It’s not often that the Supreme Court splits 4-3. (A May 4-3 division was the court’s first in almost two years.) Rarer still is when all appointees of Governor Jerry Brown are by themselves on a case. But that’s what happened today in People v. Henson, with three Brown justices in dissent. It might be the first instance of Brown appointees voting alone as a block since, before Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar left the court, they formed a four-justice majority almost three years ago in a privacy decision, Mathews v. Becerra (2019) 8 Cal.5th 756 (see here).
In Henson, the court’s opinion by Justice Martin Jenkins holds a district attorney can, without superior court permission, file a single information combining related offenses that were the subject of separate preliminary hearings. As is often the case, the decision requires parsing some less-than-pellucid statutory language and examining legislative history.
Justice Leondra Kruger dissents, for herself and Justices Goodwin Liu and Joshua Groban. She criticizes what she terms an “unusual deviation from standard charging procedures” and calls it a rule that can be effective only during a 15-day period. It’s “the Cheshire Cat of procedural rules,” Justice Kruger says. The dissent admits that the majority’s statutory interpretation is “not impossible,” but claims “the reading does not seem especially likely.”
The court affirms a divided Fifth District Court of Appeal published opinion, although, the court says, “we do not employ the Court of Appeal’s reasoning.”