Trigg v. Superior Court

Opinion

ELKINGTON, J.

Petitioner Trigg was charged in one of the counts of an information with perjuriously signing, on

September 7, 1968,

an affidavit for registration to vote, which said perjury was not discovered until

June 28, 1974.

The information was filed August 12, 1974.

[687]

Trigg moved to strike the charge on the ground that its prosecution was barred by the statute of limitations of Penal Code section 800, as in effect until 1972. Section 800 had then provided that an information charging perjury (Pen. Code, § 118) shall be filed “within three years after its

commission.”

(Italics added.) In 1972 the statute was amended to provide that the three-year statute of limitations for certain felonies, including perjury, did not start running until

discovery

of the offense.

Trigg’s motion was denied by the trial court whereupon, on Trigg’s application, we issued an alternative writ of prohibition for the purpose of reviewing the legality of the ruling.

The People concede, as they must, that the pre-1972 statute’s three-year period having run before filing of the instant information, ordinarily prosecution for the charged offense would be barred. In support of the contention that the statute had nevertheless not run against Trigg, their principal reliance is placed on the recent case of

People

v.

Swinney,

46 Cal.App.3d 332 [120 Cal.Rptr. 148]. The reliance is futile.

In

People

v.