The Supreme Court’s Wednesday conference agenda this week was a little lighter than usual, but the court made big news on one case in particular, striking a qualified initiative from the November 2018 ballot.

Other actions of note include:

  • The court granted review in People v. Perez, limiting the issue to this:  “Did defendant’s failure to object at trial, before People v. Sanchez (2016) 63 Cal.4th 665 [see here] was decided, forfeit his claim that a gang expert’s testimony related case-specific hearsay in violation of his Sixth Amendment right of confrontation?”  A Sanchez issue was raised in a death penalty case in March.  The case might be renamed People v. Chavez, because the court actually denied Perez’s petition for review and granted the petition of a co-defendant, Edgar Ivan Chavez Navarro.  The Fourth District, Division Two, Court of Appeal affirmed the defendants’ convictions, but reversed special circumstance findings and sentencing decisions, in a partially published opinion.
  • The court granted-and-held two criminal cases.
  • Reviewing two gubernatorial clemency recommendation requests (see here), the court recommended sentence commutations for a man who has served over 22 years of a 30-years-to-life burglary sentence and for a man convicted of kidnapping, robbery, and burglary.  The latter request has a twist:  under the California Constitution, the governor cannot grant a commutation “to a person twice convicted of a felony” without Supreme Court approval, but the prisoner was convicted once in Nevada and once in California and the governor wasn’t certain whether Supreme Court review is necessary when one of the two convictions was in another state.
  • The court transferred back to the Courts of Appeal three grant-and-hold criminal cases.