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Court of Appeal:
Judge Could Not Hike Sentence Imposed Five Years Earlier
Justices Decline to Follow 2023 Decision From Fourth District Declaring That Statutorily Unauthorized Sentence Is ‘Void’ and May Be Corrected at Any Time, Including Lengthening the Prescribed Term of Confinement
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Court of Appeal for this district has declared that the Los Angeles Superior Court lacked fundamental jurisdiction in 2023 to boost the term of a man’s commitment to prison by nearly three years based on a judge’s recently discovered 2018 sentencing miscalculation.
A botched sentence is not necessarily one that is “void” and therefore correctable at any time, it was held.
Justice Gail Ruderman Feuer of Div. Seven authored Wednesday’s opinion which repudiates a contrary view of Div. One of the Fourth District’s Court of Appeal. It dismisses the appeal by Joseph Ray Singleton for lack of jurisdiction, but construes his entreaty for relief as a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, and grants it.
Feuer wrote:
“Although Singleton’s 2018 sentence was unauthorized, that does not mean the trial court in 2023 had jurisdiction to correct the sentencing error.”
Sentencing Judge Unavailable
That error was committed by then-Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Craig Mitchell to whom the resentencing matter was initially routed. He was unavailable to handle it to the conclusion because he went on a leave of absence while campaigning, unsuccessfully, for the post of Los Angeles County district attorney.
The case was reassigned to Judge James R. Dabney. He acted in response to a letter from a case records manager at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (“CDCR”) informing the Superior Court that the abstract of judgment in Singleton’s case “may be in error.”
The letter suggests that although the defendant was sentenced to one-third of the middle term for dissuading a witness (doubled, based on recidivism), the full term should have been imposed on that count. The case involved Singleton concealing his minor daughter from his wife and inflicting physical injury on the spouse.
Dabney, in the presence of the inmate’s lawyer but with Singleton absent, on Sept. 20, 2023, changed the sentence from one of 10 years eight months to 13 years four months, declaring:
“It’s not a resentencing....It’s a correction of an error in the sentence.”
Penal Code §1172.1
Feuer noted that Penal Code §1172.1(a)(1) authorizes a trial court to alter a sentence, but only under specified circumstances, none of which, she said, applies.
Although the section was amended by Assembly Bill 600 in 2023, those changes do not have a bearing on whether the statute applies to Singleton.
In September 2023, as now, §1172.1(a)(1) provided that if the requisites for resentencing are met, the court may “recall the sentence and commitment previously ordered and resentence the defendant in the same manner as if” he or she “had not previously been sentenced, whether or not the defendant is still in custody, and provided the new sentence, if any, is no greater than the initial sentence.”
The justice pointed out:
“Here, the modified sentence was almost three years longer than the original sentence.”
At the time Dabney altered Singleton’s sentence, as at present, §1172.1(a)(1) said that a judge has a power to resentence, sua sponte, “within 120 days of the date of commitment.”
Feuer noted that “[n]early five years passed before the court modified the sentence in September 2023.”
Recommendation by Secretary
The statute, then as now, specified that there may be a resentencing “at any time upon the recommendation of the secretary” of the CDCR or certain other officials.
“A correctional case records manager is not the secretary,” Feuer said.
She also mentioned that the observation from the case records manager that there “may be an error” in the abstract of judgment does not amount to a recommendation.
“Whether a trial court has jurisdiction to modify a defendant’s sentence in response to a letter from CDCR pointing out a likely error in the sentence (absent a recommendation from the Secretary) raises an issue of general concern,” she remarked.
A clerical error may be corrected at any time, Feuer acknowledged, but wrote:
“[T]he parties agree the unauthorized sentence was not a clerical error….Here, the trial court made a judicial error because it did not impose the legally required sentence.”
Decision in Codinha
Feuer addressed the contrary 2023 decision in People v. Codinha rendered by Div. One of the Fourth District Court of Appeal. Authoring that opinion was Justice Joan K. Irion, who wrote:
“[T]the imposition of a sentence unauthorized by law is a jurisdictional error that may be corrected whenever it comes to the court’s attention, even if correction requires imposition of a longer sentence.”
Among the authorities she cited was the California Supreme Court’s 1904 decision in People v. Davis, which says:
“The power of a court to vacate a judgment or order void upon its face is not extinguished by lapse of time, but may be exercised whenever the matter is brought to the attention of the court. While a motion for such action on the part of the court is entirely appropriate, neither motion nor notice to an adverse party is essential. The court has full power to take such action on its own motion and without any application on the part of any one.”
Irion declared:
“Appellate courts have routinely characterized as ‘void’ sentences that were not authorized by law and therefore exceeded the power of the trial court to impose.”
The jurist cited the California Supreme Court’s 1966 decision in In re Sandel where imposition of an unauthorized concurrent sentence was found to be “void.”
From case law, she said, “we discern the following rule: A trial court that imposes a sentence unauthorized by law retains jurisdiction (or has inherent power) to correct the sentence at any time the error comes to its attention, even if execution of the sentence has commenced or the judgment imposing the sentence has become final and correction requires imposition of a more severe sentence, provided the error is apparent from the face of the record.”
Feuer’s Contrary View
Feuer wrote:
“We agree that a trial court has jurisdiction to modify a void judgment at any time.”
But she added:
“[W]e do not agree with the Codinha court that the Supreme Court’s decision in Sandel….holds that an unauthorized sentence….is a void sentence that may be corrected at any time, even without another basis for jurisdiction.”
She quoted Justice Stanley Mosk as saying in Sandel:
“Since the entire question of the legality of petitioner’s confinement is before us on this application for habeas corpus, we take the opportunity to make a judicial correction of the sentencing error….”
There, Feuer said, jurisdiction was created by the defendant pursuing a petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
She cited the 2022 Court of Appeal decision by this district’s Div. Two in People v. King with which Irion disagreed and the and the 2024 opinion in People v. Boyd from the Fourth District’s Div. Two which sided with King, and commented:
“We agree with King and Boyd and find those cases more persuasive than Codinha. Although Singleton’s 2018 sentence was unauthorized, that does not mean the trial court in 2023 had jurisdiction to correct the sentencing error.”
Agreement, Disagreement
Irion and Feuer were in agreement that a judge’s misunderstanding of sentencing statutes cannot result in a “clerical error” and that §1172.1(a)(1) does not apply where a CDCR clerk merely queries whether a mistake was made. While the major disagreement was over the issue of whether an unauthorized sentence is void, they also differed over the relevance of the statute’s provision that a resentencing may not result in an increased sentence.
Feuer cited the provision in support of her view that Singleton’s sentence could not be lengthened by Dabney. Irion took the position that §1172.1(a)(1) is foreign to the dispute, hence the bar contained in it to an upward adjustment of a sentence cannot be invoked.
She said that “by increasing” the “aggregate prison term” of defendant Joseph Codinha “ by 16 months, the court could not have been acting pursuant to section 1172.1” under the circumstances.
Explains Resolution
Explaining the court’s resolution of Singleton’s purported appeal, Feuer said:
“Because the [trial] court did not have jurisdiction, we likewise do not have jurisdiction, and we dismiss the appeal. However, leaving the modified (and void) sentence in place would be manifestly unjust, and we therefore treat the appeal, in part, as a petition for a writ of habeas corpus and order the court to vacate the order modifying the sentence and reinstate the original sentence. We do so without prejudice to Singleton, the People, the trial court, or the CDCR seeking to correct Singleton’s initial sentence through a valid procedure that vests the court with jurisdiction to modify the sentence.”
She remarked that it would otherwise be “manifestly unjust” given that Singleton’s sentence was increased “by three years without his presence.”
Her opinion directs that Dabney’s 2023 sentence be vacated and that Mitchell’s 2018 judgment be re-entered.
The case is People v. Singleton, 2025 S.O.S. 2449.
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