People v. Gonzalez
| Decision Date | 17 February 1995 |
| Docket Number | No. B086955,B086955 |
| Citation | 32 Cal.App.4th 533,38 Cal.Rptr.2d 235 |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
| Parties | Previously published at 32 Cal.App.4th 533, 36 Cal.App.4th 870, 41 Cal.App.4th 7 32 Cal.App.4th 533, 36 Cal.App.4th 870, 41 Cal.App.4th 7 The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Jessie GONZALEZ, Defendant and Appellant. |
Michael P. Judge, Public Defender, Albert J. Menaster, Cynthia Solomon and Alex Ricciardulli, Deputy Public Defenders, for defendant and appellant.
James K. Hahn, City Atty., Debbie Lew and Candice I. Horikawa, Deputy City Attys., for plaintiff and respondent.
In an effort to curtail criminal activity by the Blythe Street gang, the People of the State of California applied to the superior court for (and obtained) a preliminary injunction restraining certain activities. About a month later, Jessie Gonzalez, a member of the Blythe Street gang, was served with a copy of the injunction. A few weeks after that, a criminal complaint was filed charging Gonzalez with four counts of misdemeanor contempt based upon violations of the injunction. At trial, the municipal court refused to rule on Gonzalez's attack on the validity of the preliminary injunction, concluding (correctly) that it had no jurisdiction to consider the validity of an order issued by the superior court. Gonzalez was thereafter convicted as charged. On appeal, the appellate department of the superior court affirmed Gonzalez's conviction, concluding (correctly) that it had no jurisdiction to address the validity of a preliminary injunction issued by another department of the superior court.
As we will explain, the jurisdictional impasse which blocks Gonzalez's right to meaningful judicial review compels the creation of an exception to the general rule that misdemeanors are tried in municipal court and leads us to conclude that where, as here, a misdemeanor contempt charge arises from an alleged violation of an injunction issued by the superior court, the superior court, to the exclusion of the municipal court, has jurisdiction over the misdemeanor contempt.
In a complaint filed on February 22, 1993, and later amended, the People (represented by the City Attorney of Los Angeles) filed a superior court action to obtain preliminary and permanent injunctions to abate a public nuisance. (Civ.Code, §§ 3479 et seq., 3490 et seq.; Code Civ.Proc., §§ 526, 731.) The Blythe Street gang (a criminal street gang within the meaning of Pen.Code, § 186.22) and 500 Does were named as defendants. Among other things, the complaint alleged gang members were regularly discharging firearms, carrying concealed weapons, using and selling illegal drugs, intimidating and assaulting others, trespassing upon private property, obstructing public streets, and so on.
At the same time the complaint was filed, the People applied for an order to show cause why a preliminary injunction should not issue and requested permission to serve the complaint and OSC on the gang by service upon five of its members. In supporting declarations, gang experts from the Los Angeles Police Department provided background information about the Blythe Street gang, explaining that it has become progressively more violent in recent years and is currently terrorizing the immigrant population of the area, confident that its criminal activities will go largely unreported because the victims do not trust the police. Other remediation efforts were tried (undercover surveillances, neighborhood watch programs, barricades, and so on), all to no avail.
The superior court issued an OSC and an order permitting service as requested, and a hearing was set for late March. Before the hearing, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California appeared as amicus curiae and filed a memorandum of points and authorities to oppose issuance of a preliminary injunction. According to the amicus brief, the requested injunction was overly broad and impermissibly infringed upon various constitutional rights of the gang members.
Service on five gang members was accomplished as ordered but no one appeared at the hearing on behalf of the gang or any of its members. On April 7, the superior court (Hon. John H. Major) issued a preliminary injunction covering a designated map area, to be effective 24 hours "from receipt of written notice" of the injunction, restraining the Blythe Street gang and its members from (among other things) using or possessing any deadly weapon in any public place (with "deadly weapon" defined to include firearms, knives, baseball bats, metal pipes and rods, glass bottles and containers, razors, and so on); from using or possessing flashlights, binoculars, police scanners, whistles, pagers, cellular phones and walkie-talkies; from entering onto private property without the prior consent of the owner or other person in rightful possession; from doing anything to obstruct the free flow of vehicular or pedestrian traffic; and from doing a few dozen other things specified in the six-page order.
On May 11, a copy of the preliminary injunction was personally served on Jessie Gonzalez, an acknowledged member of the Blythe Street gang. On May 28, Gonzalez (throwing beer bottles as he ran) fled from officers who were conducting a narcotics investigation in the area designated in the preliminary injunction. Ultimately, Gonzalez was found hiding inside an apartment he had entered without consent. Gonzalez was arrested.
In a complaint filed on June 1 and later amended, Gonzalez was charged with four counts of misdemeanor contempt arising from his violation of the preliminary injunction (possessing a glass bottle, possessing a pager, entering private property without consent, and obstructing traffic). Gonzalez demurred, contending the preliminary injunction was impermissibly vague, overly broad and otherwise defective. The municipal court (Hon. Lloyd M. Nash) refused to rule on these issues, concluding that its review at that stage was limited to the sufficiency of the complaint and that the complaint merely alleged the lawful issuance of the preliminary injunction.
At trial, Gonzalez waived jury, stipulated that he was a member of the Blythe Street gang, that he had been served with a copy of the preliminary injunction, and that he had committed the acts charged against him, and renewed his claim that the preliminary injunction was impermissibly vague, overly broad and otherwise defective. The trial court (Judge Nash) rejected these arguments, not on the merits but on the ground that it had no jurisdiction to rule on the validity of the injunction. Gonzalez was found guilty as charged and was placed on summary probation on condition that he serve 90 days in county jail.
Following his conviction, Gonzalez filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the appellate department of the superior court. The appellate department denied the petition with the notation that Gonzalez had "an adequate remedy via appeal." Gonzalez dutifully filed a notice of appeal from the municipal court judgment and, in his brief to the appellate department, contended the municipal court did have jurisdiction to rule on the validity of the preliminary injunction. Later, the appellate department issued an order for further briefing in which it asked:
Ultimately, the appellate department filed an "opinion and judgment," certified for publication, in which each of the three judges wrote separately. One judge (Hon. Abby Soven) concluded that the appellate department had jurisdiction to consider the validity of the preliminary injunction because, unless it did so, Gonzalez "simply has nowhere else to go as a matter of right." Judge Soven then considered and rejected Gonzalez's claim that the injunction was invalid. The other judges (Hon. Robert L. Roberson, Jr. and Hon. Barbara Jean Johnson), in separate opinions, concurred in the result (an affirmance) but disagreed with the finding of jurisdiction (thus transforming Judge Soven's views on the validity of the injunction into a dissent since a majority of the panel found it lacked jurisdiction to review an injunction issued by another department of the same court).
We ordered the matter transferred to us for the limited purpose of determining the jurisdictional issues.
The issue in this case is not whether Gonzalez may question the validity of the preliminary injunction but where, when and how he may do so.
Under existing law, violations of preliminary injunctions prohibiting public nuisances may be pursued by either of two distinct procedures--a contempt proceeding in superior court (Code Civ.Proc., § 1209, subd. (a)(5) [] ) or a misdemeanor prosecution in municipal court (Pen.Code, § 166, subd. (a)(4) [] ).
In the typical case, preliminary injunctions are enforced by contempt proceedings initiated in the issuing court. (Code Civ.Proc., § 1212.) The plaintiff 1 files an application for an order to show cause why the contemnor ought not to be held in contempt, supported by an affidavit with facts showing (a) the rendition of a valid order, (b) the defendant's actual knowledge of the order and (c) the defendant's willful disobedience of the order. (Code Civ.Proc., § 1211; Conn v. Superior Court (1987) 196 Cal.App.3d 774, 784, 242 Cal.Rptr. 148.) If the court is satisfied with...
To continue reading
Request your trial