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Superior Court Lacked Jurisdiction to Add New Terms of Probation—Appeals Court
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The shifting of the obligation of a felon to report to the probation department in San Bernardino County, where he lived, rather than the agency in Riverside, where he pled guilty to inflicting corporal injury resulting in a traumatic condition, was not a changed circumstances that would vest jurisdiction in the San Bernardino Superior Court to change the terms of probation, Div. Two of the Fourth District Court of Appeal has held.
“The People concede that a change in circumstances is required before a court has jurisdiction to modify probation, and they argue that the transfer of defendant’s probation to San Bernardino County constituted the requisite change in circumstances,” Justice Richard T. Fields recited in an unpublished opinion filed Friday.
“We respectfully disagree with the People and find their claims are without merit,” he wrote, explaining:
“Here, the supervision of defendant’s probation in Riverside County was not a ‘fact’ upon which defendant’s original probation order was based. Thus, his transfer to San Bernardino County did not constitute the change in circumstances required to justify a modification of his probation conditions. Furthermore, as discussed ante, the San Bernardino probation department did not bring any new facts to the attention of the court when it recommended the drug and alcohol-related conditions. Thus, there was no factual basis for the court’s determination that defendant’s probation should be modified and the new terms imposed.”
The opinion reverses an order by San Bernardino Superior Court Judge Shannon Faherty granting the request of the county’s probation department to add drug and alcohol conditions to Charles Bert Rogers’s terms of probation. She told his lawyer, in ruling:
“The position of the court is that I’m not going to tie the hand of probation in their supervision. I would intend to include all of the terms that you have objected to.”
Fields wrote:
It appears the trial court ordered the conditions to be added based on its deference to the probation department. However, the court’s deference to the probation department’s recommendation is insufficient to justify the modification. There were no facts presented in the probation report or at the hearing that were not before the court at the original sentencing hearing. In other words, the modification order was improperly based on the same facts as the original order granting probation….Because there was no change in circumstances to justify a modification, the trial court acted in excess of its jurisdiction in modifying defendant’s probation conditions.”
The case is People v. Rogers, 2024 S.O.S. 3384.
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