Opinion
B328506
04-22-2024
THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. SEBASTIAN SANTANA, Defendant and Appellant.
Brad Kaiserman, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant. Rob Bonta, Attorney General, Lance E. Winters, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Susan Sullivan Pithey, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Idan Ivri, Supervising Deputy Attorney General, and Roberta L. Davis, Deputy Attorney General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
APPEAL from an order of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County No. BA462582, Ronald S. Coen, Judge. Affirmed.
Brad Kaiserman, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Rob Bonta, Attorney General, Lance E. Winters, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Susan Sullivan Pithey, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Idan Ivri, Supervising Deputy Attorney General, and Roberta L. Davis, Deputy Attorney General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
WILEY, J.
Sebastian Santana and David Venegas, members of the Winter Gardens gang, were on the prowl looking for rivals to shoot. Santana spotted Juan Vargas, a gang rival who had wounded his brother. Vargas fled. Santana directed Venegas to shoot Vargas. Venegas shot and killed a man he thought was Vargas but was actually non-gang-member Fabian Acevedo. A jury convicted Santana of second-degree murder. We affirmed the judgment. (People v. Venegas (2020) 44 Cal.App.5th 32.)
Santana petitioned for resentencing under section 1172.6. The trial court denied his petition. We affirm. Citations are to the Penal Code.
The Legislature enacted Senate Bill 1437 (2017-2018 Reg. Sess.) (SB 1437) to tailor murder liability more equitably to a defendant's involvement in the homicide. (Stats. 2018, ch. 1015, § 1(b).) SB 1437 therefore abolished the natural and probable consequences doctrine and clarified that "a conviction for murder requires that a person act with malice aforethought. A person's culpability for murder must be premised upon that person's own actions and subjective mens rea." (Stats. 2018, ch. 1015, §§ 1(f), 1(g).)
SB 1437 also added a mechanism by which defendants who could not be convicted under the current laws may petition to be resentenced. (People v. Curiel (2023) 15 Cal.5th 433, 440.) Santana filed such a petition.
Santana argues he is eligible for relief because his jury relied on the theory of transferred intent to convict him, which is no longer valid after the changes because it is a theory of imputed malice. This argument fails.
The doctrine of transferred intent imposes the same criminal liability on a defendant who shoots intending to kill a certain person but instead kills a different person. (People v. Scott (1996) 14 Cal.4th 544, 546.) In this scenario, the defendant is as culpable as if he had killed the person he intended. (Ibid.)
In admirable fulfillment of his duty under Rule 3.3(a)(2) of the State Bar Rules of Professional Conduct, counsel for Santana directed our attention to People v. Lopez (2024) 99 Cal.App.5th 1242 (Lopez) in which our colleagues in the Fifth District recently considered this question as a matter of first impression.
Looking to the words of the statutes, the Lopez court discerned no intent to disturb the transferred intent theory of liability in the changes the legislature made to the homicide statutes. (Lopez, supra, 99 Cal.App.5th at pp. 12501251.) Neither do we. We agree with the Lopez court's conclusion that the legislature did not intend SB 1437 to alter liability under this theory. (Ibid.)
Santana argues, as did Lopez, that the theory of transferred intent relies on imputed malice in that it imputes malice toward the actual victim. (Lopez, supra, 99 Cal.App.5th at p. 1249.) This argument misunderstands the mischief SB 1437 aims to alleviate. SB 1437 disallows imputing malice to a defendant who does not actually have malice. Although there is a way in which it can be understood that malice is imputed under the theory of transferred intent, it is only with respect to whom the malice is directed toward. The defendant in such a circumstance already has malice.
Santana's Equal Protection argument fails for the same reason. He is not similarly situated to a defendant convicted under a natural and probable consequences theory who a jury may not have found had malice.
DISPOSITION
We affirm the order.
We concur: STRATTON, P. J., GRIMES, J.