P. v. Cassis













Filed 10/12/10 P. v. Cassis CA2/5















>NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS

>

California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts
and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or
ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for
publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115 >.







IN
THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA



SECOND
APPELLATE DISTRICT



DIVISION
FIVE






>

THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. ERIC LINCOLN CASSIS, Defendant and Appellant.

B221818 (Los Angeles County Super. Ct. No. A566569)

APPEAL from
a judgment of the Superior Court
of Los Angeles
County, Janice C. Croft, Judge. Affirmed.

John
Lanahan for Defendant and Appellant.

Edmund G.
Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney
General, Pamela C. Hamanaka, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Susan D.
Martynec and Lance E. Winters, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and
Respondent.



_________________________________

The Sex
Offender Registration Act (Pen. Code, §§ 290-290.023)^[1] requires persons convicted of enumerated sex
offenses to register with local law enforcement personnel
and update their registration to reflect any change of residence within
California. In 1985, defendant and
appellant Eric Lincoln Cassis pled guilty to a qualifying offense--sodomy
against a child under 14 years old and more than 10 years younger than
defendant in violation of Penal Code section 286, subdivision (c)--and was
placed on five years' probation. At the
time defendant entered his guilty plea, the prosecutor misadvised defendant
that he would be required to register for a period of five years from
completion of probation. In fact, the
version of the Act applicable at that time set forth no time limitation on the
duty to register, implicitly imposing an ongoing lifetime obligation.^[2] In 1996, having been charged with failing to
register as a sex offender, defendant acknowledged that he was aware of the
lifetime registration requirement.
Defendant waited until 2009 to file the underlying writ of error >coram nobis and alternative
non-statutory motion to withdraw his guilty plea on the ground that he was
misinformed of the lifetime registration requirement. The trial court denied the writ and motion,
finding inter alia that defendant failed to show the required diligence in
seeking postconviction relief.

Defendant
timely appeals the denial of his petition
for error coram nobis, contending
(1) his delay was immaterial because the
trial court lacked jurisdiction to impose the 1985 judgment of conviction since
it contained an unauthorized provision--that he register as a sex offender for a
limited five-year period and (2) the
trial court abused its discretion in denying coram nobis relief because the prosecutor's misadvice amounted to a
concealment of a material fact that would have invalidated his guilty plea and
subsequently impeded his diligent efforts to extricate himself from the Act's
lifetime registration requirement.

As we explain,
defendant's appeal fails because the collateral relief he sought required,
among other things, a showing of diligence in seeking the extraordinary
remedy. As the lower court found,
defendant could not justify his 13-year delay in seeking collateral relief from
the time he became aware of the lifetime registration requirement. Moreover, his jurisdictional error argument
rests on the misapprehension that the court imposed a five-year term of sex
offender registration as part of the sentence.
Whatever defendant might have been led to believe about the extent of
his registration obligations at the time of his plea, the sentence itself
included no sex offender registration requirement--that was a separate
obligation independently imposed by operation of law.



RELEVANT FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY



According
to the preliminary hearing transcript
dated September 13, 1984,
13-year-old Felix S. went to a shoe store to inquire about a job on July 10 of
that year. Defendant, who was a shoe
store employee, took Felix into a back room, where he forcibly touched Felix's
genitalia over his pants and fondled the youth's exposed penis, before taking
Felix into the bathroom, where defendant forced Felix to engage in an act of
sodomy.

On September 28, 1984, an information
was filed, charging defendant with committing a lewd and lascivious act upon a
child under 14 years old (§ 288, subd. (a)).^[3] The information was amended on December 28, 1984, to add the charge
of sodomy against Felix. A change of
plea hearing was held that day, at which time defendant pled guilty to the
sodomy count.

The trial
court began the change of plea proceedings by confirming that the parties had
entered into a plea agreement calling for defendant to plead guilty to the
sodomy charge. In return, the remaining
count would be dismissed and the court would refer defendant for a diagnostic
report under section 1203.03, with the understanding that defendant's maximum
sentence would be the low term of three years imprisonment. The prosecutor advised defendant as to the
elements of the sodomy offense and the full range of potential sentences,
including the maximum prison term of eight years. He also advised defendant of the consequences
of violating probation. Defendant said
he understood those representations.

The
prosecutor then gave the advisement upon which defendant bases his underlying
petition for coram nobis relief. According to the prosecutor, because
defendant was pleading guilty to a sex offense, he would have a â€