Court Opinion

ID: 9953713
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-03-22 18:02:46.284591+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:07:19.700126
License: Public Domain

Filed 3/22/24 P. v. Vue CA3
                                           NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for
publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication
or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.

                IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
                                      THIRD APPELLATE DISTRICT
                                                     (Sacramento)
                                                            ----

 THE PEOPLE,                                                                                   C098061

                    Plaintiff and Respondent,                                      (Super. Ct. No. 05F10435)

           v.

 BEE VUE,

                    Defendant and Appellant.

         Defendant Bee Vue appeals from an order denying his motion for a proceeding to
preserve youth-related mitigating evidence for a future youth offender parole hearing
under Penal Code section 3051.1 Vue acknowledges he is statutorily ineligible for a
youth offender parole hearing under section 3051 because he was sentenced to life
without parole (LWOP) for a special circumstance murder he committed when he was 20

1 Undesignated statutory references are to the Penal Code.

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years old. But he argues that the exclusion of young adult LWOP offenders from the
youth offender parole process violates equal protection. In accordance with the
California Supreme Court’s recent decision in People v. Hardin (Mar. 4. 2024, S277487)
___ Cal.5th ___ [2024 Cal. Lexis 1076] (Hardin), we reject Vue’s equal protection
challenge and affirm.
                                     BACKGROUND
       In 2007, a jury found Vue guilty of first degree murder (§§ 187, subd. (a), 189)
and found true the special circumstance that the murder was committed during the
commission of attempted robbery (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(17)) and that Vue personally and
intentionally discharged a firearm causing death (§ 12022.53, subd. (d)). The trial court
sentenced Vue to a term of LWOP for the murder plus 25 years to life for the firearm
enhancement, to run consecutively. We affirmed the judgment in an unpublished opinion
in People v. Vue (Sept. 30, 2008, C055534). Vue was 20 years old when he committed
the offense.
       In 2023, Vue moved for a proceeding under People v. Franklin (2016) 63 Cal.4th
261 to preserve mitigating evidence for use in a future youth offender parole hearing.
The trial court denied the motion. Vue timely appealed, filing a notice of appeal with this
court in March 2023. His opening brief was filed in September 2023, and this case was
fully briefed on December 6, 2023.
                                       DISCUSSION
       Offenders who are eligible for a youth offender parole hearing are entitled to make
a record of youth-related mitigating evidence so that the parole board may, in the future,
properly discharge its obligation to determine whether the offender is fit to rejoin society.
(People v. Franklin, supra, 63 Cal.4th at pp. 268-269, 284; In re Cook (2019) 7 Cal.5th
439, 446-447; People v. Benzler (2021) 72 Cal.App.5th 743, 748-749.) Section 3051 sets
forth the eligibility criteria for youth offender parole hearings. Under that provision,
most persons convicted of a controlling offense committed before the age of 26 are now

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eligible for a youth offender parole hearing after 15, 20, or 25 years in prison, depending
on their controlling offense. (People v. Sands (2021) 70 Cal.App.5th 193, 198; § 3051,
subds. (a) & (b).) However, section 3051, subdivision (h) excludes from the youth
offender parole hearing process young adult offenders, like Vue, who were sentenced to
LWOP for a controlling offense committed between the ages of 18 and 25. (Sands, at
p. 199; § 3051, subd. (h).)
       Vue effectively concedes that, having been sentenced to LWOP, section 3051
renders him ineligible for youth offender parole consideration. But he contends that the
trial court should have granted his motion for a Franklin proceeding because excluding
young adult LWOP offenders from parole consideration, even though young adults
sentenced to parole-eligible terms are entitled to such consideration, violates federal and
state equal protection principles. The California Supreme Court recently resolved a
virtually identical equal protection challenge to section 3051 in Hardin, supra, ___
Cal.5th at p. ___ [2024 Cal. Lexis 1076, pp. *31-*33]. There, as here, the defendant
submitted there was no rational basis for excluding certain young adult offenders from
youth parole consideration because of their LWOP sentences. (Ibid.) Our Supreme
Court rejected this argument, explaining that “[l]ife without parole is the most severe
sentence of imprisonment in California law, applicable only in cases of special
circumstance murder and a small number of other offenses the law regards as particularly
serious. By excluding persons sentenced to life without parole from youth offender
parole proceedings, the Legislature exercised its prerogative to define degrees of
culpability and punishment by leaving in place longstanding judgments about the
seriousness of these crimes and, relatedly, the punishment for them.” (Id. at p. ___ [2024
Cal. Lexis 1076, p. *32, fn. omitted].) For this same reason, we conclude that Vue has
not demonstrated that the Legislature acted irrationally in declining to grant the
possibility of parole to young adult offenders sentenced to LWOP. In his briefing, Vue

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acknowledged that the decision in Hardin would control the outcome of his arguments
before this court and, accordingly, Vue’s equal protection claim fails.2
                                      DISPOSITION
       The order denying Vue’s motion for a Franklin proceeding is affirmed.

                                                      /s/
                                                  BOULWARE EURIE, J.

We concur:

    /s/
DUARTE, Acting P. J.

    /s/
WISEMAN, J.

2 As noted, Vue challenges section 3051 under both the United States Constitution and
the California Constitution. In Hardin, the defendant did “not raise any arguments
specific to the California Constitution.” (Hardin, supra, ___ Cal.5th at p. ___ [2024 Cal.
Lexis 1076, p. *20, fn. 2].) But as with our Supreme Court, “we see ‘ “no reason to
suppose” that federal equal protection analysis would yield a result different from what
would emerge from analysis of the state Constitution.’ ” (Ibid.)
 Retired Associate Justice of the Court of Appeal, Fifth Appellate District, assigned by
the Chief Justice pursuant to article VI, section 6 of the California Constitution.

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