The Supreme Court announced its late-May calendar today. May is the only month with two calendars.
It used to be that the end-of-term calendars (late-May and June) were unusually busy, but that stopped a couple of years ago. This one has only five cases on it. Four of them are criminal matters. All but one have been on the court’s docket for a relatively short time.
None of the cases are death penalty appeals. That breaks a streak of nine straight calendars with at least one capital case. The court has apparently been trying to accede to what it recognized as Proposition 66’s “exhortation to the parties and the courts to handle [death] cases as expeditiously as is consistent with the fair and principled administration of justice.”
On May 30, in San Francisco, the court will hear the following cases (with the issue presented as summarized by court staff or stated by the court itself):
White v. Square, Inc.: The court will be answering questions posed by the Ninth Circuit — Does a plaintiff suffer discriminatory conduct, and thus have statutory standing to bring a claim under the Unruh Act, when the plaintiff visits a business’s website with the intent of using its services, encounters terms and conditions that deny the plaintiff full and equal access to its services, and then departs without entering into an agreement with the service provider? Alternatively, does the plaintiff have to engage in some further interaction with the business and its website before the plaintiff will be deemed to have been denied full and equal treatment by the business? The court in July 2018 agreed to answer the question.
People v. Aledamat: Is error in instructing the jury on both a legally correct theory of guilt and a legally incorrect one harmless if an examination of the record permits a reviewing court to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury based its verdict on the valid theory, or is the error harmless only if the record affirmatively demonstrates that the jury actually rested its verdict on the legally correct theory? The court later expanded the issues to include: Could the jury, in this case, have concluded that defendant used an inherently deadly weapon in committing the assault without also concluding that defendant used a weapon in a manner that presents a risk of death or great bodily injury? The court granted review in July 2018. It was an unusual grant; while there was a vacancy on the court, only three permanent justices voted for review and the court brought in a pro tem justice, who cast the fourth vote to hear the case.
People v. Fontenot: Is attempted kidnapping a lesser included offense of kidnapping? (See People v. Bailey (2012) 54 Cal.4th 740, 753; People v. Martinez (1999) 20 Cal.4th 225, 241.) The court granted review in April 2018. The opinion in this case might overrule Martinez.
People v. Foster: Must a commitment or recommitment as an mentally disordered offender be vacated if the underlying offense supporting the initial commitment is redesignated as a misdemeanor under Proposition 47? The court granted review in June 2018.
In re Ricardo P.: Did the trial court err by imposing an “electronics search condition” on the juvenile as a condition of his probation when that condition had no relationship to the crimes he committed but was justified on appeal as reasonably related to future criminality under People v. Olguin (2008) 45 Cal.4th 375 because it would facilitate the juvenile’s supervision? The court granted review in February 2016 and an oral argument letter was sent over two years ago. The delay in setting argument might signal that this is one of the cases that was stuck because of a 3-3 division of the permanent justices during the long time it took to fill the vacancy created by Justice Kathryn Werdegar’s retirement.