California v. Bueno
Annotate this CaseDefendant Alan Bueno, an inmate at the time of the offense at issue, arranged with a prison employee codefendant to obtain a cellular telephone. Bueno pleaded no contest to one felony count of conspiracy to violate California Penal Code section 4576(a), which barred possession with the intent to deliver or the actual delivery of a cellular telephone to a prison inmate. On appeal, Bueno contended he could not be convicted of conspiracy to deliver a cellular telephone to an inmate because he was the inmate to whom the cellular telephone was delivered. Bueno analogized the scenario in this case to cases involving drug sales, in which the “buyer-seller rule” precluded the purchaser from being held criminally liable for a conspiracy to sell drugs to himself. According to Bueno, this principle applied to preclude an inmate recipient of a cellular telephone from being held criminally liable for conspiring to commit the substantive offense of section 4576 (a). Alternatively, Bueno contended that the statutory scheme set out a tiered system of punishment for the different roles that an individual might play in a scheme to deliver/have delivered a cellular telephone to an inmate, and that this scheme evinced a legislative intent that the inmate who participates in such a scheme be punished by a loss of credits only, and not criminally prosecuted. The Court of Appeal concluded Bueno’s argument that he could not be convicted of conspiracy to violate section 4576 (a) was without merit. The Court therefore affirmed the judgment.
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