P v. Wade (California Supreme Court) Carrying a Backpack Containing a Gun Constitutes Carrying a Gun on Your Person.

Mr. Wade was carrying a backpack which contained a loaded pistol.  Wade was charged with violating Penal Code Section 25850, subdivision (a): “A person is guilty of carrying a loaded firearm when the person carries a loaded firearm on the person . . . ."

After a holding order was made, Wade successfully moved to set aside the information on the basis the gun was not "on his person".  The state appealed and the Court of Appeal reversed.  The California Supreme Court granted review and affirms the Court of Appeal.

A unanimous court rejects Wade's argument that while he was "carrying" the gun, he wasn't carrying the gun "on his person", rather he was carrying it in his backpack.  The opinion is written by Justice Chin who has been cursed with the ability to consistently condense two paragraphs of legal reasoning into 13 pages of legal writing.  In the present case, the holding is essentially that when a backpack is on your person, everything inside that backpack is on your person.  Which is a reasonable holding.

But it is not Justice Chin's style to stop when he is ahead.  Instead, in a futile attempt to be complete, he goes off on ill-advised larks that are unable to withstand even rudimentary criticism.  

Here the ill-fated lark is his use of out-of-state opinions interpreting out-of-state laws as succor for his thirst to determine the California legislature's intent.  Out-of-state opinions can undoubtedly be useful for certain purposes: analogy and determining the workability of a particular interpretation both come to mind.  The one thing for which they can never be useful (especially in this case), is to determine the intent of the California legislature.  Especially when the opinions examined are issued after the California legislature passed the statute at issue. But one of the benefits of being the highest court is that you can assert with judicial impunity that members of the 1967 California legislature were somehow influenced by the 1991 Alaska Supreme Court.

Or maybe Justice Chin forgot to mention the 67' legislature had access to a Tardis.