People v. Davis

• Decision Date: 11 April 1985
• Docket Number: Cr. 23560
• Citation: 212 Cal.Rptr. 673,166 Cal.App.3d 760
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Richard Mike DAVIS, Defendant and Appellant. A011172.

Page 673

212 Cal.Rptr. 673

166 Cal.App.3d 760

The PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Richard Mike DAVIS, Defendant and Appellant.

A011172.

Cr. 23560.

Court of Appeal, First District, Division 2, California.

April 11, 1985.

Certified for Partial Publication ^*

Review Denied June 20, 1985.

Frances Ternus, Berkeley, for appellant.

John K. Van de Kamp, Atty. Gen., Eugene W. Kaster, Ronald E. Niver, Deputy Attys. Gen., San Francisco, for respondent.

ROUSE, Associate Justice.

Defendant Richard Davis appeals from a judgment of conviction after a jury found him guilty of escape by force or violence, in violation of section 4532, subdivision (b), of the Penal Code (hereafter section 4532(b).) ¹

Prior to April 1, 1980, John Stafford, a Deputy United States Marshal for the Northern District of California, was assigned to locate defendant, who had escaped from Terminal Island, a federal prison, sometime in February 1980, following his conviction for various offenses. Deputy Stafford distributed wanted posters of defendant to, among others, the San Francisco Sheriff's Department. On April 1, 1980, acting on a call from a San Francisco deputy sheriff, Deputy Stafford located defendant on a bench on the sixth floor of the San Francisco County Jail. At that time, Deputy Stafford placed defendant in federal custody, took him to the seventh floor of the county jail, and had him booked as a federal prisoner on charges of escape from a federal prison. The sheriff's department received a "remand slip" from the United States Marshal, authorizing it to hold defendant. Defendant was kept in the county jail pursuant to a contract with federal authorities because the nearest federal facility is 16 miles away from the federal courthouse for the Northern District of California.

On April 27, 1980, 13 people escaped from the county jail. Defendant was one of them. However, he was immediately caught just outside the building as he was walking through the parking lot. Not all of the escapees were federal prisoners.

I.

Defendant contends that he did not violate section 4532(b). He points out that the statute makes it a crime for a prisoner "arrested and booked for, charged with, or convicted of a felony " to escape from jail or prison. ( § 4532(b); emphasis added.) Defendant asserts that the word "felony" in the statute is defined by section 17, subdivision (a), which provides: "A felony is a crime which is punishable with death or by imprisonment in the state prison. Every other crime or public offense is a misdemeanor except those offenses that are classified as infractions." He argues that since he was a prisoner because of federal felony charges (i.e., escape from Terminal Island prison, in violation of 18 U.S.C. s

751) and since this federal felony is not a crime "punishable ... by imprisonment in the state prison" ( § 17, subd. (a); emphasis added), the statute did not apply to him. He claims that only those prisoners who are confined due to alleged or actual California offenses can committhe crime of escape.

In determining the meaning of "felony," as used in section 4532(b), our primary concern is to ascertain the Legislature's intent so as to effectuate the law's purpose. (People v. Shirokow (1980) 26 Cal.3d 301, 306-307, 162 Cal.Rptr. 30, 605 P.2d 859.) "We must read the statute in light of both the objective it seeks to achieve and the evil it seeks to avert." (People v. Alday (1973) 10 Cal.3d 392, 395, 110 Cal.Rptr. 617, 515 P.2d 1169.) We must also construe the statute "in a reasonable and common sense manner consistent with [its] apparent purpose and the legislative intent underlying [it]--one practical, rather than technical, and one promoting a wise policy rather than mischief or absurdity." (Herbert Hawkins Realtors, Inc. v. Milheiser (1983) 140 Cal.App.3d 334, 338, 189 Cal.Rptr. 450.)

The legislative intent behind section 4532 is obvious: to deter escapes by persons who have been booked and incarcerated, or previously incarcerated and temporarily in custody outside the confinement facility. (See People v. Diaz (1978) 22 Cal.3d 712, 716, 150 Cal.Rptr. 471, 586 P.2d 952.) The evident purpose of such deterrence is to protect the integrity of custodial authority and confinement facilities. (See In re Culver (1968) 69 Cal.2d 898, 903, 73 Cal.Rptr. 393, 447 P.2d 633.)

Section 4532(b) in no way limits the scope of the term "felony" or excludes therefrom foreign felonies. On the contrary, the term, as used, naturally and reasonably includes felonies from any jurisdiction. In light of the purposes which this section was meant to achieve and the evil it seeks to avert, we believe the term should have this all-inclusive scope. (Cf. Barnes v. District Court of Appeal (1918) 178 Cal. 500, 504-505, 173 P. 1100; People v. Perry (1962) 204 Cal.App.2d 201, 204-205, 22 Cal.Rptr. 54; Matter of Application of Shepard (1917) 35 Cal.App. 492, 497-499, 170 P. 442.) ²

Where two county jail prisoners, one being held on a foreign and the other on a state felony charge, escape together, it seems contrary to reason and common sense to conclude that only the "state" prisoner is guilty of escape under section 4532(b). Clearly the one prisoner's technical status as a "foreign" prisoner does not make his conduct any less of an unlawful departure from the limits of his custody ³ and breach of the jail's integrity than that of any other prisoner. Moreover, where, as here, a "foreign" prisoner violates the security and integrity of California custodial authority and facilities, it would be contrary to the intent of the statute and, in our view, absurd, to interpret the statute in a way that (1) renders the state powerless to punish the "foreign" prisoner/escapee and (2) leaves the state totally dependent on the laws and prosecutorial discretion of a foreign jurisdiction for protection against such a prisoner's escape.

Defendant's interpretation of section 4532(b) reflects a basic misunderstanding of the reason behind the Legislature's use of the term "felony" in the statute. Section 4532, subdivision (a) (hereafter § 4532(a)), proscribes escapes by prisoners being held for misdemeanors. Section 4532(b) proscribes escapes by prisoners being held for felonies. Read as a whole, section 4532 indicates a legislative intent to deter and punish escapes by prisoners who have been "arrested and booked for, charged with, or convicted of" any crime greater than an infraction. (Cf. In re Thompson (1918) 37 Cal.App. 344, 347-348, 174 P. 86.) The statute has "misdemeanor" and "felony" subdivisions, however, because the sentence to be imposed for an escape depends on the seriousness of the offense for which the prisoner was initially confined and whether the escape was accomplished by force or violence. ( § 4532.)

The terms "felony" and "misdemeanor," as used in section 4532, were intended to be used to determine the punishment for an escape and not, as defendant suggests, to provide a jurisdictional definition of the class of prisoners capable of violating the statute.

Defendant seeks to import section 17's definition into section 4532 to limit the meaning of "felony" to California felonies. However, he cites no case in which section 17 has been used for this purpose. ⁴ Indeed, that section was designed for a different, more modest purpose, namely, to "provid[e] a convenient division of crimes into the lesser and the greater, to the end that, in other legislation, the terminology and segregation provided by that section might be taken advantage of whenever, in such legislation, it became necessary to draw a distinction or to allow a difference between crimes of the greater and crimes of the lesser magnitude." (In re Thompson, supra, 37 Cal.App. 344, 347, 174 P. 86.)

Where the use of a foreign offense is clearly permitted, section 17 may not be used to determine whether it is a felony or misdemeanor. (People v. Theodore (1953) 121 Cal.App.2d 17, 29, 262 P.2d 230; Caminetti v. Imperial Mut. L. Ins. Co. (1943) 59 Cal.App.2d 476, 490, 139 P.2d 681.) It is the law of the jurisdiction where the offense is committed that determines its character as a felony or misdemeanor. (Id.) Thus, the accepted use of the section 17 definition has been carefully limited to determining the degrees of California offenses.

Defendant's suggested use goes beyond drawing a distinction between crimes of greater and lesser magnitude and would draw a jurisdictional line between criminal and noncriminal conduct. In light of our discussion, we do not believe that section 17 may be used for this purpose.

Finally, we recognize that when a penal statute is reasonably susceptible of two constructions, that more favorable to the defendant should be adopted. (People v. Davis (1981) 29 Cal.3d 814, 828-829, 176 Cal.Rptr. 521, 633 P.2d 186.) However, this rule is not inflexible and courts decline to apply it where it leads to results that are contrary to legislative intent or that fail to prevent the harm that is identified in the statute or that override common sense and create palpable absurdities. (In re Haines (1925) 195 Cal. 605, 611-612, 234 P. 883; People v. Fair (1967) 254 Cal.App.2d 890, 893, 62 Cal.Rptr. 632; People v. Bradley (1983) 146 Cal.App.3d 721, 725, 194 Cal.Rptr. 549; see also, e.g., People v. Alday, supra, 10 Cal.3d 392, 395, 110 Cal.Rptr. 617, 515 P.2d 1169; People v. Hallner (1954) 43 Cal.2d 715, 721, 277 P.2d 393; Leslie Salt Co. v. San Francisco Bay Conservation etc. Com. (1984) 153 Cal.App.3d 605, 615, 200 Cal.Rptr. 575; Southland Mechanical Constructors Corp. v. Nixen (1981) 119 Cal.App.3d 417, 430-431, 173 Cal.Rptr. 917; Generes v. Justice Court (1980) 106 Cal.App.3d 678, 681-684, 165 Cal.Rptr. 222; People v. Hacker Emporium, Inc. (1971) 15 Cal.App.3d 474, 477-478, 93 Cal.Rptr. 132.)

In this instance, defendant's interpretation is unreasonable--a clever but overly technical and legalistic attempt to exclude a certain type of...