Elsey

I. Introduction

In this appeal, we consider whether entry into six rooms at a single school constitutes six separate burglaries under Penal Code section 459.

A jury convicted defendant Lester Paul Elsey (defendant) of six counts of second degree burglary based upon his entry into five classrooms and the main office area of a middle school in Shasta County. He was sentenced to state prison for concurrent terms of two years on each count. On appeal, defendant contends that the trial court erred in instructing the jury that “each classroom and the main office constitute^] a separate building” for purposes of the burglary statute. He argues that the evidence is insufficient to establish “more than a single burglary of the school.”

We conclude that defendant was properly convicted of six counts of burglary. Both the statute’s plain language and its purpose support such a determination. First, defendant’s entry into separate rooms—assigned to different people, locked to the outside, and largely located in separate buildings on the school campus—constituted separate burglaries within the plain language of the California burglary statute, section 459, which defines burglary as…