Last November, Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero said that a drop in straight grants of review wasn’t permanent. She was quoted as advising, “Stay tuned, if anyone despairs about the lack of grants.” And, sure enough, at two consecutive December conferences, the court took on nine new cases. (Here, here, and here.)
In the more than three months since that December spree, however, the court has straight granted a total of only four cases, the last one coming at the end of February. Yesterday’s conference was the fourth in a row without a straight grant.
But there were a number of votes dissenting from denials. Those and some other highlights are:
Appellate costs against FEHA plaintiff.
The court granted review in York v. City of Sacramento, vacated the Third District Court of Appeal’s unpublished decision, and sent the case back to the appellate court, but only for a limited purpose. The Third District affirmed a defense judgment in a lawsuit under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act alleging age discrimination and harassment. However, it also awarded the defendants their costs on appeal.
The Supreme Court directed the Third District to “perform the analysis required by Pollock v. Tri-Modal Distribution Services, Inc. (2021) 11 Cal.5th 918, 947-951 [see here], before determining whether to award costs on appeal to defendant.” The Pollock decision held appellate costs are among those costs that a statute says can’t be assessed against a losing FEHA plaintiff unless there’s a finding that “the action was frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless when brought, or the plaintiff continued to litigate after it clearly became so.”
Minor de facto LWOP resentencing dissenting votes.
The court denied review of the Fourth District, Division Two, unpublished opinion in People v. Gomez and the Second District, Division Five, unpublished opinion in People v. Thomas. Justices Goodwin Liu and Kelli Evans recorded votes to grant in both.
Both appellate courts held inapplicable Penal Code section 1170(d)(1), which permits resentencing “[w]hen a defendant who was under 18 years of age at the time of the commission of the offense for which the defendant was sentenced to imprisonment for life without the possibility of parole has been incarcerated for at least 15 years.” They also rejected the defendants’ reliance on the Fourth District, Division One, opinion in People v. Heard (2022) 83 Cal.App.5th 608, which held the statute denied equal protection by precluding a resentencing opportunity for those “who were sentenced to the functional equivalent of life without parole.” (There was no petition for review in Heard.)
In 1997, Gomez was 15 years old when he was sentenced to 45 years to life for murder and attempted murder. Thomas was 17 years old in 2001 when he committed the murder for which he was sentenced to 40 years to life.
Both appellate courts concluded section 1170 and Heard were inapposite because the defendants’ sentences were not the functional equivalent of life without parole. The Gomez court found significant that, under a different statute, “defendant received a parole hearing at the age of 39, and will be eligible for parole again at the age of 53 years, or at least 59 years if he fails to earn conduct credits—decades before the end of his natural life expectancy.” Division Five said that Thomas “will be only 57 years old when he has served 40 years in prison. This is a sufficiently young age to permit Thomas to reintegrate into society as a productive and respected citizen.”
Death penalty DNA testing dissenting vote.
Justice Evans also recorded a dissenting vote when the court denied an original writ petition in Staten v. Superior Court. The petition alleges superior court error in denying a condemned prisoner’s request for DNA testing that he claims might establish his innocence. [Related: Divided Ninth Circuit denies habeas relief to California death row inmate despite labeling a Supreme Court decision “objectively unreasonable”.]
Murder resentencing dissenting vote.
Justice Liu also recorded a dissenting vote from the denial of review in Price v. Superior Court, another case under SB 1437, which limited criminal liability for felony murder and eliminated it for murder under the natural-and-probable-consequences doctrine. The petition for review argued the superior court improperly rejected a stipulation under Penal Code section 1172.6 that the defendant should be resentenced.
Three Strikes habeas dissenting votes.
The court denied the habeas corpus petition in In re Thompson, but Justices Joshua Groban and Evans recorded dissenting votes. The petition, filed by Stanford Law School’s Three Strikes Project, seeks relief for a man sentenced in 2001 under the Three Strikes law to 40 years to life for second degree robbery and attempted carjacking.
The petition claims relief on four grounds, including that there was ineffective assistance of counsel because his trial lawyer didn’t present “mitigating evidence . . . of lifelong mental illness and severe childhood trauma and deprivation” and that the sentence constituted cruel or unusual punishment under the California Constitution. Because Justice Groban’s and Evans’s dissenting votes are unexplained, it’s unclear which ground or grounds attracted their attention. (There’s a fairly simple cure for that: When a message vote’s message is muddled.)
The Attorney General filed an informal response. Thompson’s reply to the response is here.
Criminal case grant-and-holds.
There were six criminal case grant-and-holds: one more waiting for a decision in People v. Emanuel (see here), which was argued last month; four more on hold for People v. Rhodius (see here), which will be argued next week; and one more holding for People v. Lopez (see here).
Grant-and-hold disposition (see here).
The court dismissed review in a case that was waiting for the January murder-by-omission opinion in People v. Collins (2025) 17 Cal.5th 293 (see here).
