Hoard

1. Introduction

After confining two female employees to a back room, defendant robbed a Temecula jewelry store of $40,000 worth of jewelry and escaped in the car of one of the employees. A jury convicted defendant of armed robbery, aggravated kidnapping, carjacking, and various related special allegations. In addition, the court found defendant had incurred three previous strike convictions. The court sentenced defendant to a total indeterminate sentence of 45 years to life.

Defendant appeals, challenging the two convictions for kidnapping to commit robbery and the conviction for carjacking for insufficiency of evidence. We hold that defendant’s movement of the victims was merely incidental to the robbery and did not increase the risk of harm to them. We reverse the convictions for aggravated kidnapping but affirm the conviction for carjacking even though it differs somewhat from the more typical carjacking scenario where a victim is accosted in or near her car.

*602 2. Facts

Joy Salem and Sarah Gibeson were employed by the Jewelry Mart. The owner, Roukan Hatter, had twice purchased jewelry from defendant.

Defendant entered the store shortly after it opened one…

Concurring and Dissenting.—Based on a misunderstanding of the law governing the asportation element of aggravated kidnapping, the majority overturns implied findings of fact by the jury that the movement of these victims was not incidental to the robberies and that movement increased their risk of harm.

The majority starts its analysis of the “not incidental” prong with Daniels. 1 Therefore, I will too.

It is important to note that Daniels involved three kidnappings for only the crime of robbery. 2 (Daniels, supra, 71 Cal.2d at p. 1122.) In each case, the victim was moved in order for the fruits of the robbery to be obtained. (Id. at pp. 1123-1125.) 3 As the majority notes, the Daniels court held, “[D]efendants had no interest in forcing their victims to move just for the sake of *610 moving; their intent was to commit robberies and rapes, and the brief movements [18 feet, 5 to 6 feet and 30 feet] which they compelled their victims to perform were solely to facilitate such crimes. It follows, a fortiori, that those movements were ‘incidental to’ the robberies . . . within the meaning of Cotton [v. Superior Court (1961) 56 Cal.2d 459 [ 15 Cal.Rptr. 65 , 364 P.2d 241 ] (Cotton)].”…

After confining two female employees to a back room, defendant robbed a Temecula jewelry store of $40,000 worth of jewelry and escaped in the car of one of the employees. A jury convicted defendant of armed robbery, aggravated kidnapping, carjacking, and various related special allegations. In addition, the court found defendant had incurred three previous strike convictions. The court sentenced defendant to a total indeterminate sentence of 45 years to life.

Defendant appeals, challenging the two convictions for kidnapping to commit robbery and the conviction for carjacking for insufficiency of evidence. We hold that defendant's movement of the victims was merely incidental to the robbery and did not increase the risk of harm to them. We reverse the convictions for aggravated kidnapping but affirm the conviction for carjacking even though it differs somewhat from the more typical carjacking scenario where a victim is accosted in or near her car.

Joy Salem and Sarah Gibeson were employed by the Jewelry Mart. The owner, Roukan Hatter, had twice purchased jewelry from defendant.

Defendant entered the store shortly after it opened one Sunday afternoon. He displayed a gun…