In the consolidated cases of People v. Buycks, People v. Valenzuela, and In re Guiomar, the Supreme Court addresses the effect of Proposition 47 — the 2014 initiative that reduces punishment and allows resentencing for certain crimes — on sentence enhancements for prior felonies that are reduced to misdemeanors. The court’s unanimous opinion by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye concludes that a two-year sentencing enhancement for committing a felony offense while released on bail for an earlier felony offense cannot stand when the earlier felony is reduced to a misdemeanor, nor is a one-year sentencing enhancement valid for having served a prior prison term when the felony underlying that prior prison term has been reduced to a misdemeanor, but that a defendant who is convicted of a failure to appear for a felony charge gets no relief even when the underlying felony is later reduced to a misdemeanor. The first two are “felony-based enhancement[s] that [are] based on [those] previously designated felon[ies],” but the failure-to-appear offense is not negated because it is premised on being charged with a felony, not “on the conviction status of the felony for which the defendant failed to appear.”
The court affirms the Second District, Division Eight, Court of Appeal and the Sixth District. It reverses the Fourth District, Division One. The court disapproves 2017 decisions by the Second District, Division Four, and the Fifth District, and a 2016 opinion by the Second District, Division Six.
