Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
Super. Ct. No. CM023586
DAVIS, J.
In this appeal, defendant Steven Douglas Robinson contends the trial court improperly failed to exercise discretion in imposing probation conditions by following an apparent standard policy of not granting residential drug treatment custody credits as a condition of probation. We conclude that defendant has forfeited this contention. Consequently, we affirm.
Pursuant to a plea bargain, defendant pleaded no contest to one count of selling methamphetamine. (Health & Saf. Code, § 11379, subd. (a).)
At the initial sentencing/probation hearing on November 8, 2005, the trial court granted defendant probation on the condition, among others, that defendant “complete a residential substance abuse treatment program[.]” This condition also specified: “No custody time credits will accrue for participation in a residential treatment program, as a condition of probation.”
This waiver of custody time credits was imposed in light of Penal Code section 2900.5. Under that section, a defendant who is initially granted probation but who is eventually sentenced to state prison is entitled to credit against the term of imprisonment for custodial time spent in a residential drug treatment facility as a condition of probation. (Pen. Code, § 2900.5, subd. (a); People v. Thurman (2005) 125 Cal.App.4th 1453, 1460 (Thurman).) The idea behind conditioning probation on a waiver of the section 2900.5 custody time credits is that if a defendant knows that the only benefit he or she will obtain from a residential drug treatment program is the successful completion of that program, he or she is more apt to be successful, as opposed to simply obtaining custody credit under section 2900.5 by serving “easy” time in a failed effort at the residential drug treatment facility. (Thurman, supra, 125 Cal.App.4th at p. 1461.)
Defendant did not object at the initial hearing on November 8, 2005, to this probation condition waiving residential drug treatment custody time. Indeed, defendant signed a statement on that date acknowledging that he had received a copy of his probation conditions, which included this custody credit waiver condition, and had read and understood them.
On January 4, 2007, at a probation violation hearing (at which probation was reinstated), and again on March 1, 2007, at a probation review hearing, probation for defendant was again conditioned in writing, among other conditions, on defendant’s completion of a residential drug treatment program. Moreover, on these two occasions: (1) this written condition again informed defendant that “[n]o custody time credits [would] accrue for participation in a residential treatment program, as a condition of probation”; (2) defendant did not object to this condition; and (3) defendant again acknowledged by his written signature receiving, reading, and understanding this probation condition.
On July 10, 2007, the trial court terminated defendant’s probation following his third probation violation and sentenced him to state prison for the middle term of three years. The trial court did not award defendant any credit for time served in the residential drug treatment facility.
It was at this July 10, 2007, sentencing proceeding that defendant for the first time objected to the probation condition that he would not receive any custody credits for participating in the residential drug treatment program. This objection came too late. Defendant has forfeited any issue on appeal concerning this probation condition’s validity. As the court in People v. Torres (1997) 52 Cal.App.4th 771 held, “a defendant who does not object to that probationary condition when it is imposed [i.e., the probationary condition waiving custody credits for time served in a drug treatment program], [forfeits] the right to later challenge its validity on appeal.” (Torres, supra, at p. 783; see also People v. Welch (1993) 5 Cal.4th 228, 230 [“a criminal defendant’s failure to challenge the ‘reasonableness’ of a probation condition (citations) proposed at the probation and sentencing hearing constitutes a (forfeiture) of the claim on appeal”].) As explained in Welch, “[a] timely objection allows the court to modify or delete an allegedly unreasonable condition or to explain why it is necessary in the particular case. . . . A rule foreclosing appellate review of claims not timely raised in this manner helps discourage the imposition of invalid probation conditions and reduce the number of costly appeals brought on that basis.” (Welch, supra, 5 Cal.4th at p. 235.) (Defendant’s forfeiture also dispenses with his related contention on appeal that he did not “knowingly and intelligently” waive the residential drug treatment custody credits.)
Assuming for the sake of argument that defendant somehow preserved his contention on appeal that the trial court abused its discretion by following a standard policy of not granting residential drug treatment custody credits, we would still not grant those credits. This is because this court has cited Torres with approval, and Torres also held “that when defendants convicted of drug offenses are granted probation conditioned on participation in a residential drug treatment program, the court does not abuse its sentencing discretion by imposing as a standard condition of that probation a waiver of custody credits under Penal Code section 2900.5, subdivision (a) for time spent in the applicable rehabilitation facility.” (Torres, supra, 52 Cal.App.4th at p. 773, fn. omitted, italics added; Thurman, supra, 125 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1460-1461 [this court citing Torres with approval]; see also People v. Ambrose (1992) 7 Cal.App.4th 1917; but see contra, People v. Penoli (1996) 46 Cal.App.4th 298 .)
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.
We concur: SCOTLAND, P.J., CANTIL-SAKAUYE, J.