At the Supreme Court’s Wednesday conference yesterday — a double one — actions of note included:
- The court granted review in another case interpreting a provision added by 2018’s Senate Bill No. 1437 that allows resentencing of some defendants convicted of felony murder or murder under a natural-and-probable-consequences theory. (See also here.) In People v. Strong, an unpublished Third District Court of Appeal opinion waded into a scrum of conflicting published cases — many, but not all, of which are grant-and-holds for People v. Lewis (see here) — and sided with the ones that concluded a jury’s felony-murder special circumstances finding precludes relief under a resentencing petition, unless the finding has first been successfully challenged by a habeas corpus petition. Two double conferences ago, the court granted review in People v. Duke to decide a different SB 1437 resentencing issue. Strong already has its own grant-and-holds (see below).
- The court denied a pro per petition for review in People v. Harvey, but Justices Goodwin Liu and Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar recorded votes to grant. In an unpublished opinion, the Fourth District, Division One, affirmed a superior court’s ex parte declining to resentence the defendant as the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation had recommended. The appellate court rejected arguments that the recommendation triggered a right for the defendant to be heard at a noticed hearing and that the defendant had a right to appointed counsel at a hearing. In January, Justice Joshua Groban alone recorded a dissenting vote from the denial of review in a similar case. (See here.)
- Justices Liu and Cuéllar also recorded dissenting votes from the denial of review in Sandoval v. Superior Court, after the Fourth District, Division Three, summarily denied a writ petition. Because the Supreme Court’s and Court of Appeal’s dockets don’t disclose what the case is about, and because the petition for review is not readily available (cf. here), we can’t tell what issue interested the dissenting justices.
- The court granted-and-held two petitions for review arising from the same case, In re B.K. (here and here). The case(s) are waiting for a decision in In re A.R., which was argued in January. The court limited the issues in A.R. to: “1. Does a parent in a juvenile dependency case have the right to challenge her counsel’s failure to file a timely notice of appeal from an order terminating her parental rights under Welfare and Institutions Code section 366.26? (See Welf. & Inst. Code, § 317.5, subd. (a); In re Kristin H. (1996) 46 Cal.App.4th 1635 [ineffective assistance of counsel claim in dependency proceeding brought on a petition for writ of habeas corpus].) 2. If so, what are the proper procedures for raising such a claim?” In B.K., the Second District, Division Seven, dismissed an appeal as untimely.
- In Holguin v. Superior Court, the court granted review and transferred the case back to the First District, Division One, which had denied a writ petition in a detailed order. The appellate court was directed to “issue an order to show cause why petitioner is not entitled to the relief requested, based on his claim that the prosecution failed to prove a policy governing the opening of closed containers during an inventory search. (See People v. Williams (1999) 20 Cal.4th 119, 138.)”
- There were 24 criminal case grant-and-holds: seven more holding for a decision in People v. Lewis (see here), three more holding for People v. Lopez (see here), one more holding for Lewis and Lopez, one holding for Lopez and People v. Tirado (see here), one holding for Lewis and People v. Delgadillo (see here), three holding for People v. Strong (see above), two holding for Lewis and Strong, two more holding for People v. Raybon (see here), two more holding for People v. Duke (see here), one more holding for People v. Lemcke (originally People v. Rudd, although it probably should still be Rudd, because the court granted Rudd’s petition for review and denied Lemcke’s) (see here), which was argued last week, and one more holding for People v. Henderson (see here).