People v. Sparks

• Decision Date: 06 June 2002
• Docket Number: No. S098290.,S098290.
• Citation: 47 P.3d 289,120 Cal.Rptr.2d 508,28 Cal.4th 71
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Michael Joseph SPARKS, Defendant and Appellant.

120 Cal.Rptr.2d 508

28 Cal.4th 71

47 P.3d 289

The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v.Michael Joseph SPARKS, Defendant and Appellant.

No. S098290.

Supreme Court of California.

June 6, 2002.

As Modified June 19, 2002.

Robert E. Boyce, under appointment by the Supreme Court, San Diego, for Defendant and Appellant.

Bill Lockyer, Attorney General, David P. Druliner and Robert R. Anderson, Chief Assistant Attorneys General, Gary W. Schons, Assistant Attorney General, Garrett Beaumont, Laura Whitcomb Halgren, Elizabeth A. Hartwig and Steven T. Oetting, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

GEORGE, C.J.

Section 459 of the Penal Code¹ provides, in part, that one who "enters any house, room, apartment, ... store, ... or other building ... with intent to commit ... larceny or any felony is guilty of burglary."(Italics added.)We granted review to address a conflict in Court of Appeal decisions concerning whether a defendant's entry into a bedroom within a single-family house with the requisite intent can support a burglary conviction if that intent was formed only after the defendant's entry into the house.We conclude that such an entry can support a burglary conviction under section 459, and hence reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeal, which reached a contrary conclusion.

I.

At approximately noon on April 20, 1999, 22-year-old Ana I. answered defendant's knock at the door of her single-family home in Vista.Defendant, then 25 years of age, attempted to sell Ana some magazines, but she stated she was not interested.Defendant asked Ana for a glass of water, which she provided to him as he remained outside the house.Defendant eventually asked Ana whether he could enter the house, and he did so. (Ana could not recall at trial whether she invited defendant to enter.)Defendant sat at the dining room table while Ana stood in the "area where the door to the kitchen was."Eventually Ana sat at the table with defendant.Defendant persisted in his attempt to sell a magazine subscription, but soon changed the subject, asking Ana whether she had a boyfriend.When told that she did not, defendant asked her why she did not.Ana revealed that she had broken up with her boyfriend.Ana felt nervous because she did not speak English well and "did not know how to answer the questions he was asking."²Ana asked defendant to leave, telling him that she had to depart to pick up her niece and saying to defendant, "can you go out," while raising her hand and making a motion.After some time, Ana repeated to defendant that she had to pick up her niece at school and when he still did not leave the house, Ana got up, walked to the living room to turn off the stereo, and again told defendant that she had to depart to pick up her niece.

At this point, defendant had been in the house, talking with Ana at the dining room table, for about 15 minutes.Defendant rose from the dining room table, walked to the living room where Ana was standing near the stereo, and asked her whether she liked the music that was playing.Ana replied that she did, and walked down the hall to her bedroom to find outdoor shoes to wear upon leaving the house.

Although Ana did not ask defendant to go with her into the bedroom, he followed her into that room.(There was no testimony that the bedroom door was closed, or that Ana opened it.)As Ana retrieved her shoes from the floor of the closet, she realized that defendant was in the bedroom with her, standing just inside the bedroom doorway.At that point, defendant may have asked Ana whether the bedroom was hers.Defendant blocked Ana's exit, diverted her attention by telling her to look out a window, and then shoved her face down onto the bed, pressing a pillow on top of her head as she began to scream.During her struggles, Ana began to see white spots and had difficulty breathing.Ultimately, defendant raped her, and then walked into the bathroom.Ana closed her bedroom door, and locked it.When defendant exited from the bathroom, he knocked on Ana's door.She told him to leave and stated that she was "not going to tell anybody, but he should leave."

Ana left the house through her bedroom window and walked to a school to meet her niece, who noticed that Ana had red splotches on her face.Later that day Ana told her mother and her sister that she had been attacked, and that evening Ana went to a hospital, where she described the assault to a police officer.A later medical examination revealed the presence of defendant's semen in Ana's vagina.Ana also showed signs of petechiae (pinpoint hemorrhaging) on her face, a condition consistent with asphyxia.

The trial court instructed the jury on the offense of burglary by using a modified version of CALJIC No. 14.50 as follows: "The defendant is accused in count one of having committed the crime of burglary, a violation of section 459 of the Penal Code.[¶] Every person who enters a building or any room within a building with the specific intent to commit rape, a felony, is guilty of the crime of burglary in violation of Penal Code section 459."³(Italics added.)Based upon these and related instructions,⁴the prosecution argued to the jury that defendant could be found guilty of burglary if he formed the intent to rape either (i) prior to entering the house, or (ii) after entering the house, but prior to entering the bedroom in which the sexual assault occurred.

The jury convicted defendant of first degree burglary (§§ 459,460) and forcible rape (§ 261, subd. (a)(2)), and found true the allegations that defendant personally used a deadly weapon (the pillow)(§§ 12022, subd. (b)(1),12022.3, subd. (a)).The jury also found true the allegation that the forcible rape was committed during the commission of a residential burglary with the intent to commit forcible rape (§ 667.61, subds.(a) and (d)(4)).The trial court imposed a sentence of 29 years to life in prison.⁵

The Court of Appeal upheld defendant's conviction for forcible rape, but in a split decision reversed the burglary conviction for instructional error, setting aside the related true finding concerning the section 667.61 allegation.We granted the Attorney General's petition for review.

II.

The Attorney General asserts that the plain words of section 459(defining as burglary the entry of "any ... room ... with intent to commit . . . larceny or any felony") establish that the court's instructions were correct and that the elements of the offense of burglary were established in this case.

Defendant contends, as the Court of Appeal majority held below, that the Legislature could not have intended for the circumstances presented here to constitute a burglary.He maintains that the word "room" in section 459 applies only to those rooms as to which there is an expectation of protection from intrusion—from room to room—that is comparable to the expectation of protection from intrusion into a house from outside the house.In other words, defendant argues that the term "any ... room" as used in section 459 was intended to encompass only certain types of rooms—for example, a locked room within a single-family house or a separate dwelling unit within a boarding house, entry into which is generally unauthorized even for other legal occupants of the house.

If we were to view the issue before us from the perspective of how the offense of burglary currently is defined in other jurisdictions in the nation, defendant's proposed interpretation of that offense would have substantial support.During the past few decades, the legislatures of many of our sister states have been quite active in amending their respective burglary statutes in ways that either clarify or limit the meaning of the term "room," or otherwise narrow the circumstances in which entry of a room can constitute burglary.At the present time, statutes in most jurisdictions, consistent with the recommendation of the Model Penal Code,⁶ make clear that the burglary statutes in these jurisdictions apply only to entry of a "room" that constitutes a "separate unit" or a "separately secured" or "separately occupied" portion of a building or structure.⁷

As noted, the interpretation proposed by defendant would focus upon the nature of the room entered and would inquire whether an occupant's reasonable expectation of protection from intrusion into that room from the other rooms is comparable to the expectation of protection from intrusion into a house from outside the house.As the dissenting justice in the Court of Appeal observed, under this view no burglary occurs "unless the nature of the room is such that it is considered as secure from entry from the interior of the structure as from the exterior, e.g., it is a separate dwelling place or is kept locked."(Italics added.)In other words, the limiting gloss proposed by defendant essentially would embrace the "separately secured or occupied" standard endorsed by the Model Penal Code and adopted, in one form or another, in most (but not all) other jurisdictions.⁸

Although the interpretation of the statute proposed by defendant(and endorsed by the majority in the Court of Appeal below) is not unreasonable, as explained below we do not write on a clean slate.In view of the history and prior interpretation of the California statute, we are not free to adopt by judicial construction a limitation on the term "room" that has been explicitly established in other jurisdictions only by explicit legislative action.Instead, in light of governing California precedent, we conclude that section 459 reasonably must be interpreted in the manner urged by the Attorney General.

III.

At common law, the offense of burglary was defined as breaking and entering the dwelling house of another in the nighttime with intent to commit a felony.(2 Jones' Blackstone(1916)p. 2431(Jones' Blackstone);see2 LaFave & Scott, Substantive Criminal Law (1986) Crimes Relating to Property, § 8.13, p. 464...