P v. Curry (1st Dist., Div.2) Probationers' PC 1170.18 Petitions Must Be Filed In The Court In Which Probation Was First Granted

Napa County, 2012, Ms. Curry pleaded no contest to a felony count of second degree burglary.  Imposition of sentence was suspended and she was placed on a three-year grant of probation.  Because Curry lived in Alameda county, the case was transferred to Alameda county pursuant to PC 1203.9, which vested the Alameda Superior Court with "full jurisdiction over the matter . . . ."

Alameda County, 2015, Curry petitioned the Alameda court to reduce her conviction to a misdemeanor pursuant to PC 1170.18.  The Alameda court denied the petition for improper venue, finding Napa was the proper court to rule on Curry's petition.  This because PC 1170.18 states the petition be filed in the "trial court that entered the judgment of conviction".  She appealed.

The First District affirms.

The result is reasonable, it makes sense to have the judge who presided over the litigation make the factual findings necessary for ruling on a 1170.18 petition.  The issue arises because the text of PC 1170.18 is in conflict with that in PC 1203.9.  Giving full effect to both sections means a petitioner is to file her petition in a court from which "full jurisdiction" has previously been transferred.   Clearly a choice has to be made.  The statutory cannon that more recently enacted language is to be preferred when it conflicts with older language supports the decision here.  Really there is nothing unreasonable about the result.

However the opinion is dreadful.  It begins with a girning jeremiad about Proposition 47 and concludes with a supererogatory (and embarrassingly erroneous) discussion that confuses probation with post release community supervision (PRCS), describing the latter as a "kind of probation".  

Curry was on PRCS in Alameda when she was placed upon probation in this case in Napa.  PRCS is a form of post-prison supervision that has replaced parole for a large number of state prisoners.  Curry's PRCS expired before her PC 1170.18 petition in the instant matter.  

Part of Curry's argument on appeal was that a judicial treatise on PC 1170.18 indicated that because of the language in 1203.9, the proper venue for probationers whose matters had been transferred was the county to which the case had been transferred.  This helps Curry.  The opinion, however, notes the same treatise asserts that persons on PRCS whose cases had been transferred under PC 3640, must petition the county in which they were initially placed on PRCS, and intimates that this somehow (we're not told how, nor could we be) cuts against Curry's argument that the treatise supports her argument that Alameda is the proper venue for her 1170.18 petition pertaining to the burglary conviction out of Napa for which she is on probation (not PRCS).    

Hopefully some clerk at the First District will persuade the author of the opinion to conduct some much-needed revisions.