THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. ALPHONZO McINNIS, Defendant and Appellant.
A159194
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA FIRST APPELLATE DISTRICT DIVISION TWO
Filed 4/29/21
CERTIFIED FOR PUBLICATION; (Alameda County Super. Ct. No. 18CR008268)
The trial court sentenced defendant to three consecutive terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Defendant contends (1) the crime of aggravated kidnapping under
We reject defendant‘s first contention, but his remaining contentions have merit. Therefore, we will strike the parole revocation fine and remand for the trial court to exercise its discretion on whether to impose concurrent or consecutive life terms using appropriate considerations. The judgment is otherwise affirmed.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
The Alameda County District Attorney filed an amended information charging defendant with forcible sexual penetration of Jane Doe 1, a minor age 14 or older (
As to counts 1 through 4, the district attorney alleged that defendant kidnapped the victim within the meaning of
Following a jury trial, defendant was found guilty of counts 2 through 5, and not guilty of count 7. The jury deadlocked on counts 1 and 6, and the court declared a mistrial as to those counts. As to counts 2 through 4, the jury found true the kidnapping allegations (
The trial court sentenced appellant to three consecutive terms of life without the possibility of parole for counts 2, 3, and 4. For count 5, the court imposed a term of life with the possibility of parole and stayed the punishment under
Offenses Involving Jane Doe 1
On April 19, 2018, Doe 1 was 15 years old and a freshman in high school. Doe 1 slept in that day and was late for school. She started walking to school around 10:00 or 11:00 a.m.
While walking on a residential street, Doe 1 heard footsteps and was grabbed from behind. Her assailant covered her eyes and wrapped his arm around her torso. She heard a male voice say something like, “Don‘t yell. Don‘t turn around and look at me.” The man said he had a gun and he would shoot her if she yelled or turned around. Doe 1 felt a pressure on her hip that she thought might be a gun. The man pulled Doe 1 and directed her physically to walk with him. He moved his hand from her eyes and had his arm wrapped around her neck. Doe 1 never saw his face.
At first, the man had Doe 1 continue walking in the direction she had been heading. After about a block, he turned around, and he and Doe 1 walked back the way they had come from.
The man pulled Doe 1 into a yard past a fence. They walked down a driveway and to a side yard. The man told Doe 1 to open her backpack and take her wallet out. She saw what appeared to be the “tip of a gun” with the rest of the gun in the man‘s sleeve. Doe 1 told him she had $15 and showed him her wallet. He said it was not enough. He told her to take out her I.D., and she showed him her school I.D. Doe 1 asked if she could go, and the man said something like “I‘m thinking about it” or “maybe.”
The man started feeling Doe 1‘s body under her clothes. He commented on her body and asked whether she had ever had sex. She said no. He said something along the lines of “we can do this the easy way or the hard way.” He pressed something Doe 1 thought was a gun against her neck. The man pulled her pants and underwear down. Standing behind her, he put his fingers
The man forced Doe 1 on her knees. He told her to spit on his penis and put it in her mouth. His penis went “all the way into [her] mouth.” He moved his body back and forth for a few seconds. Then he “tried to insert his penis into [her] vagina again.” The man used more force than he used the first time. He was able to fully insert his penis into her vagina and it hurt a lot. Eventually, the man let Doe 1 leave and said, “Just keep walking and don‘t look back.”
The same day, Doe 1 met with a police officer and showed him the house where she had been raped. She also had a sexual assault forensic examination. The examiner collected DNA swab samples from Doe 1‘s vaginal cavity and observed multiple injuries to her vagina. The DNA profile of a sperm cell fraction recovered from the vaginal swabs matched the defendant‘s DNA.3
DISCUSSION
A. Vagueness Challenge
Defendant contends the One Strike Law aggravated kidnapping finding in counts 2 through 4 and the aggravated kidnapping conviction (count 5) must be reversed on the ground the crime of aggravated kidnapping is void for vagueness.
“The constitutional interest implicated in questions of statutory vagueness is that no person be deprived of ‘life, liberty, or property without due process of law,’ as assured by both the federal Constitution (
Aggravated kidnapping under
Similarly, the One Strike Law aggravated kidnapping circumstance of
Defendant claims the
1. Johnson
In Johnson, the United States Supreme Court held the residual clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act of 1984 (ACCA) was impermissibly vague. (Johnson, supra, 576 U.S. at p. 597.) The ACCA forbids certain individuals from possessing firearms and punishes a person with three or more prior convictions for a “violent felony” more harshly. (Id. at p. 593.) The ACCA defines a violent felony to include any crime punishable by more than a year in prison that ” ‘is burglary, arson, or extortion, involves use of explosives, or otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.’ ” (Id. at pp. 593-594, quoting
Previously, the Supreme Court had held the residual clause of the ACCA was to be interpreted using the categorical approach, which meant a sentencing court had to assess whether a prior conviction qualified as a violent
The majority in Johnson concluded that “the indeterminacy of the wide-ranging inquiry required by the residual clause” was void for vagueness. (Johnson, supra, 576 U.S. at p. 597.) It found “[t]wo features of the residual clause conspire to make it unconstitutionally vague.” (Ibid.) First, the residual clause “leaves grave uncertainty about how to estimate the risk posed by a crime. It ties the judicial assessment of risk to a judicially imagined ‘ordinary case’ of a crime, not to real-world facts or statutory elements. How does one go about deciding what kind of conduct the ‘ordinary case’ of a crime involves? . . . To take an example, does the ordinary instance of witness tampering involve offering a witness a bribe? Or threatening a witness with violence? Critically, picturing the criminal‘s behavior is not enough; . . . assessing ‘potential risk’ seemingly requires the judge to imagine how the idealized ordinary case of the crime subsequently plays out.” (Ibid.)
Second, the majority concluded, “the residual clause leaves uncertainty about how much risk it takes for a crime to qualify as a violent felony. It is one thing to apply an imprecise ‘serious potential risk’ standard to real-world facts; it is quite another to apply it to a judge-imagined abstraction. By asking whether the crime ‘otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk,’ moreover, the residual clause forces courts to interpret ‘serious potential risk’ in light of the four enumerated crimes—burglary, arson, extortion, and crimes involving the use of explosives. These offenses are ‘far from clear in respect to the degree of risk each poses.’ [Citation.] Does the ordinary burglar invade an occupied home by night or an unoccupied home by day? Does the typical extortionist threaten his victim in person with the use of force, or does he threaten his victim by mail with the revelation of embarrassing personal information? By combining indeterminacy about how to measure the risk posed by a crime with indeterminacy about how much
Reviewing its four prior decisions on interpreting the residual clause, the court observed its “repeated attempts and repeated failures to craft a principled and objective standard out of the residual clause confirm its hopeless indeterminacy.” (Johnson, supra, 576 U.S. at p. 598.)
The Johnson majority rejected the suggestion of the Government and the dissent that its holding could place in doubt “dozens of federal and state criminal laws [that] use terms like ‘substantial risk,’ ‘grave risk,’ and ‘unreasonable risk.’ ” (Johnson, supra, 576 U.S. at p. 603.) “[A]lmost all of the cited laws require gauging the riskiness of conduct in which an individual defendant engages on a particular occasion. As a general matter, we do not doubt the constitutionality of laws that call for the application of a qualitative standard such as ‘substantial risk’ to real-world conduct; ‘the law is full of instances where a man‘s fate depends on his estimating rightly . . . some matter of degree,’ [citation]. The residual clause, however, requires application of the ‘serious potential risk’ standard to an idealized ordinary case of the crime. Because ‘the elements necessary to determine the imaginary ideal are uncertain both in nature and degree of effect,’ this abstract inquiry offers significantly less predictability than one ‘[t]hat deals with the actual, not with an imaginary condition other than the facts.’ ” (Id. at pp. 603-604.)
2. Ledesma
Defendant Ledesma argued that the offense of aggravated kidnapping under
The Ledesma court rejected the argument because “[u]nlike the residual clause at issue in Johnson, California‘s asportation requirement compels juries and courts to apply a legal standard to real-world facts. As Johnson itself recognizes, this difference is crucial.” (Ledesma, supra, 14 Cal.App.5th at p. 838.) The court reasoned, “Unlike the categorical analysis courts were required to engage in under the ACCA, the asportation requirements in sections 209 and 667.61 require no hypothetical case of the underlying crime that determines the statutes’ applicability. Rather, the jury in this case (and in all aggravated kidnapping cases) assessed whether [the defendant‘s] movement of [the victim] was merely incidental to the rape and whether that
The court also observed, “[A]ppellate courts have routinely assessed the validity of aggravated kidnapping convictions in published decisions without suggestion that the
The court concluded with a quote from our Supreme Court. ” ‘ “The law is replete with instances in which a person must, at his peril, govern his conduct by such nonmathematical standards as ‘reasonable,’ ‘prudent,’ ‘necessary and proper,’ ‘substantial,’ and the like. Indeed, a wide spectrum of human activities is regulated by such terms: thus one man may be given a speeding ticket if he overestimates the ‘reasonable or prudent’ speed to drive his car in the circumstances (
3. Analysis
We agree with Ledesma that Johnson does not require us to find the crime and special circumstance of aggravated kidnapping unconstitutionally vague. The Johnson majority “d[id] not doubt the constitutionality of laws that call for the application of a qualitative standard such as ‘substantial risk’ to real-world conduct” (Johnson, supra, 576 U.S. at pp. 603-604), and that is what the aggravated kidnapping statutes involve, the application of a qualitative standard to real-world conduct.
Defendant offers five reasons he believes Ledesma was incorrectly decided. First, he asserts the court‘s observation that “appellate courts have routinely assessed the validity of aggravated kidnapping convictions . . . without suggestion that the . . . asportation requirement is unworkable or too vague to be constitutional” (Ledesma, supra, 14 Cal.App.5th at p. 836) is irrelevant because cases are not authority for propositions not considered and because Johnson was not decided until 2015. We find the observation relevant, however, because it contrasts California appellate courts’ routine application
Second, defendant suggests the Ledesma court incorrectly rejected the argument that Johnson announced a new test for unconstitutional vagueness. Defendant cites Welch v. United States (2016) ___ U.S. ___ [136 S.Ct. 1257, 1264], as support that Johnson announced a “new rule.” But the “new rule” of Johnson was its holding that the residual clause of the ACCA was void for vagueness. (Welch, supra, 136 S.Ct. at p. 1265 [“By striking down the residual clause as void for vagueness, Johnson changed the substantive reach of the Armed Career Criminal Act, altering ‘the range of conduct or the class of persons that the [Act] punishes’ “].) Johnson did not purport to set forth a new test for determining whether a law is unconstitutionally vague.
Third, defendant argues the Ledesma court‘s reasoning is flawed because the aggravated kidnapping statute requires a jury to “compare real world facts to a hypothetical rape or robbery,” and this is contrary to the rule in Johnson. We disagree with the premise of this argument. Johnson did not condemn the comparison of real-world facts to hypothetical offenses. It found fault with asking courts to imagine how an idealized ordinary version of a crime would play out as the test for determining whether the crime qualified as a violent felony under the residual clause. (Johnson, supra, 576 U.S. at p. 597.) Aggravated kidnapping does not suffer from this fault. As our high court has explained, “[F]or aggravated kidnapping, the victim must be forced to move a substantial distance, the movement cannot be merely incidental to the target crime, and the movement must substantially increase the risk of harm to the victim. Application of these factors in any given case will necessarily depend on the particular facts and context of the case.” (People v. Dominguez (2006) 39 Cal.4th 1141, 1153, italics added and original italics deleted.)
Fourth, quoting the Johnson court‘s observation that the residual clause of the ACCA “has proved ‘nearly impossible to apply consistently’ ” ( Johnson, supra, 576 U.S. at p. 601), defendant claims the asportation standard of aggravated kidnapping is similarly suspect because it is applied inconsistently. Defendant cites various robbery and rape cases; in some cases, the movement of the victim was sufficient to support aggravated kidnapping, in others it was not. These cases do not show that the asportation requirement of aggravated kidnapping is impossible to apply consistently; they show only that the application of the law to the facts yields, not surprisingly, different results in different cases. As the Johnson5 majority observed, “even clear laws produce close cases.” (576 U.S. at p. 601.) The problem with the residual clause was that cases demonstrated a “pervasive disagreement about the nature of the inquiry one is supposed to conduct and the kinds of factors one is supposed to consider.” (Ibid.) The Ledesma court explained, “In contrast, California cases on the asportation element of aggravated kidnapping . . . show broad agreement on both the nature of the inquiry required and the relevant factors to evaluate when deciding whether the facts in a case are sufficient to satisfy the asportation element of the aggravated kidnapping statute and the One Strike Law.” (Ledesma, supra, 14 Cal.App.5th at p. 839.)
Fifth, defendant notes the United States Supreme Court has invalidated another federal statute on vagueness grounds in Sessions v. Dimaya (2018) ___ U.S. ___ [138 S.Ct. 1204]. Dimaya involved a “straightforward application” of Johnson to a statute that defines a “crime of violence” to include ” ‘any other offense that is a felony and that, by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense.’ ” (138 S.Ct. at pp. 1211, 1213;
In short, defendant has not persuaded us to depart from Ledesma. Accordingly, we reject his contention that the aggravated kidnapping statutes are void for vagueness.
B. Consecutive Terms
1. Background
Before pronouncing the sentence, the trial court stated, “The factors in circumstances in aggravation, number one, the crime involved great violence, bodily harm, threat of great bodily harm, and other acts disclosing a high degree of cruelty, viciousness and callousness.”
“The victim was particularly vulnerable. [¶] The manner in which the crime was carried out indicated planning, sophistication and professionalism. [¶] The defendant engaged in violent conduct that indicates a danger to society. [¶] The defendant‘s prior convictions as an adult are numerous and are of increasing seriousness. [¶] The defendant has served a prior prison term. [¶] The defendant was on parole when the crime was committed. [¶] The defendant‘s prior performance on probation and parole were unsatisfactory. [¶] There are no factors in mitigation.”
Immediately following this statement, the court imposed a term of life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) for count 2 pursuant to
2. Analysis
A trial court is required to state its reasons for imposing consecutive terms. (
We agree with defendant that the trial court was clear about why it chose consecutive rather than concurrent LWOP terms, and that its sole reason (the possibility of appellate relief on one or more counts) was not an appropriate basis for imposing consecutive terms. As defendant points out, when a defendant has an aggregate sentence and a count is reversed on appeal, the trial court may reconsider its prior sentencing choices. (People v. Burbine (2003) 106 Cal.App.4th 1250, 1253.) Burbine expressly cautioned against sentencing courts attempting “to take into account the likelihood of certain counts surviving appeal—a sentencing algorithm which might unnecessarily lead to longer original sentences.” (Id. at p. 1258.) Accordingly, we will remand to the trial court to resentence defendant using appropriate sentencing factors.
C. Parole Revocation Fine
The trial court imposed and suspended a parole revocation restitution fine under
In People v. Oganesyan (1999) 70 Cal.App.4th 1178 (Oganesyan), cited by defendant, the Court of Appeal rejected the Attorney General‘s position. The issue was whether
Courts have followed Oganesyan in People v. Battle (2011) 198 Cal.App.4th 50, 63 (Battle) [improper to impose parole revocation fine where the defendant received an indeterminate term of 25 years to life for one count and LWOP for another count] and People v. Jenkins (2006) 140 Cal.App.4th 805, 819 (Jenkins) [error to impose
The Attorney General does not address Oganesyan, and the cases he7 cites do not involve defendants who received LWOP terms. We think the reasoning in Oganesyan, Battle, and Jenkins is sound, and we conclude
D. Error in the Abstract of Judgment
As to counts 2, 3, and 4, defendant was sentenced under
DISPOSITION
The matter is remanded for resentencing in accordance with this opinion. The parole revocation fine under
WE CONCUR:
Kline, P.J.
Stewart, J.
Miller, J.
A159194, People v. McInnis
Court: Alameda County Superior Court
Trial Judge: Hon. Thomas Rogers
Eric R. Larson, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant
Xavier Becerra, Attorney General, Lance E. Winters, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Jeffrey M. Laurence, Assistant Attorney General, Rene A. Chacon, Julia Y. Je, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent
A159194, People v. McInnis
Notes
“(a) Facts relating to crimes [¶] Facts relating to the crimes, including whether or not: [¶] (1) The crimes and their objectives were predominantly independent of each other; [¶] (2) The crimes involved separate acts of violence or threats of violence; or [¶] (3) The crimes were committed at different times or separate places, rather than being committed so closely in time and place as to indicate a single period of aberrant behavior.
“(b) Other facts and limitations [¶] Any circumstances in aggravation or mitigation may be considered in deciding whether to impose consecutive rather than concurrent sentences, except: [¶] (1) A fact used to impose the upper term; [¶] (2) A fact used to otherwise enhance the defendant‘s sentence in prison or county jail under
