THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. JIMMIE LEE OATES, Defendant and Appellant.
No. S106796
Supreme Court of California
Apr. 26, 2004
July 14, 2004
1048
Howard C. Cohen, under appointment by the Supreme Court, and John L. Dodd, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Bill Lockyer, Attorney General, Robert R. Anderson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Gary W. Schons, Assistant Attorney General, Lora Fox Martin, Gil P. Gonzalez, Matthew Mulford, Gary Brozio and Steven T. Oetting, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
OPINION
CHIN, J.—
We granted review in this case to determine the proper application of these provisions where a defendant fires two shots at a group of five people, but hits and injures only one. The Court of Appeal held that even where such a defendant is convicted of five counts of attempted premeditated murder—one for each person in the group—because only one person has been injured,
FACTUAL BACKGROUND
On the afternoon of September 11, 1999, members of the North Side Ontario gang (NSO), including Victor Mendoza, Gustavo Barrera and Walter Ramirez, entered territory claimed by NSO‘s rival, the East Side Ontario gang (ESO). Mendoza got into a fistfight with an ESO associate. Defendant Jimmie Lee Oates is an ESO member.
That night, after returning to territory claimed by NSO, Mendoza, Barrera and Ramirez went to the home of another NSO member, Manuel Castrejon. About 10:00 p.m., as Mendoza, Barrera, Ramirez, and Castrejon socialized in front of Castrejon‘s house with Jose Gonzalez, another NSO member, a green car drove down the street and stopped in front of the house. Someone inside the car fired two shots at the group, and the car sped away. The first shot hit Barrera in the leg, which had to be amputated as a result.
Shortly after the shooting, a California Highway Patrol officer spotted the dark green car and began pursuit. He saw three people in the car, including defendant in the front passenger seat. The car eventually stopped and its occupants fled on foot. The officer apprehended defendant, who admitted that he had been a passenger in the car. The other occupants were also apprehended and identified as ESO gang members. A subsequent search along the car‘s attempted escape route turned up a .44-caliber handgun bearing one of defendant‘s fingerprints and containing two empty cartridges and four live rounds. The live rounds were jacketed, hollow-point cartridges, which are designed to mushroom on impact so as to cause more severe injury. One of the rounds had an additional modification that was also designed to inflict more severe injury: an X shape sawed through its nose, resulting in fragmentation upon impact.
Based on these events, the San Bernardino County District Attorney later filed an information charging defendant with, as here relevant, five counts of attempted premeditated murder, one for each person in the group at which he fired. As to each of these counts, the information also alleged enhancements under subdivisions (b), (c), and (d) of
On appeal, defendant argued in part that, as to each attempted murder conviction, instead of imposing three
DISCUSSION
In their petition for review, the People challenged the Court of Appeal‘s holding that
A. Imposing Multiple Enhancements Based on a Single Injury Is Proper Under Section 12022.53 .
As with any question of statutory interpretation, in determining whether
Notably, the parties here agree that the phrase, “any person other than an accomplice,” does not mean “the victim” of the underlying crime. For example, defendant asserts in his brief that the elements of a subdivision (d) enhancement “require the imposition of the enhancement even if the injured person is not a victim of crime, such as if he or she was injured by a stray bullet.” Thus, “[i]f there is a qualifying substantive offense, if a firearm is intentionally discharged, and if anyone (but an accomplice), i.e., either the victim or a nearby ‘non-victim‘—a person who is injured but is not the victim of an enumerated offense—suffers great bodily injury, the enhancement attaches to the offense.” In other words, as defendant explains, “the ‘any person other than an accomplice’ language is sufficiently indisputable to ensure the imposition of the enhancement if a person other than the victim of the qualifying felony suffers a great bodily injury.” This reading of the statute is consistent with our recent statement that, as “[a]pplied to a defendant/shooter, this enhancement is arguably unambiguous: a defendant who is convicted of a specified felony and is found to have intentionally and personally discharged a firearm proximately causing great bodily injury or
Because the requirements of the subdivision (d) enhancement have been satisfied as to each of defendant‘s attempted murder convictions,
In this regard, it is significant that the Legislature expressly included in
Defendant‘s construction also contravenes
In summary, the statutory provisions discussed above authorize and support imposition of multiple subdivision (d) enhancements under the circumstances here. Defendant cites, and we find, nothing in the statutory language supporting his contrary interpretation.
Although, as defendant notes, the legislative history of
Moreover, the evolution of
The legislative history discussed above supports the conclusion suggested by the statutory language itself: that
Moreover, adopting defendant‘s construction would create several practical problems. In this case, it is easy to say, in retrospect, that defendant should receive one subdivision (d) enhancement with respect to the attempted murder of Barrera and subdivision (c) “discharge” enhancements with respect to the other attempted murder convictions. However, at the charging stage, the prosecution could not have known whether the jury would convict defendant of all of the crimes alleged or whether, as to the crime involving Barrera, it would convict defendant of some lesser offense that is not a qualifying offense. Given these possibilities, if the prosecution had been
Another practical problem arises if the crime involving the injured person is not a qualifying crime but the other crimes are. As discussed above, it would be contrary to the clear statutory language and the Legislature‘s intent to hold that
Defendant argues that “anomalies could easily occur” if we conclude that
Defendant also argues that we should construe
Defendant‘s argument is unpersuasive. Notwithstanding his assertions, defendant concedes that “[t]here is ‘no intimation’ in
In making his argument, defendant relies on the fact that both
Defendant‘s argument against imposing multiple subdivision (d) enhancements is unpersuasive.5 The phrase, “in the commission of” a felony, cannot mean one thing when a subdivision (d) enhancement is not imposed with respect to a crime committed against the injured party (for whatever reason), and something else when a subdivision (d) enhancement is imposed with respect to such a crime (or with respect to a crime against any other uninjured
Based on the preceding analysis, we hold that
B. Section 654 Does Not Preclude Imposing Multiple Subdivision (d) Enhancements.
Defendant argues that, under
In support of a contrary conclusion, the People advance several arguments. They argue generally that
In resolving the issue before us, our application of the “multiple victim” exception in King is particularly instructive. There, after shooting two people while robbing a store, the defendant pleaded guilty to first degree murder and attempted premeditated murder. (King, supra, 5 Cal.4th at p. 63.) At sentencing, the trial court imposed two enhancements—one for each conviction—under
In Tameka, we applied King to affirm invocation of multiple
In Tameka, we affirmed the juvenile court‘s sentence calculation based on King. We first noted King‘s holding that “multiple firearm-use enhancements may be imposed pursuant to
Although we did not specifically mention
Defendant argues that Tameka and King are “inapposite” because they involved
For several reasons, defendant‘s argument fails. First, Moringlane expressly rejected the very distinction underlying defendant‘s argument that King and Tameka are inapposite: that, for purposes of applying
Defendant‘s remaining arguments in support of the Court of Appeal‘s decision are also unpersuasive. Based on the language of
DISPOSITION
The judgment of the Court of Appeal is reversed, and the case is remanded to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion, including remanding to the trial court for resentencing in accordance with the views expressed in this opinion.
George, C. J., Baxter, J., and Brown, J., concurred.
WERDEGAR, J., Concurring.—I concur in the result reached by the majority and in its conclusion that
In
By reserving
The drafters of
For the reasons explained above, I suspect
Kennard, J., and Moreno, J., concurred.
Appellant‘s petition for a rehearing was denied July 14, 2004.