People v. Trevino

• Decision Date: 26 July 2001
• Docket Number: No. S085410.,S085410.
• Citation: 26 Cal.4th 237,109 Cal.Rptr.2d 567,27 P.3d 283
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Marcos TREVINO, Defendant and Appellant. In re Marcos Trevino on Habeas Corpus.

109 Cal.Rptr.2d 567

26 Cal.4th 237

27 P.3d 283

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Marcos TREVINO, Defendant and Appellant.

In re Marcos Trevino on Habeas Corpus.

No. S085410.

Supreme Court of California.

July 26, 2001.

Gail Harper, San Francisco, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Appellant.

Bill Lockyer, Attorney General, David P. Druliner, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Carol Wendelin Pollack, Assistant Attorney General, Sanjay T. Kumar, John R. Gorey, Kenneth C. Byrne and Alan D. Tate, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

KENNARD, J.

In California, the penalty for first degree murder is either death or life imprisonment without possibility of parole if the prosecution proves one or more of the special circumstances specified in Penal Code section 190.2.¹ (See People v. Bacigalupo (1993) 6 Cal.4th 457, 467-468, 24 Cal.Rptr.2d 808, 862 P.2d 808.) One of these special circumstances, commonly known as the prior-murder special circumstance, is that "[t]he defendant was convicted previously of murder in the first or second degree." (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(2).) For this purpose, "an offense committed in another jurisdiction, which if committed in California would be punishable as first or second degree murder, shall be deemed murder in the first or second degree." (Ibid.)

Under these provisions, defendant Marcos Trevino was sentenced to imprisonment for life without possibility of parole for a murder he committed in 1996, with the special circumstance that he had previously been convicted of murder in Texas in 1978. Defendant was 33 years old when he committed the current murder, and he was 15 years old when he committed the prior Texas murder. Since January 1, 1995, a person may be tried as an adult in California for a murder committed at the age of 14 years or older. (See Welf. & Inst.Code, § 707, subd. (d)(2); Hicks v. Superior Court (1995) 36 Cal.App.4th 1649, 43 Cal.Rptr.2d 269.) In 1978, however, a person could not have been tried as an adult in California for an offense committed at an age younger than 16 years. (People v. Andrews (1989) 49 Cal.3d 200, 221, fn. 18, 260 Cal.Rptr. 583, 776 P.2d 285.)

The issue defendant raises here is this: May a prior-murder special-circumstance finding be based on an offense committed in another jurisdiction if, under the law as it then was, the defendant was too young to be tried as an adult in California? We conclude that it may.

I

The circumstances of the homicide that resulted in defendant's current murder conviction need not be repeated in detail here. It is sufficient to note that a jury found him guilty of first degree murder (§§ 187, subd. (a), 189), with a finding that he personally used a firearm to commit the offense (§ 12022.5, subd. (a)), based on evidence that in February 1996, after quarrelling with Mario Nunez in the yard of defendant's residence, defendant obtained a handgun from his house and shot the unarmed Nunez three times at close range, firing the final shot while Nunez was lying helpless on the ground.

In 1978, when he was 15 years old, defendant had been tried as an adult and convicted of murder in Texas. The prosecution alleged the Texas conviction as a qualifying prior-murder special circumstance. Defendant moved to strike this allegation, arguing that because he could not then have been tried as an adult in California if he had committed the same offense in this state, the Texas conviction could not be deemed a conviction of first or second degree murder under the prior-murder special circumstance. The trial court denied the motion to strike. Defendant then admitted the allegation.

For the first degree murder of Nunez, with the prior-murder special circumstance based on the 1978 Texas murder conviction, the superior court sentenced defendant to imprisonment for life without possibility of parole. Defendant appealed from the judgment of conviction. In the Court of Appeal, defendant renewed his argument, rejected by the trial court, that the prior-murder special circumstance could not be based on an offense committed in another jurisdiction if, when he committed that offense, the defendant was too young to be tried as an adult in California. Agreeing with defendant, the Court of Appeal set aside the prior-murder special-circumstance finding, vacated the sentence, and remanded the matter to the trial court for resentencing. The court denied defendant's related petition for a writ of habeas corpus. We granted the People's petition for review.

II

The issue before us is one of statutory construction. Our task "is to ascertain and effectuate legislative intent." (People v. Gardeley (1996) 14 Cal.4th 605, 621, 59 Cal.Rptr.2d 356, 927 P.2d 713.) We begin by considering the statute's words because they are generally the most reliable indicator of legislative intent. (Ibid.; see also Holloway v. United States (1999) 526 U.S. 1, 6, 119 S.Ct. 966, 143 L.Ed.2d 1.) "When looking to the words of the statute, a court gives the language its usual, ordinary meaning." (People v. Snook (1997) 16 Cal.4th 1210, 1215, 69 Cal.Rptr.2d 615, 947 P.2d 808; accord, Lennane v. Franchise Tax Bd. (1994) 9 Cal.4th 263, 268, 36 Cal.Rptr.2d 563, 885 P.2d 976.)

The provision we must construe reads: "For the purpose of this paragraph, an offense committed in another jurisdiction, which if committed in California would be punishable as first or second degree murder, shall be deemed murder in the first or second degree." (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(2).) According to the ordinary meaning of this text, a conviction in another jurisdiction may be used if the "offense" would be punishable as first or second degree murder if committed in California. Thus, the focus is on the conduct, not the age or other personal characteristics of the person who engaged in that conduct. It is the offense, and not necessarily the offender, that must satisfy statutory requirements for punishment under California law as first or second degree murder.

Section 190.2 was enacted by voter initiative in 1978, but the language of its subdivision (a)(2) is identical to a provision that the Legislature enacted as part of the 1977 death penalty law. (People v. Andrews, supra, 49 Cal.3d 200, 222, 260 Cal. Rptr. 583, 776 P.2d 285.) In the absence of anything suggesting the contrary, we infer that the voters who enacted section 190.2 intended subdivision (a)(2) to have the same meaning as the identically worded provision drafted by the Legislature.

The Legislature knows how to draft a provision to require consideration of the defendant's age or other personal characteristic when it wants to impose this requirement. The Legislature has provided in section 668: "Every person who has been convicted in any other state, government, country, or jurisdiction of an offense for which, if committed within this state, that person could have been punished under the laws of this state by imprisonment in the state prison, is punishable for any subsequent crime committed within this state in the manner prescribed by law and to the same extent as if that prior conviction had taken place in a court of this state." (Italics added.) According to the plain meaning of this text, a conviction in another jurisdiction may be used if the same "person" could have been punished by imprisonment for the same conduct had it been committed in this state. Thus, section 668 would permit consideration of a defendant's age in determining whether that defendant could have been imprisoned for the same conduct in California.²

When the Legislature uses materially different language in statutory provisions addressing the same subject or related subjects, the normal inference is that the Legislature intended a difference in meaning. (People v. Drake (1977) 19 Cal.3d 749, 755, 139 Cal.Rptr. 720, 566 P.2d 622.) Consistent with this general principle of statutory construction, we infer that the Legislature, when it used wording distinctly different from section 668 to define the circumstances under which offenses committed in other jurisdictions would qualify for use under the prior-murder special-circumstance provision of the 1977 death penalty law, did not intend to incorporate all the restrictions of section 668. And we infer that the voters had the same intent when they used the language of the 1977 death penalty law's prior-murder special-circumstance provision in section 190.2. We therefore conclude that under section 190.2, subdivision (a)(2), the determination whether a conviction in another jurisdiction qualifies under California's prior-murder special circumstance depends entirely upon whether the offense committed in the other jurisdiction involved conduct that satisfies all the elements of first or second degree murder under California law.

In reaching a different conclusion, the Court of Appeal relied on the reasoning of our decision in People v. Andrews, supra, 49 Cal.3d 200, 260 Cal.Rptr. 583, 776 P.2d 285. There, this court upheld a prior-murder special-circumstance finding based on the defendant's 1967 Alabama murder conviction for a crime he had committed when he was 16 years old. In 1967, a person of the defendant's age could have been tried as an adult for murder in California, but only if the juvenile court had found him unfit to be dealt with under juvenile court law. The defendant argued that this restriction precluded use of the Alabama conviction as a basis for the prior-murder special-circumstance finding.

Rejecting the argument, we stated:

"The language of the statute does not support defendant's interpretation. Defendant is attempting to characterize the words "would be punishable' as if they were synonymous with the term `would be punished.' `Punishable' has been defined as `[d]eserving of or capable or liable to punishment; capable of being punished by law or right.' (Black's Law Diet. (5th ed.1979) p. 1110, col. 1.) The word does not denote certainty of punishment, but...