute, that the plain language of the 1856 statute required the jury in every murder case to *936specify the degree of the murder, regardless of the evidence or argument presented in support of the charge. This court so held 130 years ago in People v. Campbell, supra, 40 Cal. 129, 138, where we specifically rejected the argument that no determination of degree was necessary if “it is not possible, from the nature of the case, that the accused could be lawfully convicted of murder in the second degree.” The court stated: “We have no right to disregard a positive requirement of the statute, as it is not our province to make laws, but to expound them. . . . The word ‘designate,’ as here employed, does not imply that it will be sufficient for the jury to intimate or give some vague hint as to the degree of murder of which the defendant is found guilty; but it is equivalent to the words ‘express’ or ‘declare,’ and it was evidently intended that the jury should expressly state the degree of murder in the verdict so that nothing should be left to implication on that point. . . . However absurd it may, at the first blush, appear to be to require the jury to designate the degree of the crime, when it appears on the face of the indictment that the offence charged has but one degree, there are plausible and, perhaps, very sound reasons for this requirement. . . . But whatever may have been the reasons for this enactment, it is sufficient for the Courts to know that the law is so written and it is their duty to enforce it.” {Id. at pp. 138-140.)
It would have been absurd for the court in People v. Campbell, supra, 40 Cal. 129, to reach a contrary result. That would have required concluding that, even though the 1856 statute in the same sentence both defined first degree murder to include killings committed in the course of certain felonies and required juries to find the degree of the murder committed, the latter portion of the sentence unaccountably did not apply to the earlier portion.
In 1872, as part of the general codification of California law, the 1856 statute was replaced by section 1157. As originally enacted as part of the Penal Code of 1872, section 1157 provided: “Whenever a crime is distinguished into degrees, the jury, if they convict the defendant, must find the degree of the crime of which he is guilty.” Section 1157 did change the 1856 statute, but it did so by generalizing the rule’s application from the crime of murder alone, as was the case under the 1856 statute, to every crime “distinguished into degrees.” The majority here suggests that, by deleting the reference to murder indictments that had been present in the 1856 statute, the Legislature in 1872 intended to abrogate this court’s decision in People v. Campbell, supra, 40 Cal. 129. Obviously, however, the purpose of deleting the reference to murder indictments was to broaden the statute’s application to include all crimes of degree, not to narrow its application to include only some cases of murder. Nor is there any evidence in the legislative history of the 1872 version of section 1157 that it was intended to narrow the 1856 *937statute. The annotations made to section 1157 by the commissioners who drafted it as part of the 1872 Penal Code cite Campbell with apparent approval and without any suggestion that section 1157 was intended to abrogate Campbell’s holding. (Code commrs., note foil. Ann. Pen. Code, § 1157 (1st ed. 1872, Raymond & Burch, commrs.-annotators) pp. 404-405.)
Moreover, section 5 of the Penal Code, enacted as part of the 1872 codification and continuing in effect to this day, provides: “The provisions of this Code, so far as they are substantially the same as existing statutes, must be construed as continuations thereof, and not as new enactments.” (Italics added.) Because section 1157 is substantially the same as the 1856 statute, especially with respect to the crime of murder, “the codified act carries the same [judicial] interpretation as the original one.” (People v. Ellis (1928) 204 Cal. 39, 44 [266 P. 518] [concluding the bigamy prohibition enacted as part of the 1872 Penal Code should be interpreted the same as pre-1872 bigamy statute, despite significant changes in wording between the two provisions].) That is, we must interpret section 1157 as this court interpreted the 1856 statute in People v. Campbell, supra, 40 Cal. 129.
And this court has done so. In 1887, 15 years after the enactment of section 1157, this court relied on People v. Campbell, supra, 40 Cal. 129, in interpreting section 1157, explaining its reliance in these terms: “The [1872 Penal] [C]ode has extended this provision to all crimes ‘distinguished into degrees.’ Therefore the construction given to the clause of the [1856] statute as it existed before the code, in murder cases, may guide us in construing it in its broader application.” (People v. Travers (1887) 73 Cal. 580, 581 [15 P. 293].)
Since 1872, section 1157 has been amended three times. It was amended in 1949 to provide that the consequence of a jury’s failure to specify degree is a conviction for the lesser degree rather than, as formerly, a new trial. (Stats. 1949, ch. 800, § 1, p. 1537.) It was then amended in 1951 to expand its scope to include convictions in court trials as well as jury trials. (Stats. 1951, ch. 1674, § 109, p. 3849.) It was again amended in 1978 to expand its scope to include convictions for attempts to commit crimes of degree. (Stats. 1978, ch. 1166, § 4, p. 3771.) All three amendments retained unchanged the “crime . . . distinguished into degrees” formulation of the original 1872 version of section 1157 and none of them evidenced any intention to limit the application of section 1157 in cases where the prosecution presents evidence directed at only a single degree of a crime.
As this review shows, the majority subverts both the plain language and the long history of section 1157 when it concludes that the statute contains *938an unwritten exception whose application depends upon the evidence presented by the prosecution. There is no basis at this late date to change course and abandon our settled conclusion that the statute governs in all cases in which the jury fails to determine degree, an interpretation which faithfully adheres to the statute’s plain language.
V
The prosecution argues that, even if defendant Valle’s jury failed to comply with section 1157, the judgment imposing on him a first degree murder sentence should be affirmed under article VI, section 13 of the California Constitution (hereafter article VI, section 13). That section provides: “No judgment shall be set aside, or new trial granted, in any cause, on the ground of misdirection of the jury, or of the improper admission or rejection of evidence, or for any error as to any matter of pleading, or for any error as to any matter of procedure, unless, after an examination of the entire cause, including the evidence, the court shall be of the opinion that the error complained of has resulted in a miscarriage of justice.” (Ibid.)
Article VI, section 13 does not salvage the trial court’s judgment punishing Valle for first degree murder. Once the jury returned a verdict of murder without specifying the degree and was discharged, section 1157 made Valle’s conviction one for second degree murder by operation of law. The error here was the trial court’s failure to recognize that Valle’s conviction was for second degree murder and to sentence him accordingly. This error was obviously prejudicial to Valle, resulting in an illegal sentence exceeding the maximum permitted for a second degree murder conviction.
Conclusion
For the reasons given above, I would affirm the first degree murder conviction of defendant Mendoza, while I would reduce the first degree murder conviction of defendant Valle to second degree murder.
Werdegar, J., concurred.