People v. Gonzales

Penal Code section 667 authorizes imposition of an additional five-year prison term on “any person convicted of a serious felony” for each separate prior conviction of “a serious felony in this state” the person has suffered. Section 667 defines “serious felony” by reference to subdivision (c) of Penal Code section 1192.7.

We revisit these provisions in a case in which the People have undertaken to apply them to the crimes of gross vehicular manslaughter defined in Penal Code section 191.5 and in subdivision (c)(1) of Penal Code section 192. We shall conclude:

We shall affirm two five-year serious-felony enhancements imposed on defendant and appellant Ralph Gonzales.

In 1985 Gonzales pled guilty, in Kern County, to gross vehicular manslaughter other than while intoxicated. (Pen. Code, § 192, subd. (c)(1).) There was no separate allegation that, and no separate finding whether, in the commission of the felony Gonzales had personally inflicted great bodily injury on any person other than an accomplice. Although the Kern County minutes recite that the superior court found a “factual basis” for Gonzales’s guilty plea, the factual basis is not otherwise identified or…