People v. Grandpierre

Filed 7/1/21 CERTIFIED FOR PUBLICATION

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION EIGHT

THE PEOPLE, B307916

Plaintiff and Respondent, (Los Angeles County Super. Ct. No. GA106567) v.

OBADIAH GRANDPIERRE,

Defendant and Appellant.

APPEAL from an order of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Terry Lee Smerling, Judge. Affirmed as modified. Jolene Larimore, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant. Xavier Becerra, Attorney General, Lance E. Winters, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Susan Sullivan Pithey, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Noah P. Hill, Supervising Deputy Attorney General, and Kathy S. Pomerantz, Deputy Attorney General, for Plaintiff and Respondent. ____________________

Obadiah Grandpierre challenges the court’s restitution order, which we affirm, with two modifications. References to statutes are to the Penal Code. I Grandpierre inflicted thousands of dollars of damage by stealing Shawn Vessels’s identity. Police saw Grandpierre at an ATM while a codefendant sat in Grandpierre’s running car. Police found $2,480 in cash and 16 debit cards on Grandpierre. They found one credit card reader in the car and another in the codefendant’s hotel room. The codefendant is not a party to this appeal. A felony complaint alleged Grandpierre and the codefendant committed two counts of identity theft (§ 530.5, subd. (a)) and one count of forgery of an access card (§ 484f, subd. (a)). One identity theft count alleged the defendants used personal identifying information about Vessels for an unlawful purpose. Grandpierre pleaded no contest to the three counts. The court suspended imposition of the sentence and ordered three years of formal probation. The court held a restitution hearing on September 10, 2020. At the restitution hearing, Vessels testified about the crime’s impact. Vessels owned 30 percent of a company called Electrical Advantage Engineering (“Engineering”). He sought restitution for himself and the company. Ultimately, the court awarded restitution for 19 hours of lost time. The question in this case is whether and how to put a dollar value on this lost time. We describe this lost time in more detail.