California v. Garcia
Annotate this CaseIn 1993, defendant Albert Garcia physically assaulted and stole money from an 82-year-old man, who died about an hour later from lethal cardiac arrhythmia. A jury found defendant guilty of first degree murder and robbery. The trial court sentenced him to an aggregate term of 27 years to life in prison, and the Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment in an unpublished opinion. In affirming defendant’s murder conviction, the Court noted that the prosecution’s theory was felony murder, and concluded that the felony-murder rule applied to the facts of this case because there was substantial evidence the robbery, either the physical altercation or the emotional stress, caused the victim’s death. In 2019, after the passage of California Senate Bill No. 1437 (2017-2018 Reg. Sess.), which narrowed the class of persons liable for felony murder, defendant petitioned for resentencing under Penal Code section 1172.6 (former § 1170.95). The trial court denied the petition in August 2020, finding defendant was ineligible for resentencing as a matter of law because he was the “actual killer,” a felony-murder theory that remained valid after the passage of the Senate Bill. Defendant appealed, arguing: (1) the trial court improperly evaluated the validity of his murder conviction under the “actual killer” provision of Penal Code section 189 (e)(1), as there was no “actual killer” within the meaning of the revised felony-murder rule when death results from a preexisting medical condition aggravated by the stress of the underlying felony; and (2) the trial court erroneously relied upon a sufficiency of the evidence standard in denying his petition for resentencing rather than determining whether the prosecution had met its burden to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he is guilty of murder under current law. The Court of Appeal disagreed with defendant on his first contention, thus it did not reach his second. Here, the Court found defendant was the actual killer; accordingly, the order denying his petition for resentencing was affirmed.
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