People v. Garcia
| Decision Date | 25 February 2016 |
| Docket Number | No. S218233.,S218233. |
| Citation | 365 P.3d 928,199 Cal.Rptr.3d 164,62 Cal.4th 1116 |
| Court | California Supreme Court |
| Parties | The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Hugo GARCIA, Defendant and Appellant. |
Nancy J. King, San Diego, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Appellant.
Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette and Gerald A. Engler, Chief Assistant Attorneys General, Julie L. Garland, Assistant Attorney General, Kristine A. Gutierrez, Steven T. Oetting, Lise Jacobson and Lynne G. McGinnis, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
CUÉLLAR
, J.
Section 459 of the Penal Code1
provides, in part, that "[e]very person who enters any house, room, ... shop, warehouse, store, ... or other building ... with intent to commit grand or petit larceny or any felony is guilty of burglary." In this case, defendant Hugo Garcia (Garcia) entered a commercial store in Escondido, California with the intent to commit a robbery inside. After accomplishing the robbery, Garcia took the robbery victim—a store employee—to a bathroom in the back of the business, bound her hands, and raped her. The jury convicted Garcia of aggravated kidnapping, forcible rape, and two burglaries, among other offenses. The two burglary convictions were based on the theory that Garcia's entry into the store with the intent to commit a robbery, followed by his entry into the store's bathroom with the intent to rape, constituted two burglaries rather than one. The Court of Appeal affirmed the convictions.
What we conclude is this: the simple fact that a defendant has committed two entries with felonious intent into a structure and a room within that structure does not permit multiple burglary convictions. Where a burglar enters a structure enumerated under section 459
with the requisite felonious intent, and then subsequently enters a room within that structure with such intent, the burglar may be charged with multiple burglaries only if the subsequently entered room provides a separate and objectively reasonable expectation of protection from intrusion relative to the larger structure. Such a separate expectation of privacy and safety may exist where there is proof that the internal space is owned, leased, occupied, or otherwise possessed by a distinct entity; or that the room or space is secured against the rest of the space within the structure, making the room similar in nature to the stand-alone structures enumerated in section 459.
Though the facts are somewhat close in this case, the evidence of the bathroom's location and characteristics is insufficient to show that it provided to its occupants a separate and reasonable expectation of protection from intrusion and danger, beyond that provided by the shop itself. We therefore reverse the Court of Appeal's judgment upholding Garcia's dual burglary convictions.
On the afternoon of May 18, 2011, victim M. was working behind the counter at an Escondido store that provided food and other services for pregnant women and young children. Shortly after she arrived at the store, M. noticed a young man, later identified as Garcia, slowly riding a bicycle in front of the store and looking inside. M. was the only store employee working at the time. A short time later, Garcia entered the store, looked around, smiled at M., and left. Garcia subsequently reentered the store and walked up to the counter where M. was working. Garcia kept one hand in his jacket pocket while he asked M. questions about the store's welfare recipient voucher program. M. found the questions "weird," and sent a text message to a coworker telling her there was a strange man inside the store and she was afraid for her safety.
Garcia then asked M. about a jar of candies on the store counter. As M. went to open the jar of candies to offer some to Garcia, Garcia pulled a gun out of his pocket. Garcia pointed the gun at M. and ordered her to hand over the money from the cash register. M. complied and asked Garcia not to hurt her. Garcia continued to point the gun at M. while asking her if she had any money. M. found a few dollars in her pants pocket and gave them to Garcia. Garcia continued to point the gun at M. and directed her to close the front door of the store. At Garcia's direction, M. removed the "open" sign from the store door and turned off the lights. M. pleaded with Garcia to leave her alone and not to hurt her.
Instead, Garcia pointed the gun at M.'s back and ordered her to walk toward the back of the store. Garcia asked M. if she had the key to the back office of the store. M. responded that she did not. Garcia then asked M. if the store had a bathroom. When M. said yes, Garcia told M. to go into the bathroom, which was located down a hallway and behind the office in the back of the store, out of sight of the main part of the store. M. refused and begged Garcia to leave her alone, telling him she had a daughter waiting for her at home. Garcia waved the gun at M., directed her into the bathroom, and ordered her to take off her clothes. M. entered the bathroom and removed her pants and blouse.
Garcia followed M. into the bathroom while continuing to point the gun in her direction. He ordered M. to remove all of her clothes and to turn around and face him. Garcia briefly left the bathroom and returned with some children's hair bands, which he attempted to use to tie M.'s hands. Because Garcia held the gun close to M.'s chest while attempting to tie her hands, causing M. to become afraid the gun would accidentally fire, M. offered to bind her own hands. After she did so, Garcia left the bathroom again and returned with more hair bands. He directed M. to tie up her feet, but she was unable to do so because she was trembling with fear. As M. attempted to bind her feet, Garcia again left the bathroom.
A few minutes later, Garcia returned to the bathroom for a third time. The zipper of his shorts was down and his erect penis was exposed. He ordered M. to turn away from him and face the mirror in the bathroom. While still pointing the gun at M., he put his fingers and penis inside her vagina. Garcia then removed his fingers but continued to penetrate M. with his penis. When M. began to cry, Garcia told her to "shush" and gestured for her to be quiet as he continued to assault her.
After the sexual assault, Garcia cleaned himself with a paper towel or napkin and told M. to stay in the bathroom. M. got dressed, left the bathroom, and walked into the main part of the store, where she saw Garcia opening drawers and looking through them. Garcia ordered M. to return to the bathroom, followed her there, and then shut the door to the bathroom with M. inside. M. remained in the bathroom until she no longer heard Garcia moving about the store. After exiting the bathroom, M. found the store empty. When M. looked out the window in the front of the store, she saw Garcia driving her white sports utility vehicle out of the store parking lot. M. left the store and went to a nearby business for help.
Garcia was later convicted of, among other things, two counts of burglary, aggravated kidnapping, forcible rape, and rape with a foreign object, along with various enhancements. The verdict reflected the jury's determination that Garcia committed separate crimes of burglary when he entered the store, and then when he subsequently entered the bathroom, with the intent to commit a felony inside each space. The trial court sentenced Garcia to an aggregate term of 74 years 4 months to life.
On review, the Court of Appeal held that Garcia was properly convicted of two burglaries based on his respective entries into the store and the bathroom. The court rejected Garcia's argument that his entry into the store itself "subsumed entry into the bathroom located in the back of the store" and precluded his conviction for a separate burglary offense. In reaching this conclusion, the court relied heavily on the text of the burglary statute—which prohibits the entry with felonious intent into any "room" (§ 459
)—and on our decision in People v. Sparks (2002) 28 Cal.4th 71, 120 Cal.Rptr.2d 508, 47 P.3d 289 (Sparks ). In Sparks, we considered a defendant's conviction for burglary based on his entry into a bedroom within a single-family house with the intention to commit a felony inside. The jury had been instructed that it could convict the defendant of burglary if it found that the defendant entered the home, or any room within that home, with the intent to commit a felony inside. (Id. at p. 75, 120 Cal.Rptr.2d 508, 47 P.3d 289.) We upheld the jury's conviction, holding that a burglary conviction could be supported by the defendant's entry into a bedroom with a felonious intent formed "after entering the house, but prior to entering the bedroom." (Id. at p. 75, 120 Cal.Rptr.2d 508, 47 P.3d 289 ; see id. at p. 78, 120 Cal.Rptr.2d 508, 47 P.3d 289.) Relying on portions of Sparks that it believed suggested an expansive definition of the term "room" in section 459, the Court of Appeal found Sparks to support a separate conviction for the burglary of an interior room, even when that burglary is preceded by an entry with the requisite intent into the enclosing structure. It rejected authority from other Courts of Appeal (People v. Richardson (2004) 117 Cal.App.4th 570, 575, 11 Cal.Rptr.3d 802 (Richardson ); People v. Thomas (1991) 235 Cal.App.3d 899, 905–906, 1 Cal.Rptr.2d 434 & fn. 2 (Thomas )) suggesting that a defendant may only be convicted of a single burglary if he or she enters various rooms in a single-family home with the intent to commit felonies inside. Because the crimes in this case occurred in a commercial building rather than a "single-family dwelling," the Court of Appeal found these cases to be distinguishable.
The Court of Appeal modified the trial court's judgment to stay the sentence imposed for burglary with the intent to commit sexual assault. It affirmed the judgment in all other respects.
In reviewing the Court of Appeal's judgment...
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