Court Opinion

ID: 9722297
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:23:42.838884+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:33.499573
License: Public Domain

SONENSHINE, J., Concurring and Dissenting,
While I concur in that portion of parts I and II which hold failure to permit appellant to plead guilty to any or all of an information at any stage of the proceedings is error but harmless (People v. Watson (1956) 46 Cal.2d 818, 836 [299 P.2d 243]), I cannot join the majority’s discussion of Evidence Code section 1101, subdivision (b).
As the majority correctly notes, Evidence Code section 1101, subdivision (b) permits the admission of evidence of a crime or other act when relevant to prove identity, motive or intent under limited circumstances. Specifically, other acts are admissible when there are common, distinctive marks leading to the conclusion . . if the defendant is guilty of one he must be guilty of the other. Or as the matter is sometimes stated, the other offenses . . . are sufficiently similar and possess a sufficiently high degree of common features with the act charged where they warrant the inference that if the *657defendant committed the other acts he committed the act charged.’ ” (People v. Thomas (1978) 20 Cal.3d 457, 465 [143 Cal.Rptr. 215, 573 P.2d 433].)
Where the majority dangerously breaks new ground is in holding the addition of a fingerprint transposes two nondistinctive crimes into two distinctive crimes. The majority concludes, as the evidence demonstrates, the facts of the two burglaries “. . . are rather pedestrian . . . and probably descriptive of several dozen similar Santa Ana burglaries in the same general time frame.” (Majority opn., ante, at pp. 655-656.) In fact, if one were given the facts of the first burglary sans fingerprint, the conclusion defendant committed the second could not follow.
People v. Thornton (1974) 11 Cal.3d 738 [114 Cal.Rptr. 467, 523 P.2d 267] and the decisions which followed uniformly determined other crimes evidence was admissible only where there were a number of highly distinctive marks. Thus in Thornton, although the court found one distinctive mark to be the smell of gasoline, other crimes evidence was not admitted until as many as eight other distinctive marks were found. Here what the majority accomplishes, whether intended or not, is to permit the introduction of other crimes evidence of the same or similar class, whether or not distinctive, simply because the defendant’s fingerprints were found at both crime scenes. The result is that with the addition of but one admittedly distinctive mark, Reza’s fingerprint, other evidence clearly inadmissible was made admissible.
I would affirm the conviction insofar as I. believe the error in refusing to permit appellant to plead guilty is harmless in light of the proof his fingerprint was found in a home with the only reasonable explanation being he entered for purposes of theft.