Opinion
A130251
09-01-2011
In re C.W., a Person Coming Under the Juvenile Court Law. THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. C.W., Defendant and Appellant.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.
(Contra Costa County Super. Ct. No. J08-00173)
Appellant C.W. was adjudicated a ward of the juvenile court based on her commission of a residential burglary. (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 602; Pen. Code, §§ 459/460, subd. (a).) The evidence showed that several teenagers, including appellant, entered the home of a vacationing neighbor on different occasions during a one-month period and committed various acts of vandalism and theft. Appellant argues that the juvenile court erred when it entered a direct victim restitution order making her jointly and severally liable for the entire cost of the theft of and damage to items in the victim's home. (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 730.6.)
We conclude that while the juvenile court had broad discretion to award direct victim restitution as a condition of probation (In re T.C. (2009) 173 Cal.App.4th 837, 844-845 (T.C.)), it abused that discretion when it required appellant to pay for economic losses caused by other people during separate, earlier crimes. Here, the evidence showed that appellant entered an already-vandalized home and stole two purses belonging to the victim, but it did not established that she had participated in earlier burglaries and acts of vandalism. On the record presented, the juvenile court erred in making her jointly and severally liable for the full amount of the losses caused by others.
BACKGROUND
Yolanda Norwood left on vacation on August 16, 2007, leaving her house in "immaculate" condition. When she returned on September 11, 2007, she discovered it in total disarray. Furniture and other household items had been damaged or destroyed, papers and clothing had been thrown everywhere, holes had been punched in the walls, the refrigerator had been left open, and ketchup and other condiments had been spread all over the ceilings and walls. Someone had unlocked the exterior doors and at least one window was broken. A number of valuable items were missing, including clothing, purses, jewelry, stereo equipment, television sets, cell phones, game consoles, video games, CDs, and a coin collection.
A neighbor told Norwood that appellant, a teenager who lived in the neighborhood, had been involved. Norwood confronted appellant, who started to shake and said that she had Norwood's purse in her bedroom. Appellant admitted that she had gone into Norwood's home "because she heard there was some really nice stuff in there and she wanted to see." She also said she "wasn't going to take the blame for the rest of them because they were all involved."
The statement by the neighbor was not admitted for its truth, but to explain Norwood's subsequent conduct.
Norwood telephoned appellant's mother, who initially produced a purse belonging to Norwood (valued at about $60). Three officers arrived at the scene and began to investigate the burglary. Officer Vu accompanied appellant and her mother to their residence, where appellant's mother went inside and came out with a Coach handbag belonging to Norwood (valued at $300 to $400).
On that same day, M.S. told Officer Vu that about three weeks earlier, he had walked by Norwood's house with F.M. and C.B. and saw a piece of paper on the door. The three teens returned that same evening, threw a rock through a window, and entered the house, where they stole various items, including a flat screen television, a game console and some stereo equipment, and then stored those stolen goods at a house in the neighborhood. M.S. also told Officer Vu that they entered the house again about two weeks later, at which time they noticed it had been vandalized.
On February 5, 2008, a petition was filed under Welfare and Institutions Code section 602 charging appellant with the residential burglary of Norwood's home. At the contested jurisdictional hearing, and in addition to the evidence noted above, Officer Vu testified that appellant had told him she and two other friends of hers had gone inside the house, and that they had been told about the house by C.B.
M.B. (C.B.'s sister) testified on behalf of the defense. According to M.B., she and appellant had a conversation with M.S. in early- to mid-September 2007, during which he told them about a house that had been "abandoned" after the people living there were evicted. She and appellant and M.S. went inside the house to look around and saw that everything had been "trashed." M.B. took some lotion and appellant took a purse, but neither of them caused any damage to the inside of the house. M.B. denied that she and appellant went into the house together on any other occasion. She acknowledged that property stolen from Norwood's home had been found in her bedroom and admitted that she knew it was stolen, but she claimed that other people ("like [M.S.] and all of them") had put it there when they were "hanging out" with her.
The court sustained the petition filed against appellant on June 26, 2008, rejecting the defense argument that appellant had not committed a burglary because she did not intend to steal when she entered Norwood's house. On July 14, 2008, a dispositional hearing was held and appellant was adjudged a ward of the court and placed on probation subject to a number of conditions, including direct victim restitution. F.M. and M.S. were also declared wards after they admitted allegations of residential burglary under separate delinquency petitions. M.B. admitted an allegation of receiving stolen property, but the disposition in her case is not a part of the record on appeal. The record also does not reflect whether M.B.'s brother C.B. was adjudicated a ward, nor does it reveal what happened to two other minors (brothers J.C.1 and J.C.2) who were listed as "co-responsibles" in the probation report that was filed in appellant's case.
Beginning in November 2009, and continuing over several dates until March 2010, the court held a separate hearing to determine the restitution owed by appellant, M.S. and F.M. Norwood presented an itemized list of property that had been stolen or damaged during the burglaries, and she testified at the hearing about the amounts claimed. Eric McDaniel, who was Norwood's boyfriend at the time of the burglaries, testified about property belonging to him that had been stolen from the house.
Evidence was also presented on the minors' respective culpability for the theft of and damage to Norwood's property. Officer Canady testified that he had interviewed F.M., who said that he (F.M.) and M.S. and C.B. had broken a window to enter Norwood's house and had stolen a number of items. F.M. also admitted punching a hole in the wall of a vacant house down the street where some of the stolen property was recovered.
M.B. testified at the restitution hearing and maintained that she and appellant had entered Norwood's home only once, after it had been broken into. She denied that either of them had caused any damage. M.B. explained that she and appellant were very good friends who "used to hang out every day," so she would have known if appellant had gone inside the house again.
Officer Vu testified that M.S. had admitted breaking into Norwood's house with F.M. and C.B., and to stealing a number of items, including a flat screen television set, some stereo equipment and a game console. M.S. did not say that appellant entered the house at that time. Appellant had told Officer Vu that she and M.B. and M.S. had entered Norwood's house through a broken window and had stolen purses and clothing that was later recovered. She and M.B. also identified J.C.1 and J.C.2 as having broken into the home.
After taking the case under submission, the court issued a written order and decision on October 1, 2010. It ruled that Norwood was entitled to restitution from appellant and M.S. in an amount of $62,514.66, and from F.M. in an amount of $56,805.87, the liability for those amounts being joint and several. The amount owed by F.M. was less because F.M. had stipulated to a total amount before Norwood amended her claim during the hearing to include additional items she had previously overlooked.
The court explained its decision to impose joint and several liability as follows: "In the case at bench, all minors were charged with the identical crime. The allegations were found to be true as to each minor. Each minor burglarized Ms. Norwood's home during the same period of time. Significant damage was caused to Ms. Norwood's property - her home was ransacked and made to resemble a disaster zone. No credible evidence was presented by any of the minors on the basis of which the court could fairly apportion liability among the minors by a percentage or limit a minor's liability to specific items of loss. When the minors unlawfully entered Ms. Norwood's home, whether together or alone or in some combination, each of them took the risk of being held responsible for all of the resulting damage. Ms. Norwood should be allowed to collect any part or all of her loss from any or all of the minors . . . ."
DISCUSSION
Appellant argues that she cannot be held jointly and severally liable for the full amount of Norwood's losses because there was no evidence suggesting that she participated in the original burglary with M.S., F.M., and C.B., and no evidence that she committed any acts of vandalism during the single time she entered the house. We agree.
The purpose of restitution is threefold: "to rehabilitate the defendant, deter future delinquent behavior, and make the victim whole by compensating [her] for [her] economic losses." (In re Anthony M. (2007) 156 Cal.App.4th 1010, 1017.) Direct victim restitution in a juvenile case is governed by section 730.6, which tracks the adult offender restitution provisions in Penal Code section 1202.4. (In re M.W. (2008) 169 Cal.App.4th 1, 4.) "It is the intent of the Legislature that a victim of conduct for which a minor is found to be a person described in Section 602 who incurs any economic loss as a result of the minor's conduct shall receive restitution directly from that minor." (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 730.6, subd. (a)(1), italics added; compare Pen. Code, § 1202.4, subd. (a)(1).) The minor's conduct need not be the sole cause of the loss, but it must be a "substantial factor." (See In re A.M. (2009) 173 Cal.App.4th 668, 673-674.)
A juvenile court may impose joint and several liability for a direct victim restitution order when more than one wrongdoer is involved in the offense. (In re S.S. (1995) 37 Cal.App.4th 543, 550.) Appellant, F.M. and M.S. were all convicted of burglarizing Norwood's house, but they did so at different times, making their entries distinct offenses. (See In re William S. (1989) 208 Cal.App.3d 313, 316-318.) Appellant was not, then, involved in the "same" offenses as F.M. and M.S., even though their conduct violated the same statute.
Although appellant and M.B. both maintained that M.S. was with them when they entered the house, there is no evidence that he damaged the house on that occasion.
The court considered a similar issue in People v. Leon (2004) 124 Cal.App.4th 620, at page 622. The defendant (Leon) had been convicted of one count each of passing a forged check and grand theft after he wrote a check to himself on the victim's bank account and cashed it. A codefendant (Garza) had written three checks to himself and cashed them, and was convicted of three counts each of the same offenses as the defendant. (Ibid.) In reversing an order making Leon jointly and severally liable for losses attributable to the three checks written by Garza, the appellate court explained, "[Penal Code] section 1202.4, subdivision (f) [which parallels Welfare and Institutions Code section 730.6, subdivision (a)] requires restitution '[i]n every case in which a victim has suffered economic loss as a result of the defendant's conduct.' (Italics added.) Under this statutory language, courts have found that if two defendants convicted of the same crime caused a victim to suffer economic loss, a court may impose liability on each defendant to pay the full amount of the economic loss, as long as the victim does not obtain a double recovery. [Citation.] However, because $11,000 of Farber's loss resulted from the crimes of Garza, not Leon, and nothing in the record suggests that Leon aided and abetted commission of Garza's crimes, the trial court was not authorized by section 1202.4 to order Leon to pay restitution for a crime he did not commit." (Leon, at p. 622.)
So too here. Appellant was adjudicated a ward because she entered Norwood's home after it had already been burglarized and damaged by others. There was no substantial evidence that she had entered the home on previous occasions. (See People v. Millard (2009) 175 Cal.App.4th 7, 43-44 [applying substantial evidence standard to court's finding that victim was 25 percent at fault for purposes of restitution].) Absent some showing that appellant was a participant in the other burglaries or otherwise encouraged their commission, the losses flowing from those distinct offenses were not a "result of the minor's conduct" under Welfare and Institutions Code section 730.6, subdivision (a).
This does not mean that the permissible amount of restitution was limited to the value of property actually taken by appellant. A juvenile court's discretion to fashion a restitution order is broader when restitution is a condition of probation, as it was in this case, and is not necessarily dependent on a finding that the defendant caused the losses. (T.C., supra, 173 Cal.App.4th at pp. 844-848; In re I. M. (2005) 125 Cal.App.4th 1195, 1209-1210.) "That a defendant was not personally or immediately responsible for the victim's loss does not render an order of restitution improper. . . . [T]he question simply is whether the order is reasonably related to the crime of which the defendant was convicted or to future criminality." (Id. at p. 1210; see also People v. Carbajal (1995) 10 Cal.4th 1114, 1123-1124.)
Though the juvenile court was authorized to award reasonable restitution exceeding the actual losses caused by appellant's conduct, holding appellant liable for more than $62,000 in losses caused by other people during other burglaries, was not reasonably related to her own criminal conduct or her future criminality. The trial court stated in its ruling that "[w]hen the minors unlawfully entered Ms. Norwood's home, whether together or alone or in some combination, each of them took the risk of being held responsible for all of the resulting damage." But entering a house that has already been burglarized and vandalized involves a much less culpable mental state than breaking into a secured home and then stealing or destroying the property within. The order entered was an abuse of discretion. (T.C., supra, 173 Cal.App.4th at pp. 844-845.)
We will therefore remand the case so the juvenile court may reconsider the amount of restitution payable by appellant. Such an order must be reasonable, and while it need not be limited to the losses personally caused by appellant's conduct, it should be in an amount that serves a legitimate rehabilitative purpose. As noted by the court in T.C., supra, 173 Cal.App.4th at p. 848, " '[R]estitution may serve a rehabilitative function consistent with the purposes of Juvenile Court Law. . . . [A]lthough restitution serves the obvious function of compensating the victims of crime, it also impresses upon the offender the gravity of the harm he has inflicted upon another, and provides an opportunity to make amends. . . . " 'It offers the individual something within reason that he can do here and now, within the limits of his ability, to demonstrate to himself that he is changing." ' "
DISPOSITION
The order imposing joint and several liability upon appellant for restitution to Yolanda Norwood in the amount of $62.514.66 is reversed. The matter is remanded to the trial court to determine the appropriate amount of direct victim restitution payable by appellant, consistent with the views expressed in this opinion. On remand, the court is not required to hold a new evidentiary hearing and may rely on evidence taken at the hearing from which this appeal is taken. Our disposition makes it unnecessary to resolve appellant's remaining challenges to the restitution order.
We urge the trial court to handle this matter expeditiously. Over three years elapsed between the underlying offense and the original restitution order, and appellant is now 19 years old.
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NEEDHAM, J. We concur. SIMONS, Acting P. J. BRUINIERS, J.