Page 1
Guilty Plea Pursuant to Plea Bargain Doesn’t Preclude Full Resentencing Hearing—C.A.
If Judge Lowers Sentence, Prosecution May Not Withdraw Assent to Bargain, Opinion Says
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Div. One of the Fourth District Court of Appeal held Friday that an inmate who pled guilty under a 2016 plea bargain that called for a 12-year prison sentence is entitled to a full resentencing hearing under Penal Code §1172.75, adding that—contrary to the view recently expressed by another panel—if the judge lowers the sentence, the People are not entitled to withdraw their assent to the agreement.
Under the 2016 plea bargain, the Office of Riverside District Attorney dropped two counts of attempted murder against Robert Carter Jr. and the defendant was allowed to plead guilty to two counts of possessing a deadly weapon. He admitted the truth of a great bodily injury allegation as well as a prison prior and a strike prior.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, in October 2022, referred the case to the Riverside Superior Court for recall and resentencing under §1171.1, enacted in 2021 as Senate Bill 483, later renumbered §1172.75.
Judge Randall S. Stamen struck a one-year prison prior. Sec. 1172.75(a) invalidates pre-2020 prison prior that did not stem from a “sexually violent offense.”
Stamen commented that Carter had “taken advantage of the rehabilitative aspects of incarceration, earning several certificates of completion and letters of appreciation,” and that he would take that “into account at a full resentencing hearings” if Carter’s “conviction and sentencing were not the product of an accepted plea bargain.”
Full Resentencing Hearing
In an opinion reversing the order denying such a hearing, Justice Martin N. Buchanan, expressing partial agreement with the Oct. 17 decision by Div. One of the First District Court of Appeal in People v. Coddington, said:
“[A] defendant eligible for removal of a prison prior under section 1172.75 must be provided an opportunity for full resentencing to argue for further relief under any other ameliorative changes in law that reduce sentences, regardless of whether their sentence resulted from a plea agreement.”
The justice continued:
“Where we part ways with Coddington, however, is on the question of whether the prosecution is then entitled to withdraw from the parties’ plea agreement should the trial court choose to exercise its discretion in further reducing the defendant’s sentence beyond merely striking the one-year prison-prior enhancement. We conclude that the answer is no.”
He declared:
“[W]e determine that, in enacting Senate Bill 483, the Legislature intended that the full resentencing procedure in section 1172.75 should be applied to all sentences, including stipulated sentences imposed as part of a plea bargain, and that the prosecution may not withdraw from the plea bargain if the court imposes a lower sentence on resentencing.”
Humes’s View
Presiding Justice James M. Humes said in Coddington:
“Although the Legislature clearly intended that the striking of a sentencing enhancement for a prior prison term would not provide a basis for rescinding a plea agreement, this intent cannot be understood to govern other possible sentence reductions merely because they happen to occur during the same resentencing.”
He remarked:
“The trial court here followed Senate Bill No. 483’s clear directive in striking the prison prior but otherwise leaving intact the plea agreement.”
Contrary View
Viewing it differently, Buchanan wrote that the First District “did not explain where it found this ‘clear directive,’ and we do not see it.”
In enacting SB 483, the Legislature declared:
“It is the intent of the Legislature that any changes to a sentence as a result of the act that added this section shall not be a basis for a prosecutor or court to rescind a plea agreement.”
Buchanan said: “The statement of legislative intent in Senate Bill 483 does not differentiate between a sentence reduced by removal of the prison-prior enhancement and a sentence reduced due to other resentencing decisions made by the trial court. Instead, it broadly refers to ‘any changes’ to the sentence resulting under the new law and then states that those changes do not give the prosecution a right to withdraw from a plea agreement.”
Impairment of Contracts
The Office of Attorney General argued that a plea bargain is a contract, and the state and federal constitutions prohibit laws impairing the obligations of contracts. Buchanan responded:
“We conclude that the People do not have standing to assert such a violation.”
He explained:
“A county district attorney acts as an agent of the State of California when prosecuting crimes….Thus, a plea bargain such as the one between Carter and the People is essentially a contract entered into by the district attorney on behalf of the state….It follows that when the People enter into a contract on behalf of the state, they cannot later assert that the state has unconstitutionally passed a law impairing that contract.”
The case is People v. Carter, 2023 S.O.S. 3686.
Copyright 2023, Metropolitan News Company