Court Opinion

ID: 9782376
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 18:26:51.612828+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:57.864492
License: Public Domain

KENNARD, J., Concurring.
I concur fully in the majority opinion. I write separately to reiterate my continuing disagreement with the holding of People v. Cooper (1991) 53 Cal.3d 1158 [282 Cal.Rptr. 450, 811 P.2d 742] (Cooper), a decision cited and discussed by the majority, and to explain how the issue presented here differs from the issue decided in Cooper.
Cooper addressed the scope of accomplice liability for the crime of robbery and, more specifically, the “late joiner” problem. There, defendant Cooper drove his two codefendants to a shopping center parking lot. (Cooper, supra, 53 Cal.3d at p. 1161.) The codefendants ran across the parking lot, knocked down an 89-year-old shopper, stole his wallet, and returned to Cooper’s car. (Ibid.) Cooper “hurriedly drove away.” (Ibid.) At Cooper’s ensuing trial, the prosecution presented evidence supporting an inference that Cooper had participated in the planning of the robbery and had agreed in advance to act as the “getaway” driver. (Id. at p. 1179 (dis. opn. of Kennard, J.).) During argument to the jury, however, the prosecutor said that the defendant was guilty of robbery if he knowingly helped his codefendants escape with the victim’s property, regardless of whether the defendant knew beforehand that his codefendants were planning a robbery. (Id. at p. 1178 (dis. opn. of Kennard, J.).) The trial court’s instructions reinforced the prosecutor’s argument. (Id. at pp. 1162-1163.) The jury convicted the defendant, and he appealed. (Id. at p. 1163.) The Court of Appeal reversed the conviction, and this court granted review. (Ibid.)
The majority in Cooper concluded that the defendant had been properly convicted because “a getaway driver who has no prior knowledge of a robbery, but who forms the intent to aid in carrying away the loot during [its] asportation, may properly be found liable as an aider and abettor of the robbery.” (Cooper, supra, 53 Cal.3d at p. 1161.) Disagreeing with that holding, I pointed out that it “finds no support either in the statutory language or in the previous decisions of this court,” that it “is inconsistent with the rule that a person who aids an escaping felon is an accessory after the fact” rather than a principal, and that it would “lead to absurd results because criminal liability will bear little or no relationship to the culpability of the offender.” (Id. at p. 1178 (dis. opn. of Kennard, J.).) My views on that issue have not changed.
*267Here, however, the issue is not accomplice liability but the definition of robbery. More specifically, the issue is whether a robbery has been committed when, after wrongfully taking another’s property, before reaching a place of temporary safety, and while in the immediate presence of a person legally entitled to possession of that property, the thief uses force against that person. The majority’s decision that the described offense is robbery is properly grounded in the statutory definition of robbery and in the prior decisions of this court and the Courts of Appeal, and the holding here will produce results that are rationally related to the offender’s culpability. Accordingly, I concur.