People v. Urdiain

Opinion

BLEASE, J.

I-IV

*

V

Defendant was convicted of two counts of violating section 11351 (possession of heroin and cocaine for sale), and two counts of violating section 11352 (sale of heroin) of the Health and Safety Code. Ledgers introduced at trial demonstrated defendant’s extensive involvement in drug trafficking. At the sentencing hearing, the trial court denied defendant’s request to initiate proceedings to commit him to the California Rehabilitation Center (CRC). Defendant claims that, because he had no prior criminal record, the court’s refusal constituted an abuse of discretion. We disagree.

Welfare and Institutions Code section 3051 provides that, upon conviction, the judge shall order the district attorney to file a petition for CRC

[332]

commitment “if it appears to the judge that the defendant may be addicted or . . . may be in imminent danger of becoming addicted to narcotics . . . unless, in the opinion of the judge, the defendant’s record and probation report indicate such a pattern of criminality that he or she does not constitute a fit subject for commitment . . . .” The only evidence before the court relating to defendant’s possible addiction was information in the probation report that defendant had stated he had been using cocaine for three years and heroin for one year. The probation report also included a statement from NET-5 Agent Peters that he “does not believe the defendant was addicted to the use of any illegal substance and was primarily selling narcotics for profit.”

The trial court did not make an express finding as to whether defendant is addicted or is in danger of becoming so. The court found however that defendant was not a fit subject for commitment because he “was engaged in a very extensive and widespread, as regards customers and clientele and the frequency of transactions, business, in the sale of controlled substances,” that the sales “were not . . . isolated incidents at all, they were a pattern of extensive dealings,” and that “it is . . . the Court’s impression that [defendant] has been primarily a businessman in the narcotics business . . . .” The court asserted that even if defendant were an addict he was not suitable for commitment.