Bear

*771 *493 Defendant Cheyanne Bear appeals from orders summarily denying a Penal Code section 1170.18 petition to redesignate a 1980 felony grand theft conviction as a misdemeanor and a subsequent filing that the trial court construed as a second petition regarding the same conviction. 1 The trial court denied the first petition for failure to establish that the value of the property taken did not exceed $950. The trial court denied what it construed as a second petition on several grounds, including the absence of *494 "any authority cited for the filing of a second petition after disposition of the first petition in open court."

We shall affirm the order denying defendant's first petition. We construe section 1170.18 as conferring discretion on the trial court to permit the filing of an amended petition. Because the trial court was unaware of, and did not exercise, this discretion, we reverse the second order and remand the matter to give the trial court the opportunity to exercise that discretion.

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND 2

In 1978, defendant approached a high schooler on a transit bus and told him to take off his Ted Nugent concert T-shirt because defendant…