Alejandro N. v. Superior Court

Proposition 47, passed by the voters in November 2014, reclassified certain nonserious, nonviolent offenses from felonies to misdemeanors. Proposition 47 also enacted a statute (Pen. Code, § 1170.18) that permits offenders to petition the superior court to redesignate their felony convictions and reduce their sentences based on the new misdemeanor classification. After the passage of Proposition 47, Alejandro N. (Alejandro) filed a section 1170.18 petition to change his juvenile felony adjudication to a misdemeanor. Ruling on the petition, the superior court agreed that Alejandro’s offense now qualified as a misdemeanor for purposes of section 1170.18’s sentence reduction provisions. Based on Welfare and Institutions Code section 726, which provides that a juvenile offender cannot be physically confined longer than an adult offender for the same offense, the court reduced Alejandro’s maximum period of confinement to the misdemeanor level. However, the court declined to reclassify Alejandro’s offense from a felony to a misdemeanor under section 1170.18’s offense reclassification provisions, ruling that because section 1170.18 uses the adult offender terminology of…