People v. Abelino
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A riot occurred at Pelican Bay State Prison. Several correctional officers were seriously injured. The defendants were charged with torture, mayhem, assault by a state prisoner, and battery by a state prisoner on a nonprisoner. At the preliminary hearing, the magistrate dismissed the complaint. The trial court denied a motion to reinstate the complaint, finding the record was devoid of evidence that the defendants did any specific thing.
The court of appeal reversed in part. Participation in a riot is a criminal offense; a previous agreement between the aggressors is not necessary. The evidence was sufficient to entertain a reasonable suspicion that the defendants committed the target crime of rioting in the yard of a maximum-security prison and that, taken as a whole, the riot involved the use of force or violence by numerous inmates against correctional officers who were significantly outnumbered. Given the particular circumstances of this prison riot and the scope of force and violence used, a person of ordinary prudence could have entertained a reasonable suspicion that mayhem, battery, and assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury were reasonably foreseeable, and hence natural and probable, consequences of the target crime of riot.
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