Townsend

At issue in this appeal is the scope of Health and Safety Code section 11353.6, subdivision (b), which creates a sentence enhancement applicable to certain narcotics offenses committed within 1,000 feet of a school. 1 In its instructions to the jury, the trial court altered the language of this provision. Appellant Curtis Ronald Townsend contends that the court’s instruction gave the jury the erroneous impression that section 11353.6(b) is applicable to a person who sells controlled substances outside the school boundary while the school is closed but minors are on the school grounds. The People maintain that the enhancement is triggered whenever minors are present at the school. We agree with the People’s interpretation. Although the trial court improperly changed the language of the statute in defining the enhancement for the jury, no prejudice resulted. We further find no unconstitutional vagueness in the statute. Accordingly, we will affirm the judgment.

Background

Between 5:55 and 6:00 on a Thursday evening in April 1995, appellant sold an undercover officer a piece of crack cocaine for $20. The exchange took place eight to ten feet from the fence that bordered…

I respectfully dissent.

Before 1993, Health and Safety Code section 11353.6 1 created an absolute “drug-free zone” around schools. The enhancement applied to offenses committed on or within 1,000 feet of a school, even if they occurred “in the bedroom of a private residence at a time when the nearby school was closed for summer vacation.” (People v. Jimenez (1995) 33 Cal.App.4th 54, 58 [ 39 Cal.Rptr.2d 12 ].) Then, in 1993, the Legislature amended the statute by expanding the list of applicable offenses, limiting the circumstances in which the enhancement applied, and excluding offenses committed in private areas and businesses where minors are not legally permitted to be.

These changes, as the court in People v. Jimenez, supra, 33 Cal.App.4th 54 later explained, were not made because the Legislature “suddenly became soft on crime or because it lost interest in ‘shielding . . . children from the evils of the drug trade.’ ” (Id. at p. 59.) Rather, the amendments “represent a change in focus away from attempting to create a ‘drug-free zone’ around schools, focusing instead on preventing the sale of drugs to students on their way to and from school and, equally important,…

At issue in this appeal is the scope of Health and Safety Code section 11353.6, subdivision (b), which creates a sentence enhancement applicable to certain narcotics offenses committed within 1,000 feet of a school. [1] In its instructions to the jury, the trial court altered the language of this provision. Appellant Curtis Ronald Townsend contends that the court's instruction gave the jury the erroneous impression that section 11353.6(b) is applicable to a person who sells controlled substances outside the school boundary while the school is closed but minors are on the school grounds. The People maintain that the enhancement is triggered whenever minors are present at the school. We agree with the People's interpretation. Although the trial court improperly changed the language of the statute in defining the enhancement for the jury, no prejudice resulted. We further find no unconstitutional vagueness in the statute. Accordingly, we will affirm the judgment.

Between 5:55 and 6:00 on a Thursday evening in April 1995, appellant sold an undercover officer a piece of crack cocaine for $20. The exchange took place eight to ten feet from the fence that bordered…