Court Opinion

ID: 9531580
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:13:11.784457+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:31.698097
License: Public Domain

KENNARD, J., Dissenting.
The majority is remanding this case to the superior court so that court can determine whether petitioner suffered prejudice when the trial court misstated the parole consequences of his plea of guilty to second degree murder. Like Justice Mosk, I see no need for a remand. As Justice Mosk observes in his dissenting opinion, the prosecution’s failure to raise the issue of prejudice in its return to the habeas corpus petition is tantamount to a concession on that issue. Therefore, the majority’s remand on the question of prejudice is unnecessary and a waste of judicial resources.
I find the majority’s opinion troubling on yet another point. Left unresolved by the majority is the issue of what relief should be afforded a defendant who, as here, enters a guilty plea after receiving erroneous advice from the trial court regarding the parole consequences of that plea. This is the sole issue disputed by the parties, and the only issue on which petitioner sought review in this case. Because the majority does not resolve this issue, *364it provides no guidance to the trial court in this case, and others like it, regarding the remedy to be afforded: should the trial court order “specific performance” of a statutorily unauthorized period of parole, or should the court allow withdrawal of the guilty plea?
Justice Mosk would permit the imposition of a parole term that is not authorized by statute. I cannot agree. In my view, withdrawal of the guilty plea is the only permissible relief, as I shall explain.
I.
In May 1987, pursuant to a negotiated arrangement with the prosecution, petitioner agreed to plead guilty to second degree murder, a crime punishable by an indeterminate state prison term of 15 years to life. Before accepting the guilty plea, the trial court advised petitioner that, after serving the prison term for second degree murder, he would be released on parole. The court explained: “[T]here will be a period of parole which cannot exceed forty-eight months, and it works—actually, the term is thirty-six months; but if you add parole violations spaced just correctly, you could serve an additional forty-eight months in prison if the Board [of Prison Terms] determined that there should be a return on each violation.” The court was wrong regarding the period of parole applicable to petitioner. A defendant who is convicted of second degree murder, and is given a maximum prison term of life imprisonment will be subject to an actual period of parole for “the remainder of the inmate’s life.” (Pen. Code, § 3000.1, subd. (a).)1
In May 1990, petitioner filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Superior Court of Humboldt County, asserting that, based on the trial court’s erroneous advisement regarding parole, he should be allowed to withdraw his plea of guilty to second degree murder. The court issued an order to show cause. In the return to that order, the People conceded that the trial court’s erroneous parole advisement entitled petitioner to relief. The appropriate relief, the People argued, should be not withdrawal of the guilty plea, but issuance of a writ of habeas corpus by the superior court directing that petitioner’s parole be limited to the three-year period set forth by the trial court at the time of petitioner’s plea of guilty to second degree murder. In his traverse to the People’s return, petitioner disagreed that “specific performance” of the trial court’s erroneous parole advice was the appropriate remedy, insisting that he was entitled to withdrawal of his plea of guilty.
At the hearing on the order to show cause, the superior court issued the writ of habeas corpus, setting aside the judgment of conviction and permitting petitioner to withdraw his guilty plea. On appeal, the People challenged *365only the form of relief. The Court of Appeal reversed the judgment of the superior court, and reinstated petitioner’s conviction for second degree murder. In addition, the appellate court directed that, upon petitioner’s release on parole, the Board of Prison Terms impose a parole term of no more than five years.2
“Specific performance” of the three-year parole period that the trial court mentioned at the time of petitioner’s plea, as well as the five-year parole period fashioned by the Court of Appeal, both violate the mandate of section 3000.1, subdivision (a), that a defendant sentenced to a life term for second degree murder is subject to lifetime parole. Under the circumstances of this case, the only appropriate remedy is to permit petitioner to withdraw his plea of guilty, as the following discussion demonstrates.
II.
In Bunnell v. Superior Court (1975) 13 Cal.3d 592, 605 [119 Cal.Rptr. 302, 531 P.2d 1086], this court held that before accepting a defendant’s guilty plea, the trial court must tell the defendant of the direct consequences of the conviction, such as “the permissible range of punishment provided by statute” and any statutory “registration requirements.” Subsequent decisions have made it clear that the period of parole a defendant must serve is a direct penal consequence of a conviction. (E.g., People v. Victorian (1992) 2 Cal.App.4th 954, 957 [4 Cal.Rptr.2d 460]; In re Carabes (1983) 144 Cal.App.3d 927, 932 [193 Cal.Rptr. 65].)
In this case, the majority acknowledges that the trial court committed Bunnell error when it misstated petitioner’s potential parole term as 36 months when, in reality, petitioner was subject to lifetime parole. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 352.) The People necessarily conceded prejudice to petitioner when they agreed, in their return to the order to show cause, that petitioner was entitled to relief. (See dis. opn. of Mosk, J., ante, at p. 361.)
A defendant who is prejudiced by a trial court’s erroneous advisement or failure to warn regarding a direct consequence of a guilty plea is entitled to judicial relief. (See People v. Walker (1991) 54 Cal.3d 1013, 1023 [1 Cal.Rptr.2d 902, 819 P.2d 861].) In Walker, a defendant who pleaded guilty to a felony was ordered to pay a restitution fine of $7,000. (See Gov. Code, § 13967, subd. (a), which provides for imposition of a mandatory restitution fine of at least $100 but not more than $10,000 on a person convicted of a *366felony.) In telling the defendant of the direct consequences of his guilty plea, the trial court failed to mention the restitution fine. We concluded that relief from that misadvisement could take one of two forms: permitting withdrawal of the guilty plea or reducing the amount of the restitution fine to the $100 minimum allowable under the restitution statute. Reduction of the restitution fine to the $100 minimum allowed by Government Code section 13967 satisfied the statute, but imposition of such a low fine would not result in prejudice. (People v. Walker, supra, at p. 1023.)
Here, the remedy that the People assert should be afforded petitioner for the trial court’s erroneous statement regarding the period of parole is a reduction of petitioner’s parole term to a period not to exceed five years. The problem with this suggested remedy is that it violates section 3000.1, subdivision (a). That statute expressly states that for a second degree murder conviction “with a maximum term of life imprisonment, the period of parole, if parole is granted, shall be the remainder of the inmate’s life.” Unlike the situation in People v. Walker, supra, 54 Cal.3d 1013, in which the remedy fashioned—reduction of the restitution fine rather than withdrawal of the plea of guilty—was within the statutory framework, here the People’s suggested remedy of reducing the number of years that petitioner would serve on parole is not authorized by the parole statute at issue. The superior court recognized that when, at the hearing on the order to show cause in this writ proceeding, it rejected the People’s suggested remedy as “creative sentencing” that would work “a subversion of the appropriate penal statute.” I agree with the superior court that in this case allowing petitioner to withdraw his guilty plea is the only available remedy.
I would reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeal with directions to reinstate the relief granted by the superior court.

Unless otherwise noted, further statutory references are to the Penal Code.

The Court of Appeal based the five-year parole term on section 3000.1, subdivision (b), allowing the Board of Prison Terms to discharge from parole any person who, following a conviction of second degree murder, “has been on parole continuously” for five years.