A burglary conviction for cashing a stolen check can be a “theft” offense classified as “shoplifting” and thus subject to reduced punishment under Proposition 47, a 2014 initiative. But if similar conduct is treated as identity theft, there is not a theft offense that qualifies a defendant for relief. That’s the Supreme Court’s unanimous holding today in People v. Jimenez.
Three years ago in People v. Gonzales (2017) 2 Cal.5th 858 a 5-2 court held that misdemeanor “shoplifting” no longer means just taking goods from a store, because Proposition 47 “creates a term of art, which must be understood as it is defined, not in its colloquial sense,” and that, as defined, “shoplifting” under the initiative could include burglary by entering a bank to cash a stolen check for less than $950.
However, the court’s opinion today, by Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, concludes that entering a check cashing store to cash a phony check with the payor’s account number, if it is charged as the crime of misuse of personal identifying information, does not come within Proposition 47’s “shoplifting” definition. The “misuse” crime is not “theft,” the court finds, even though “lawmakers and the public sometimes refer to [the offense] as ‘identity theft.’ ” Rather, it is “ ‘an essentially unique crime,’ ” one that “implicat[es] issues of privacy and control of personal data.”
The key distinction between Gonzales and Jimenez is the defendant’s “crime of conviction,” not his conduct. Unlike in Jimenez, the Gonzales defendant was guilty of second degree burglary and was not charged — although he could have been — with misuse of personal information.
The court reverses the Second District, Division Six, Court of Appeal. Also, it disapproves a 2018 opinion by the same appellate court. The disapproved case is a grant-and-hold, waiting for today’s Jimenez decision.
