Some felony enhancements can be stricken under Prop. 47, state Supreme Court rules

A 2014 ballot measure that reduced some nonviolent crimes to misdemeanors requires the striking of felony sentencing enhancements from non-final judgments tied to a prior felony conviction if the prior was reduced, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday.

Proposition 47, or the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act, reclassified many non-violent felonies as misdemeanors. It also created a resentencing mechanism for prisoners convicted of those crimes and instituted a review process to ensure criminals released under it did not pose a risk to public safety.

The Supreme Court's opinion ruled on three separate cases involving felony enhancements with similar facts. The court unanimously ruled in favor of the criminals in two cases, and against the third.

In one of the two decided in favor of the convicts, a two-year enhancement was assessed for committing a felony while released on bail for another felony. In the other, a one-year enhancement was given for committing a felony after having served a prior prison term. Since Proposition 47 reduced the underlying crimes to misdemeanors in both, the court ruled that the enhancements should be dismissed.

"This emphasis on reduced penalties for these narcotics- and larceny-related offenses extends logically to enhancements and subsequent offenses connected to those offenses," wrote Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye in the unanimous opinion.

"From these particular statements in the ballot materials for Proposition 47, it follows that a reduced penalty for a crime that had previously been classified as a felony would include a penalty that takes the form of an enhancement or other recidivist-based punishment that was alleged with that same felony," the chief justice wrote.

The court ruled that the enhancements could be successfully challenged in the resentencing process, due to Proposition 47's language saying the prior crime needed to be considered "a misdemeanor for all purposes." People v. Buycks, 2018 DJDAR 7510 (Cal. Sup. Ct., filed July 30, 2018).

"Proposition 47's creation of a procedure to retroactively reduce to a misdemeanor any judgment, even those that are otherwise final, is consistent with the conclusion that the initiative should also have a limited retroactive impact on non-final judgments involving enhancements previously derived from those now reduced felonies," Cantil-Sakauye wrote.

The third case, while featuring a felony reduced to a misdemeanor under Proposition 47, varies in key ways from the others, which led the court to uphold its enhancement.

In that instance, the defendant was assessed a second felony charge for failing to appear in court to address his prior crime under Section 1320.5 of the Penal Code.

In that case, the defendant's original crime was reduced to a misdemeanor, but the felony charge for failure to appear stood.

The majority focused on the intent of Section 1320.5 to punish attempts to dodge justice by failing to appear, and that it does not require a conviction.

"Under a plain reading of the statute, a Section 1320.5 conviction does not require the bail jumper's felony charge to have resulted in a felony conviction. This defeats petitioner Guiomar's claim for relief under Proposition 47," Cantil-Sakauye wrote.

"His narcotics offense became "a misdemeanor for all purposes," but that did not alter the fact that he had been charged with a felony when he failed to appear while on bail for that felony charge," the opinion says.