Bueno

I.

INTRODUCTION

Defendant Alan Bueno, who was an inmate at the time of the offense at issue, arranged with a prison employee codefendant to obtain a cellular telephone. Bueno pleaded no contest to one felony count of conspiracy to violate Penal Code1 section 4576, subdivision (a), which bars possession with the intent to deliver or the actual delivery of a cellular telephone to a prison inmate, after the trial court denied his motion to dismiss the conspiracy charge.2 On appeal, Bueno contends that he cannot be convicted of conspiracy to deliver a cellular telephone to an inmate because he is the inmate to whom the cellular telephone was delivered. Bueno analogizes the scenario in this case to cases involving drug sales, in which the “buyer-seller rule” precludes the purchaser from being held criminally liable for a conspiracy to sell drugs to himself. According to Bueno, this principle applies to preclude an inmate recipient of a cellular telephone from being held criminally liable for conspiring to commit the substantive offense of section 4576, subdivision (a). Alternatively, Bueno contends that the statutory scheme sets out a tiered system of punishment for the different…