P v. Garcia (Cal. Supreme Ct.) Rule Announced Re: Multiple Burglary Convictions for Entering Rooms Within a Structure

Mr. Garcia, armed with a gun, entered a business which catered to pregnant women and children.  Garcia pointed  his gun at the store clerk and took the money in the till.  He then ordered the clerk into the store's bathroom at gunpoint where he raped her.

Garcia was convicted of numerous crimes, including two burglaries (PC 459), and received a sentence of 74 years, 8 months, to life.  Garcia appealed and asserted that it was error to have found him guilty of two burglaries.  The Court of Appeal affirmed the two burglary convictions.  The California Supreme Court granted review and reverses the second burglary conviction, creating a new rule for entries made within a structure.

The statute at issue is California Penal Code section 459, which states:

Every person who enters any house, room, apartment, tenement, shop, warehouse, store, . . . or other building . . . with intent to commit grand or petit larceny or any felony is guilty of burglary.

The issue is what the legislature meant by "any ... room".  The State and the Court of Appeal take a textual approach, and assert the words themselves reflect the legislature's intent.  When Garcia entered the "store" with an intent to commit robbery, he committed burglary number one.  When Garcia entered a room, the bathroom, with the intent to rape the clerk, he committed burglary number two.  This is not a baseless interpretation.

However the California Supreme Court disagrees.  It finds the legislature likely meant to incorporate common law principles into the language and arrive at the following rule, borrowing some Fourth Amendment language from the United States Supreme Court.

Where a burglar enters a structure enumerated under section 459 with the requisite felonious intent, and then subsequently enters a room within that structure with such intent, the burglar may be charged with multiple burglaries only if the subsequently entered room provides a separate and objectively reasonable expectation of protection from intrusion relative to the larger structure.  

Acknowledging two of the long recognized purposes of the burglary statute is to [1] protect places of security where occupants may feel comfortable enough to dispense with the safeguards commonly taken in public places, and [2] prevent the high risk of harm to persons and property inherent in an unauthorized intrusion, this rule strikes me as reasonable.  If a burglar enters a hotel with the intent to steal from guestrooms, each guestroom into which he enters to fossick for loot should be a separate 459.  But if the same burglar enters a five bedroom house and goes into each bedroom, bathroom, and closet, looking for loot, it seems excessive to convict him of 11 burglaries.

One thing gave me pause though.  Should the rule be different when the subsequent entrance into a room within a structure is for a different criminal purpose than the initial entrance into the structure? Assume Garcia went into the store with the intent to commit a robbery, burglary number one.  Once inside he saw the clerk was a female and only then formed the intent to commit a rape.  It was with this new criminal intent, formed after entering the structure, that he entered the bathroom.  Should that matter?

After announcing their new rule, the Court applies the new rule to these facts and determines that the bathroom within the store did not provide the required separate and objectively reasonable expectation of protection from intrusion relative to the larger structure.

So Garcia gets one of his burglary charges dismissed.