Trial court had no jurisdiction to find a violation of probation because, due to Assembly Bill No. 1950’s retroactive change to Penal Code section 1203.1, defendant’s probationary term had expired before the misconduct occurred. In January 2017, defendant entered a plea to burglary and was sentenced to five years of probation. In July 2020, he was charged with having committed probation violations in July and October 2019 (i.e., more than two years after his probationary term began). In August 2020, the court summarily revoked probation pending a formal hearing. In January 2021, AB 1950 took effect, decreasing the maximum period of felony probation (with certain exceptions not relevant here) to no more than two years. The court revoked and terminated defendant’s probation as unsuccessful. Defendant timely appealed. Held: Reversed. An order revoking probation does not render a case final for purposes of In re Estrada (1965) 63 Cal.2d 740. The Estrada presumption of retroactivity applies to this case because neither the trial court’s revocation of probation nor defendant’s original conviction was final under Estrada when AB 1950 took effect on January 1, 2021. While AB 1950 did not amend section 1203.2 or section 1203.3—the statutes that address a trial court’s authority to revoke and terminate probation—no amendment of these sections was necessary. Here, AB 1950 retroactively modified defendant’s probationary period so that it ended in January 2019. His conduct in July or October 2019 cannot amount to a violation of that probation, even applying the unmodified sections 1203.2 and 1203.3 to the modified probation term. [Editor’s Note: The court noted the disagreement among appellate courts on this issue, which is also on review in the California Supreme Court. (See People v. Canedos (2022) 77 Cal.App.5th 469, review granted June 29, 2022, S274244 [holding that AB 1950 applied retroactively to bar a court from considering an alleged probation violation that occurred more than two years after the court had imposed a four-year term of probation]; People v. Faial (2022) 75 Cal.App.5th 738, review granted May 18, 2022, S273840 [holding the opposite].)]
Case Summaries