Rosas

I. INTRODUCTION

One of the issues in this appeal from the resentencing of Federico Rosas for two attempted murders of a rival gang member raises a question of first impression in criminal sentencing procedure: Does a trial court, upon appellate remand for resentencing, have the legal authority to make a new restitution fine order, even if the original restitution order was never addressed in the appeal that led to the remand in the first place? Or, alternatively, is the original restitution order “final”? Here, because the remand was for resentencing and restitution fines are statutorily interrelated with a defendant’s sentence, we conclude the trial court was indeed within its authority to make a new, lower, restitution order on resentencing.

n. BACKGROUND

This is the second appeal in this case. The first one resulted in a remand to the trial court for resentencing because the Attorney General’s office itself identified no less than 11 separate sentencing “defects” the first time around. (See People v. Rosas (June 24, 2009, G040153) [nonpub. opn.] (Rosas).)

It is not hard to see why sentencing was a relatively complex matter: While the essential facts are simple,…