Perez

Defendant fired a single bullet at a distance of 60 feet, from a car going 10 to 15 miles per hour, at a group of seven peace officers and a civilian who were standing less than 15 feet apart from one another in a dimly lit parking lot late on the night in question. There was evidence that defendant believed he was shooting at a group of rival gang members, but no evidence he was targeting any particular individual when he fired at the group. The bullet hit one officer in the hand, nearly severing his finger, but killed no one. The jury returned special findings that defendant knew or reasonably should have known that the victims were peace officers, and convicted defendant of, among other crimes, seven counts of premeditated attempted murder of a peace officer and one count of premeditated attempted murder (the civilian victim).

The Court of Appeal reasoned that the jury could find on this evidence that “the officers’ proximity to each other was such that in intending to kill any of the officers defendant’s shooting endangered the lives of all.” On that basis, the court affirmed defendant’s convictions of eight counts of attempted murder. But shooting at a person or…

I concur in the judgment and in the majority’s conclusion that defendant’s single discharge of a handgun was insufficient to support more than one conviction for attempted murder. I write separately to note my disagreement with the majority’s attempt to distinguish People v. Smith (2005) 37 Cal.4th 733 [ 37 Cal.Rptr.3d 163 , 124 P.3d 730 ] (Smith), in which I dissented. In my view, Smith does not meaningfully differ from the present case, and the majority’s attempt to find a distinction results in an unsupportable de facto rule that a single gunshot may of itself give rise to multiple attempted murder convictions provided the alleged victims were all “ ‘in [the defendant’s] direct line of fire.’ ” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 233.) Taken together, today’s decision and Smith allow multiple convictions for *235 victims positioned “in the line of fire,” whether or not any evidence shows the defendant intended his single shot to strike and kill all the victims or even believed it could, and whether or not in the circumstances a single round from the weapon used had any realistic potential to do so. The root of this novel thinking is in Smith, which should be overruled rather than…

Defendant fired a single bullet at a distance of 60 feet, from a car going 10 to 15 miles per hour, at a group of seven peace officers and a civilian who were standing less than 15 feet apart from one another in a dimly lit parking lot late on the night in question. There was evidence that defendant believed he was shooting at a group of rival gang members, but no evidence he was targeting any particular individual when he fired at the group. The bullet hit one officer in the hand, nearly severing his finger, but killed no one. The jury returned special findings that defendant knew or reasonably should have known that the victims were peace officers, and convicted defendant of, among other crimes, seven counts of premeditated attempted murder of a peace officer and one count of premeditated attempted murder (the civilian victim).

The Court of Appeal reasoned that the jury could find on this evidence that "the officers' proximity to each other was such that in intending to kill any of the officers defendant's shooting endangered the lives of all." On that basis, the court affirmed defendant's convictions of eight counts of attempted murder. But shooting at a person or…