People v. Zangari

Nicholas Zangari (defendant) pled guilty to an Oregon indictment for first-degree burglary, a felony defined as entering a dwelling with criminal intent. The trial record accompanying Zangari’s conviction contained only Zangari’s signed confession, in which he admitted to having entered a house with an intent to commit theft. The Oregon trial court sentenced Zangari to an above-minimum prison term and ordered Zangari to pay restitution to the homeowner. Some years later, Zangari pled guilty to a California indictment for felony theft, a felony defined as permanently taking another person’s property. The California trial court applied California’s three-strikes law and counted Zangari’s Oregon conviction as a prior strike, for which the court doubled Zangari’s prison sentence. On appeal to the California Court of Appeal, Zangari argued that his prior Oregon conviction should not have counted as a strike, because the Oregon trial record failed to establish all the elements of California’s definition of theft. The key difference between Oregon and California statutory definitions of theft was that California’s law contained an asportation element requiring stolen property to be physically removed from the owner’s premises. However, California courts interpreted the asportation requirement as one that could be met by showing that a defendant treated the owner’s property so as to create an unreasonable risk that the owner would lose most of the property’s value or otherwise be permanently deprived of possession.