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Name: People v. Valladares
Case #: G039799
Opinion Date: 05/15/2009
Court: CA Court of Appeal
District 4 DCA
Division: 3
Citation: 173 Cal.App.4th 1388
Summary

Penal Code section 113 was not repealed by implication with the passage of section 112; section 112 is not a lesser included offense; and prosecution under section 113 rather than 112 is not a violation of equal protection. Penal Code section 112 criminalizes the manufacture, etc. of false government documents with intent to conceal citizenship, etc. And section 113 criminalizes the manufacture, etc. of false documents. During the investigation of a false document operation, investigator Hauge encountered appellant who, in response to Hauge’s request, provided her with an identification card and social security card with the invented information that she gave him. Appellant was charged with and convicted of section 113 and sentenced to state prison. Utilizing rules of statutory construction, the court rejected appellant’s claim that section 112, a misdemeanor, repealed by implication section 113. A finding that a statute is repealed by implication with the passage of another statute will be found where two acts are so inconsistent that there is no possibility of concurrent operation, or where the later provision gives undebatable evidence of an intent to supersede the earlier. Here, sectoin 112 criminalized manufacture of false government documents, whereas 113 criminalized false documents in general. Thus, the two statutes could be harmonized and 113 remained valid. The court then ruled that because the two statutes are essentially identical, but for the penalty, there was no need for the court to instruct on section 112 as a lesser included offense. Finally, the court ruled that there was no equal protection violation resulting from the different penalties because the prosecutor’s decision on how to prosecute a crime does not violate the equal protection clause.