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People v. Elsey6/23/2000
victing defendant of separate burglaries for each entry into a secured room assigned to a different person and largely located in a different building on the CVI school campus, as long as he had the requisite intent. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, absolutely nothing in the language of the statute suggests an immunity for additional intrusions into additional, secured rooms simply because an initial intrusion of a different room had already occurred. As the court in People v. McCormack concluded, " pplying the plain language of the statute . . . serves rather than frustrates the policy of the law." (People v. McCormack, supra, 234 Cal.App.3d at p. 257.) And where strict adherence to the plain language of the statute also furthers its statutory purpose, such an interpretation can be safely said to effectuate its legislative intent.
Defendant nonetheless contends that "it is irrelevant that the school burgled was made up of multiple buildings and portables. The whole school was fenced, and [defendant] would argue it was a `unit' for second degree burglary purposes."
There is no support for this proposition in either the language or purpose of the burglary statute. Were it otherwise -- that is, if defendant is correct that "it is irrelevant that the school burgled was made up of multiple buildings and portables" -- a burglar who moved through a campus of the University of California, entering various classrooms and offices in various buildings to steal or commit a felony, would be guilty of a single burglary. Likewise, a thief breaking into separate locked offices of a law firm occupying one or more floors of a commercial building would be guilty of only one burglary. And a burglar stealing from separate justices' chambers in a single courthouse would not be guilty of more than one burglary. This is not the law of California, and finds no support in the language or purpose of the burglary statute, which protects the occupants of any "room" not otherwise specified in the statute, from entry by a person with burglarous intent.
Defendant also argues that while "entry into separate `individual dwelling places' within a single building" can constitute separate first degree burglaries "because of the overriding public policy of protecting occupants from physical harm which underpins the first degree burglary statute," such a rationale does not apply to second degree burglary.
To the contrary, although the law distinguishes between inhabited and uninhabited buildings for purposes of first and second degree burglary (§ 460) , the statutory definition of burglary makes no such distinction (§ 459); only the degree of the burglary is affected by habitation. In fact, our state Supreme Court has rejected the contention that the purpose underlying the burglary statute -- and thus its interpretation -- changes if the building is not inhabited: "Although entry into an inhabited structure is recognized as most dangerous and most likely to create personal injury , justifying assignment of the greater degree [citations], some risk of danger to human life and safety exists whether or not the structure is inhabited, because the intrusion may give rise to a confrontation between the intruder and persons lawfully on the premises." (People v. Montoya, supra, 7 Cal.4th at p. 1043.)
Finally, defendant argues that " or purposes of determining when the crime of burglary is completed for a charge of second degree burglary . . . , the court must look to the `boundary' approach, by which the simple entry into the off limits area of the school was the burglary, after which taking of items from separate classrooms . . . were not new and separate second degree burglaries."
Howev
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