Henson

Opinion of the Court by Jenkins, J.

Penal Code1 section 954 provides in relevant part: “[1] 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 offenses, under separate counts, and [2] if two or more accusatory pleadings are filed in such cases in the same court, the court may order them to be consolidated.” As is evident from our insertion of numerals into the text, the quoted portion of section 954 includes two main clauses joined by the conjunction “and.” (See People v. Merriman (2014) 60 Cal.4th 1, 36 [recognizing these distinct clauses in § 954].) The first clause addresses joinder of related offenses in a single pleading, and for convenience, we will refer to it as the “joinder clause.” The second clause addresses court consolidation of separate pleadings, which we will refer to as the “consolidation clause.” In this case, the question before us is whether and under what circumstances a trial court can consider more than one preliminary hearing record in ruling on a motion under section 995 to set aside the…