Cates

In October 2006, appellant Christopher Shane Cates was placed on probation after pleading no contest to a felonious assault on his former girlfriend. In March 2008, the trial court modified that probation, ordering appellant to attend and complete a 52-week batterer’s counseling program, even though he was performing satisfactorily at the time of the modification. The court reasoned that Penal Code section 1203.097 mandates imposition of the challenged condition, and the failure to impose it when probation was originally ordered in 2006 resulted in an unauthorized sentence that had to be corrected. Section 1203.097 requires imposition of certain conditions when a defendant is “granted probation for a crime in which the victim is a person defined in section 6211 of the Family Code.” That Family Code provision defines “domestic violence” as “abuse” perpetrated against specified persons. Appellant argues that section 1203.097 should be narrowly construed to apply only to those defendants convicted of crimes that expressly target domestic violence victims. He contends that because he was convicted of the “generic crime” of assault by means of force likely to produce great…