How have courts interpreted the "unauthorized sentence" doctrine?

California, United States of America


The following excerpt is from People v. McConico, B281858 (Cal. App. 2018):

correctable' independent of any factual issues presented by the record at sentencing. [Citation.]" (Ibid.) The "unauthorized sentence" doctrine thus prevents forfeiture of valid sentencing claims by permitting appellants to assert on appeal sentencing claims they failed to assert below. It is well recognized that section 654 claims generally are within this universe. (Id. at p. 354, fn. 17; see also People v. Hester (2000) 22 Cal.4th 290, 295.)

Yet the "unauthorized sentence" doctrine is not a panacea that permits an appellant to belatedly raise section 654 claims he or she had the opportunity to pursue in a previous appeal. People v. Haney (1994) 26 Cal.App.4th 472, cited by respondent, is instructive. In Haney, the trial court imposed a sentencing enhancement based on one of the appellant's prior convictions. (Haney, supra, 26 Cal.App.4th at p. 474.) The appellant contended the enhancement was improper because section 654 prohibits enhancements based on a stayed conviction, and it was unclear from his prior abstract of judgment and sentencing minute order which of his three simultaneously imposed previous sentences had been stayed. (See id. at pp. 476-477.) The court agreed that the prior documentation improperly "merged" rather than "stayed" the appellant's previous sentences and "was therefore an ineffective attempt at complying with Penal Code section 654." (Id. at p. 477.) But it did not use the "unauthorized sentence" doctrine to belatedly correct the error. Instead, it noted that the section 654 error would have been "subject to correction if it had been appropriately raised in a timely appeal." (Id. at pp. 477-478.) In other words, the appellant was required to abide by an erroneous final order that he did not properly appeal, even though a court addressing his subsequent appeal recognized the order as an unauthorized sentence on its face.

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