In Re Miller

California Supreme Court Aug 24, 1933 No. Docket No. Crim. 3644.Published

Before: Waste

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Holding. The court held that a felony conviction under the California Vehicle Act remains a felony at the time of sentencing, and a court may impose a fine and alternative imprisonment consistent with the Act's felony sentencing provisions. Section 17 of the Penal Code does not retroactively reclassify the offense as a misdemeanor to limit the fine or imprisonment term.

Issues

Whether a felony conviction under the California Vehicle Act is reclassified as a misdemeanor upon the imposition of a fine, thereby limiting the authorized punishment.
Whether the trial court's judgment imposing a $5,000 fine with alternative imprisonment was authorized under the California Vehicle Act.

Disposition. Writ discharged and petitioner remanded.

Quotations verified verbatim against the opinion

“The offense to which petitioner entered his plea of guilty is designated in the statute as a felony. It remained such until the court had completed the rendition of judgment”

WASTE, C. J.

Application for writ of

habeas corpus.

Petitioner entered a plea of guilty to a charge of taking an automobile without the consent of the owner, a felony, in violation of section 146 of the California Vehicle Act. (Deering’s Gen. Laws, 1931, p. 2523.) He was sentenced to pay a fine of $5,000 with an alternative of imprisonment in the county jail until the fine be satisfied, the court allowing a credit toward the payment of such fine of $2.74 for each day of imprisonment. In the event of nonpayment of the fine this will necessitate petitioner’s incarceration in the county jail for a period of five years. He has now served

[700]

in excess of thirteen months and urges that by reason of the provisions of section 17 of the Penal Code, the imposition of a fine characterized his offense as a misdemeanor and that under section 153c of the California Vehicle Act,

supra,

the maximum period of confinement for a violation of the act amounting to misdemeanor is, in the absence of other provisions to the contrary, six months.

We cannot accept petitioner’s theory. Under section 146 of the act the driving or taking of an automobile without the owner’s consent, to which charge petitioner entered a plea of guilty, is declared to be a felony. In the absence of a contrary provision, every person convicted of a felony for a violation of the provisions of the act, “shall be punished by a fine of not less than '$1,000 nor more than $5,000, or by imprisonment in the state penitentiary for not less than one nor more than five years, or by both such fine and imprisonment”. (Sec. 153d.) Section 153% of the act declares that “A judgment that the defendant pay a fine for

any

violation of this act may also direct that he be imprisoned until the fine be satisfied. But the judgment must specify the extent of the imprisonment, which must not exceed one day for every two dollars of the fine nor extend in any case beyond the term for which the defendant might be sentenced to imprisonment for the offense of which he has been convicted.”

In Re Miller

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WASTE, C. J.

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