In People v. Bullard, the Supreme Court today holds that Proposition 47, the 2014 initiative that reduces punishment and allows resentencing for certain crimes, and that the court had previously held allows relief for a person convicted of taking a vehicle worth $950 or less with an intent to permanently deprive the owner of possession, applies just as much to a person convicted of temporarily taking such a vehicle. The court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Leondra Kruger says that if it did not so decide, a defendant “who takes a low-value vehicle would be better off never returning it.”
Why is the court even spending its time spelling out such a common-sense rule, which avoids what the court says would be a “patently illogical” result? It’s a bit complicated, but the oversimplified explanation is that a literal reading of Proposition 47 leads to the avoided result — Proposition 47 would not apply to a “nontheft” vehicle offense and temporarily taking a vehicle is a “nontheft” offense because “theft” requires the thief to take property intending to permanently deprive the owner of possession. The court concludes that the voters who approved Proposition 47 “could not possibly have intended . . . to split the atom of [a vehicle-taking statute] into two separate crimes — permanent taking and the included offense of temporary taking — with the latter punished more harshly than the former.”
Also, the court rejects the Attorney General’s proposed distinction that would allow harsher punishment for taking a vehicle by driving it away than for taking a vehicle by other means, such as towing. As inspiration for his proposal, the Attorney General looked to an episode of MTV’s series Punk’d, a reference likely to cause puzzlement in future generations — and in certain current ones — who read the opinion.
The court reverses the Fourth District, Division Two, Court of Appeal.