California v. Awad
Annotate this CaseAppellant has appealed his felony conviction for multiple counts of forgery and grand theft and is currently serving a sentence for his conviction. Following his sentencing, in November 2014, the California voters enacted Proposition 47, entitled “the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.” Appellant tried to take advantage of Proposition 47’s postconviction procedure by petitioning the trial court to reduce the felony sentence for one of his forgery counts to a misdemeanor. The trial court declined to do so, on the ground it lacked jurisdiction to recall the sentence while appellant’s case was pending on appeal. Appellant and similarly situated defendants had a tactical legal choice: on one hand, they could wait to seek Proposition 47 relief until they complete their appeals from the underlying judgment of conviction (but by then, it might be too late to gain any benefit from a sentencing reduction because they already will have served the time in question). On the other hand, they could give up any pending appeal in order to obtain speedy Proposition 47 relief from the trial court. The Court of Appeal surmised there was a way out of this jurisdictional conundrum: a discretionary remand by the Court of Appeal to the trial court for the sole and express purpose of determining, within a specified time frame, a Proposition 47 petition to recall a sentence. The Court concluded it had the authority pursuant to Penal Code section 12601 to effectuate the resentencing provisions in Proposition 47 in a timely manner. The Court granted appellant’s motion for a limited remand, and stayed the pending appeal for a short period of time to allow the trial court to conduct a Proposition 47 postconviction hearing.
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