In People v. Arellano, the Supreme Court on Thursday restricted a superior court’s resentencing options for defendants who successfully have their murder convictions vacated under 2018 legislation — Senate Bill 1437 — that limited accomplice liability for felony murder and eliminated it for murder under the natural-and-probable-consequences doctrine.
The court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Kelli Evans concludes that, although the relevant statute — Penal Code section 1172.6 — requires a defendant be resentenced for the felony on which the vacated murder conviction was based even if that felony was not charged, an enhancement to the felony can’t be imposed “unless [it] was pled and either proven to the trier of fact or by the defendant’s admission in open court.” In the case before the court, a second degree murder conviction was vacated and the defendant was properly resentenced for attempted robbery, but the superior court erred in also imposing a firearm use enhancement.
The court said, “We deem it unlikely the Legislature intended to allow the prosecution to effectively revisit its charging decisions for the entire range of offense-specific sentencing allegations and enhancements every time a petitioner succeeds in setting aside a murder conviction under section 1172.6.”
Since its enactment, SB 1437 has been a mainstay of the court’s docket. (See, e.g., here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)
The court affirmed the Sixth District’s published opinion “to the extent it ordered the firearm use enhancement stricken,” but reversed “to the extent [the appellate court] ordered a remand to the trial court for redesignation of the underlying felony or felonies.” The Sixth District had disagreed with the First District, Division Five, opinion in People v. Howard (2020) 50 Cal.App.5th 727 about when an enhancement can be imposed on resentencing, but the Supreme Court distinguished Howard instead of disapproving it.