The Supreme Court filed two unanimous opinions this morning, extending to certain internet gaming a general prohibition of slot machines and devices and finding to be harmless a Miranda violation.
In People v. Grewal, Justice Ming Chin writes for the court in what can rank no higher than the second most important statutory construction case decided today. The court concludes that the statutory ban on “‘one-armed bandits'” — a nickname for slot machines that the court notes could puzzle “younger users” — encompasses “devices that resemble traditional casino-style slot machines in some ways and offer users the chance to win sweepstakes prizes,” but that, “[b]ecause they employ modern technology, . . . differ from traditional slot machines in some ways.” The court says that, “[w]hen the user, by some means (here swiping a card or entering a number), causes the machine to operate, and then plays a game to learn the outcome, which is governed by chance, the user is playing a slot machine.”
The Grewal decision affirms the Fifth District Court of Appeal, and in fact quotes extensively from that court’s opinion in one of the four cases under review. Grewal also speaks approvingly of a 2000 divided opinion by the Second District, Division One, and of a 2013 decision by a federal district court judge in the Southern District of California.
In People v. Elizalde, the court’s opinion by Justice Carol Corrigan finds a Miranda violation, but concludes it was harmless to introduce evidence gained from the violation. Questioning the defendant about his gang affiliation while processing him into jail exceeded the scope of the Miranda booking exception, the court holds. “[I]t is permissible to ask arrestees questions about gang affiliation during the booking process,” the court explains, but the “answers to the unadmonished gang questions posed here were inadmissible in the prosecution’s case-in-chief.” Admitting the inadmissible was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, however, because the defendant’s gang membership was established by the uncontroverted testimony of three witnesses.
Elizalde affirms the First District, Division Two, Court of Appeal. It also disapproves a 2011 decision by the Fourth District, Division Two, Court of Appeal, and states that the Supreme Court’s approving citation of that decision in a 2013 opinion “no longer provides persuasive authority.”
