Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
APPEAL from the Superior Court of Riverside County, Super.Ct.No. RIF125413. Helios (Joe) Hernandez, Judge. Affirmed with directions.
Chet L. Taylor, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Edmund G. Brown Jr., Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Gary W. Schons, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Quisteen Shum and Angela M. Borzachillo, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
OPINION
RAMIREZ, P.J.
A jury convicted defendant of receiving stolen property. (Pen. Code, § 496(a).) In bifurcated proceedings, the trial court found he had six prior convictions for which he served prison terms. (Pen. Code, § 667.5, subd. (b).) He was sentenced to prison for eight years and appeals claiming insufficient evidence supports the verdict and the trial court erred in denying his motion to reduce his crime to a misdemeanor. We reject his contentions and affirm, while directing the trial court to correct an error in the abstract of judgment.
Facts
The victims kept their travel trailer within a gated recreational vehicle storage area of the mobile home park where they lived. Only employees of the park and those residents having recreational vehicles inside the area had keys to the gate.
On August 8, 2005, the park’s caretaker saw defendant in a large dumpster just outside the gated recreational vehicle storage area and told him he was trespassing on private property and to leave. Defendant ignored him. The caretaker left the gated recreational vehicle storage area, locking the gate behind him. He returned 15 minutes later, found defendant still there, going through things in the dumpster but not taking anything out. He again told defendant he was on private property and to leave. Defendant again ignored him. The caretaker returned a third time, on this occasion telling defendant he was calling the police. Defendant responded, “‘Fuck you. I don’t have to do anything. I’m going to do what I want to do. I can’t get my truck started. Get the hell away from me.’”
The caretaker next saw a deputy sheriff in his patrol car pushing defendant’s truck out of the mobile home park. The caretaker returned to his office and discovered that an alarm to a structure inside the gated recreational vehicle storage area had been set off. He returned to the area and noticed that the doors to a maintenance storage shed inside the area were open. The locks that had secured the doors had been cut off and left on the ground and bolt cutters that had not been there before were nearby. The shed had been ransacked. Thirty feet away, the victims’ locked trailer, whose door had been closed earlier that morning, had been broken into and ransacked. A fire extinguisher, notebook and $10-$15 in change had been taken from inside it. A hole, which had not been there the day before, had been cut in the chain link fence that enclosed the recreational vehicle storage area.
The caretaker went to his office, got his supervisor and was driving her to the shed when they saw defendant walking into the park. They followed him and asked him where he was going and who he was there to see. He did not respond. Defendant was told he needed to leave or the police would be called. They followed him as he walked to a fence or wall surrounding the park and jumped over it, and then proceeded to a nearby shopping center.
Defendant later returned to the park. The caretaker told defendant that the police were on their way, but defendant kept walking, stopping at the rear door of a mobile home parked in space 131. Defendant pounded on the door and said he had a key that may belong to its occupant. A deputy sheriff arrived. He seized from defendant a grocery bag that contained the fire extinguisher that had been taken from the trailer. In his pockets, defendant had the notebook that had been in the trailer and $12.48 in change. He also had a key ring with 20-30 old keys on it.
A man whose truck had been stolen in 2001, testified that defendant’s driver’s license was in a wallet he found in the truck after it was retrieved by the police and defendant subsequently confessed to him that he had stolen the latter.
Defendant did not testify and called no witnesses. No statements by him or anyone else explaining his possession of the notebook and change were offered.
Defendant was charged with burglarizing the victims’ trailer and the maintenance storage shed. The jury hung on the former charge and found him not guilty of the latter. The receiving stolen property conviction was based on the notebook and the change.
Issues and Discussion
1. Insufficiency of the Evidence
Defendant contends there was insufficient evidence to support his conviction of receiving the stolen notebook and change because there was an innocent explanation for his possession of these items, i.e., that he got them while going through the dumpster. However, the existence of an innocent explanation does not mean the verdict is not supported by substantial evidence. (People v. Towler (1982) 31 Cal.3d.105, 118-119.) Under the circumstances present, there was a reasonable basis for the jury to conclude that the notebook and change were stolen from the trailer and defendant was aware of their nature when he possessed them. (See People v. Alvarado (1982) 133 Cal.App.3d 1003, 1019-1020 [“ . . . [T]he knowledge element . . . of receiving stolen property . . . is inferred from the defendant’s failure to explain how he came to possess a stolen item . . . or from suspicious circumstances attendant upon his possession of the item.”]; See People v. Roland (1969) 270 Cal.App.2d 639, 647 [“ . . . [T]he possession of stolen property, accompanied by suspicious circumstances, will justify the drawing of an inference that it was received with knowledge that it had been stolen.”].)
2. Denial of Defendant’s Motion to Reduce His Conviction to a Misdemeanor
Following the verdict, defendant moved to reduce his receiving stolen property conviction to that of a misdemeanor. In his written motion, defendant asserted that the value of the items was small, that he could be given jail time, community service and ordered to pay restitution as conditions of misdemeanor probation, that his six priors “primarily consist of minor criminal acts” and that he acted politely and respectfully during trial. The People countered, pointing out that defendant had previously been convicted of exhibiting a firearm on the grounds of a day care center, he had suffered four driving under the influence convictions in seven years and he had been convicted of unlawfully driving/taking a car, having false plates on a car and receiving stolen property for stealing a car. The People further noted that when, before trial, defendant got the plea bargain he requested, he turned it down. The People asserted that defendant has a history of thievery, big and small, which had not stopped, despite prior imprisonments.
The trial court denied defendant’s motion, noting that it had read the points and authorities submitted by both sides, but noting that defendant refused to leave the park after being asked several times to and finding that he exhibited dangerousness in “getting into the face of the [park caretaker], and those things can blow up.” The court said it had considered both defendant’s conduct during the crime, without considering his prior record, and “looking at the entire person including his record” and came up with the same result.
Defendant here contends that the trial court misunderstood its discretion in denying his motion. He contends that the court looked only at his behavior with the caretaker, without considering all the other factors present, in violation of People v. Superior Court (Alvarez) (1997) 14 Cal.4th 968, 981. However, the trial court’s remarks belie this. Moreover, the parties presented to the trial court all the factors defendant mentions in his brief, most of which, in all honesty, do not support a reduction of the conviction. The fact that the trial court found that defendant’s conduct toward the caretaker “tipped the scales” in favor of denial does not mean the court did not fulfill its duty to consider all relevant criteria.
Defendant also contends that the trial court abused its discretion in denying his motion. We again disagree. As the trial court noted in sentencing defendant, although his priors were not violent, they show a persistent pattern on his part of unwillingness to abide by the rules of society and to respect other people’s property. The trial court did not act unreasonably.
Disposition
The trial court is directed to amend the abstract of judgment to show that defendant was convicted by jury and not by plea, as it currently states. In all other respects, the judgment is affirmed.
We concur: McKINSTER, J. MILLER, J.