California v. Gonzales
Annotate this CaseDefendant Craig Danny Gonzales, in custody in state prison, filed a petition in January 2015 to recall his sentence pursuant to "Proposition 47." The petition simply recited the statutes defendant violated without any further information about the convictions in a consolidated 2003/2005 case for which he was sentenced in February 2008. After receiving opposition from the prosecutor, the trial court denied the petition without elaboration beyond checking a box on its form order that defendant was ineligible for relief based on his "[c]urrent convictions." Defendant contended, inter alia, that the only basis on which the trial court could have determined that he was entirely ineligible for any relief was the prosecutor's claim (as opposed to the petition) that defendant's conviction for identity theft in a transactionally independent 2006 case (that was part of the same sentencing proceeding in February 2008) disqualified him from relief, because this would exclude his convictions from misdemeanor status under Penal Code section 473(b). The Court of Appeal agreed with defendant that section 473(b) was ambiguous about the manner in which its exclusion applied, and the voter materials referencing section 473(b) made it clear that an identity theft conviction had to be transactionally related to other counts in order to exclude them from misdemeanor treatment under section 473(b). The Court accordingly reversed the order denying relief (except as to one conviction) and remanded for further proceedings.
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