Court Opinion

ID: 9751738
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 16:56:45.739185+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:33:09.503687
License: Public Domain

BLEASE, Acting P. J., Concurring and Dissenting.
I concur in the opinion insofar as it holds the phrase “otherwise provided by law” in Penal Code section 1170.12, subdivision (a)(8) invokes the subordinate term provisions of section 1170.1, subdivision (a). Pursuant to the latter provision the trial *1133court correctly imposed an eight-month consecutive term on resentencing for the defendant’s prior conviction for burglary.
However, I dissent from the majority’s holding that the eight-month term for that prior conviction is a “term otherwise provided as punishment for the current felony conviction,” which must be doubled under Penal Code section 1170.12, subdivision (c)(1). (Italics added.) The defendant’s only current conviction is for receiving stolen property and the term of two years imposed for that offense was doubled under section 1170.12, subdivision (c)(1). That subdivision is the governing law and its terms are controlling.
Penal Code section 1170.12, subdivision (c)(1) provides that “[i]f a defendant has one prior felony conviction . . . the . . . term [for that conviction] shall be twice the term otherwise provided as punishment for the current felony conviction.” (Italics added.) This manifestly does not read “twice the term otherwise provided upon a current resentencing for a prior conviction pursuant to section 1170.1.”1
The majority opinion engages in an extensive policy argument that the term “current conviction” should mean current resentence for a prior conviction because the sentence for the prior conviction had been enhanced pursuant to Penal Code section 1170.12 in the prior proceeding. With all due respect, that policy argument, however persuasive, should be addressed to the Legislature or to the People, whose initiative led to section 1170.12.2
We have no common law power to amend the plain terms of a statute, let alone the terms of a criminal statute. “In the construction of a statute . . . the office of the judge is simply to ascertain and declare what is in terms or in substance contained therein, not to insert what has been omitted, or to omit what has been inserted . . . .” (Code Civ. Proc., § 1858.) “In California all crimes are statutory and there are no common law crimes. Only the Legislature and not the courts may make conduct criminal.” (In re Brown (1973) 9 Cal.3d 612, 624 [108 Cal.Rptr. 465, 510 P.2d 1017].)
By what judicial alchemy a resentence imposed for a prior conviction becomes a current conviction I do not know. There is no support for that result to be found in the language of Penal Code section 1170.12.
That the terms “prior” and “current” distinguish between convictions in different proceedings is uniformly seen wherever the terms “prior conviction” and “current conviction” are used in Penal Code section 1170.12. (See *1134subds. (a)(3), (a)(6), (a)(7), (c)(1), (c)(2)(A).) Section 1170.12 implicates prior nonserious or nonviolent felonies only in the context of consecutive sentencing, at issue in this case. Subdivision (a)(8) provides that “[a]ny sentence imposed pursuant to this section will be imposed consecutive to any other sentence which the defendant is already serving, unless otherwise provided by law.” It presupposes an enhanced sentence has already been “imposed” under section 1170.12 for the current conviction. In this case it was doubled.
The reference to “otherwise provided by law,” in Penal Code section 1170.12, subdivision (a)(8) has nothing to do with a further enhancement. It refers, as the majority opinion has concluded, to an exception to the requirement the current enhanced sentence be served consecutive to the sentence “the defendant is already serving . . . .” The exception is found in Penal Code section 1170.1. It seems a simple matter of logic that an exception is not subject to that as to which it is an exception. Having got to section 1170.1 by means of section 1170.12, subdivision (a)(8), its terms and only its terms must be applied. Section 1170.1 says nothing about enhancing the defendant’s sentence under section 1170.12. That we got to section 1170.1 by means of section 1170.12 may seem an anomaly to my colleagues, because the application of section 1170.1 undoes the prior enhancement imposed upon the defendant under section 1170.12. But it is an anomaly of the Legislature’s making.
People v. Nguyen (1999) 21 Cal.4th 197 [87 Cal.Rptr.2d 198, 980 P.2d 905] does not hold otherwise. The subordinate term provisions of Penal Code section 1170.1 apply “when any person is convicted of two or more felonies, whether in the same proceeding . . . or in different proceedings.” In Nguyen, the defendant was convicted of two felonies in the “same” proceeding. Accordingly, both felonies involved current convictions and both properly were doubled pursuant to Penal Code section 1170.12, subdivision (c)(1). Nguyen is not to be read to apply to the case, as here, of resentencing based upon two felonies arising from “different proceedings,” a circumstance necessarily involving a prior conviction.
I would apply the plain language of the statute.

 It is helpful when construing a statute to formulate the application of a perceived policy in the clearest terms possible and then compare the language thus conceived with the actual language of the statute. That will reveal what is being added or subtracted.

 See the identical provisions in Penal Code section 667, subdivision (c)(8).