Henson

*494 Penal Code section 954 provides, in pertinent part: "An accusatory pleading may charge two or more different offenses connected together in their commission, or different statements of the same offense or two or more different offenses of the same class of crimes or *495 offenses, under separate counts, and if two or more accusatory pleadings are filed in such cases in the same court, the court may order them to be consolidated." 1 Section 949 provides, in part: "The first pleading on the part of the people in the superior court in a felony case is the indictment, information, or the complaint in any case certified to the superior court under Section 859a." *309 When a defendant is held to answer on charges brought in separate cases following separate preliminary hearings, do the People need the court's permission to file a unitary information, covering the charges in both those cases, as their first pleading? Reading the foregoing statutes together, we conclude that, where the charges meet the requirements set out in section 954, the answer is no. In that situation, whether to file a unitary information covering all charges, or a separate information for each case, is a…