At the Supreme Court’s Wednesday conference, actions of note included:

  • The court granted-and-held in Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association v. Amador Water Agency, to resolve an apparent intra-district conflict.  (See rule 8.500(b)(1) [one ground for review is “to secure uniformity of decision”].)  Action on Amador Water, a Third District Court of Appeal case, is deferred pending a decision in Wilde v. City of Dunsmuir, also a Third District case, in which the Supreme Court granted review in January.  The issue in Wilde is whether the electorate can use the referendum power (Cal. Const., art. II, § 9) to challenge a city’s resolution increasing water fees or whether such a challenge is expressly limited to the power of initiative (Cal. Const., arts. XIII C & XIII D, § 6 (Proposition 218)).  The three-justice panel in Wilde said a referendum is OK.  In Amador Water, however, a two-thirds different panel held it’s not.  There was one justice who sat on both cases, and he proposed a way to harmonize the two.  After signing the Wilde opinion, he wrote a concurring opinion in Amador Water to distinguish Wilde, but he later dissented from a modification of the Amador Water majority opinion and voted to grant rehearing.
  • The court dismissed review in People v. Arredondo in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s divided decision in Mitchell v. Wisconsin (2019) __ U.S. __ [139 S.Ct. 2525].  Arredondo concerned the warrantless taking of a blood sample from an unconscious individual.  In Mitchell, the high court held that, when a “driver is unconscious and therefore cannot be given a breath test . . . , . . . the exigent-circumstances rule almost always permits a blood test without a warrant.”  The state high court also dismissed review in 5 cases that were grant-and-holds for Arredondo.
  • The court dismissed review as improvidently granted in People v. Frazier, a fully briefed case.  When it granted the defendant’s petition for review in Frazier last October, the court limited the issue to, “Was the court’s failure to instruct the jury that the special circumstance required the aider and abettor harbor the intent to kill prejudicial?”
  • The court denied review in People v. Montiel, but Justice Leondra Kruger recorded a vote to grant.  In a published opinion, the First District, Division One, upheld a restitution award of noneconomic damages to the mother of an eight-year-old whom the defendant was convicted of sexually abusing.  A 42-page dissent agreed the conviction should be affirmed, but claimed there is no statutory basis for the noneconomic damage restitution award.
  • Under Proposition 66, the court transferred to superior courts four capital habeas corpus petitions.  (See here.)
  • There were eight criminal case grant-and-holds.