Wood v. Superior Court

Opinion

FRIEDMAN, Acting P. J.

J.— In this prohibition proceeding petitioner seeks to prevent his trial upon a charge of violating Penal Code section 4532, subdivision (a), escape from a county jail, one of four counts in the information filed by the district attorney. The writ will issue, for the undisputed evidence before the committing magistrate established no violation of the statute.

After the subtraction of language surplus to our needs, subdivision (a) of section 4532 provides: “Every prisoner arrested and booked for, charged with, or convicted of a misdemeanor, . . . who is confined in any county or city jail ... or who is in the lawful custody of any officer or person, . . . and who thereafter escapes or attempts to escape from such county or city jail, ... or from the custody of any officer or person in whose lawful custody he is, is guilty of a felony ....”

[566]

As the result of a barroom altercation, petitioner had been arrested, taken to the city police station and placed in a holding cell with five other persons. The cell was approximately 9 by 12 feet in size; three walls were of concrete and the fourth consisted of a fixed wire mesh screen with a swinging wire mesh door equipped with two locks, which had been locked after petitioner, was placed in the cell. Because of the clamor of the persons in the holding cell, the officers moved into the squad room for booking instructions from a police sergeant. While he was delivering instructions, the sergeant saw petitioner running down the hall and out the front door. A one-block pursuit achieved petitioner’s recapture.

Subdivision (a) of section 4532, dealing with the escape of prisoners held for misdemeanors, has its counterpart in subdivision (b), dealing with the escape of felony prisoners. The lengthy, complex history of these provisions was analyzed in

People

v.

Redmond

(1966) 246 Cal.App.2d 852 [55 Cal.Rptr. 195], which dealt with the “field” escape of an arrestee who had not yet been transported to jail. The court observed that the phrase

arrested and bookedfor