skip to Main Content
Name: People v. Garcia
Case #: D062659
Opinion Date: 03/24/2014
Court: CA Court of Appeal
District 4 DCA
Division: 1
Citation: 224 Cal.App.4th 1310
Summary

A defendant may be convicted of two burglaries based on crimes committed with the requisite felonious intent in multiple “rooms” of a commercial building. Garcia sustained two burglary convictions (among others) for entering a store, robbing the sole clerk present, then forcing the clerk into the store’s bathroom and raping her. On appeal Garcia claimed he could only be convicted of one count of burglary, as his entry into the store subsumed entry into the bathroom located in the store. Held: Affirmed as modified. Penal Code section 459 defines burglary as “the entry into any house, room, apartment, tenement, shop . . . with intent to commit grand or petit larceny or any other felony . . . .” The evidence proved that Garcia entered the store intending to commit robbery. After committing the robbery he formed the separate intent to rape the clerk and forced her into the store’s bathroom for that purpose. The bathroom is a “room” within the meaning of section 459. “[O]ne of the main policies underlying the burglary statute—to prevent intrusion into an area in which the occupants reasonably could expect significant additional privacy and security . . . —supports the conclusion that Garcia’s entry with the requisite felonious intent into the bathroom in the back of the store constituted a separate burglary.”