California v. Warner
Annotate this CaseThe Court of Appeals' decision issued May 7, 2019 was modified. On a Saturday night of a long July 4th holiday weekend, defendant Shane Warner took a semiautomatic hand gun, concealed in his waistband into a bar and shot across the bar’s semi-dark dance floor, illuminated by a strobe light, at I. Smith, who had attacked him a few weeks earlier. Defendant emptied the gun’s clip of 10 bullets and wounded, but did not kill Smith, and wounded, but did not kill an innocent bystander. Defendant claimed to have acted in self-defense, but there was no evidence that Smith was armed. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on the attempted murder of Smith, and the prosecution eventually dismissed that count. The jury acquitted defendant of the attempted murder of N.C., but found him guilty of the lesser included offense of attempted voluntary manslaughter. The jury convicted defendant of assaulting N.C. with a semiautomatic firearm. The trial court sentenced defendant to 22 years in prison. On May 22, 2019, defendant filed a petition for rehearing asking the Court of Appeal to address his supplemental brief seeking a remand to the trial court for retroactive application of Senate Bill No. 620 (2017-2018 Reg. Sess.), which would allow the trial court to exercise its discretion to dismiss the firearm enhancement. Rather than simply affirming the trial court's order, the Court of Appeal remanded this matter to the trial court for the sole purpose of determining whether to exercise its discretion to dismiss the Penal Code section 12022.5 (a) firearm enhancement. The Court was not persuaded by the State's claim the case should not have been remanded because “the record shows that the sentencing court clearly indicated that it would not, in any event, have exercised its discretion to strike the allegations.” The Court did not express an opinion as to how the trial court should exercise its discretion on remand: "The fact that the trial court elected the upper term does not necessarily indicate it would not elect to strike the firearm enhancement if given the opportunity. The trial court did not indicate that even if it had discretion to strike the weapon enhancement it would not do so."
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.