# People v. Batten

> California Court of Appeal · March 17, 2025

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/10823930

## Case

- **Court:** California Court of Appeal
- **Decided:** March 17, 2025
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Opinion
- **Cited by:** 0 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/10823930

## Opinion text

Filed 3/17/25
CERTIFIED FOR PUBLICATION

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

FIRST APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION FOUR

THE PEOPLE,
Plaintiff and Respondent, A169597
v.
(San Francisco City
ANNETTE GAYLENE BATTEN, & County
Defendant and Appellant. Super. Ct. No.
CT-23012184)

Annette Gaylene Batten served a life term for murder and was released
on lifetime parole in 2017. In 2023, she admitted two parole violations.
Penal Code 1 section 3000.08, subdivision (h) required the court to remand her
to the custody of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
(CDCR). She appeals, pointing out that under a statute enacted in 2020,
someone convicted of murder but released on parole after July 2020 would
have been placed on parole for only three years and would therefore have
been eligible for punishments other than mandatory remand to the CDCR.
(§§ 3000.01, as enacted by Stats. 2020, ch. 29, § 18, 3000.08, subds. (f) & (g).)
Batten argues this disparity violates equal protection principles under strict
scrutiny or, in the alternative, rational basis review. We agree with the
People that rational basis review applies and that there is a rational basis to
treat the two groups of inmates differently. We therefore affirm.

1 Undesignated statutory citations are to the Penal Code.

1
BACKGROUND
Batten was convicted of first degree murder in 1996 and sentenced to
life in prison. She was released on parole in August 2017. She generally
performed well on parole, and her parole agent recommended her for an early
discharge from parole. But at a parole revocation hearing in December 2023,
Batten admitted two violations of the conditions of her parole based on an
incident in 2021: driving under the influence and failing to inform her parole
agent of her resulting arrest. The trial court ordered Batten’s parole revoked
and remanded her to the custody of the CDCR and the jurisdiction of the
Board of Parole Hearings (Board) for future parole consideration. In June
2024, the Board denied Batten’s request for parole for one year. 2

DISCUSSION
Pursuant to section 3000.1, subdivision (a), any inmate sentenced to
life in prison for first or second degree murder is released on parole, if at all,
for the rest of the inmate’s life. If an inmate released on lifetime parole
under section 3000.1 is found to have violated the conditions of parole, the
trial court must remand the parolee “to the custody of the [CDCR] and the
jurisdiction of the Board of Parole Hearings for the purpose of future parole
consideration.” (§ 3000.08, subd. (h).) By contrast, when most other parolees
violate their parole conditions, “a trial court generally has the discretion to
modify or revoke parole, including the authority to sentence the person to
county jail for up to 180 days, or refer the person to a reentry court or other
evidence-based program.” (People v. Reed (2024) 103 Cal.App.5th 43, 51
(Reed); § 3000.08, subds. (f) & (g).)

2 We grant Batten’s unopposed request for judicial notice of the record
of her parole hearing. (Evid. Code, § 452, subd. (c) [judicial notice may be
taken of the official acts of the executive department of the state].)

2
The Legislature enacted section 3000.01 in 2020. (Stats. 2020, ch. 29,
§ 18.) That statute applies to inmates released from state prison on or after
July 1, 2020 (§ 3000.01, subd. (a)), and states that “notwithstanding any
other law” (id., subd. (b)) and with two exceptions not relevant here, “[a]ny
inmate sentenced to a life term shall be released on parole for a period of
three years” (id., subd. (b)(2)). (See Reed, supra, 103 Cal.App.5th at p. 52.)
Reed, supra, 103 Cal.App.5th at page 53, recognized a conflict between
sections 3000.01 and 3000.1 for inmates released after July 1, 2020, in that
both statutes purport to establish the term of parole for inmates released
after life sentences for first or second degree murder. Reed held that section
3000.01, the later-enacted statute, takes precedence because of the
“ ‘notwithstanding any other law’ ” clause, so that the term of parole for an
inmate sentenced to life in prison for murder who is released after July 1,
2020, is three years. (Reed, at p. 53.) Reed then reasoned that because such
an inmate is not released on lifetime parole, when the inmate violates the
terms of parole, the mandatory remand provision in section 3000.08,
subdivision (h) does not apply and the trial court has authority to choose from
the alternative sanctions under section 3000.08, subdivisions (f) and (g).
(Reed, at p. 54.)
Batten admits she does not benefit from section 3000.01 and was
subject to mandatory remand to the CDCR under section 3000.08,
subdivision (h) because she was released on parole before July 1, 2020. But
she contends that the different treatment of inmates released before and
after July 1, 2020, violates equal protection principles of the state and federal
constitutions.
When a party challenges a law “drawing distinctions between
identifiable groups or classes of persons, on the basis that the distinctions

3
drawn are inconsistent with equal protection, . . . [t]he only pertinent inquiry
is whether the challenged difference in treatment is adequately justified
under the applicable standard of review.” (People v. Hardin (2024) 15 Cal.5th
834, 850–851 (Hardin).) Batten first argues that the strict scrutiny standard
applies because the issue affects her fundamental interest in personal liberty,
meaning freedom from incarceration. This is incorrect. Her argument rests
on People v. Olivas (1976) 17 Cal.3d 236, 251, which stated that a personal
liberty interest is a fundamental interest second only to life itself. Olivas
applied strict scrutiny to a statute that allowed a trial court to sentence a
defendant between 16 and 21 years old and tried as an adult to a longer term
in the California Youth Authority than the defendant would have faced if
sentenced as an adult. (Id. at pp. 239–241, 243.)
However, our Supreme Court has made clear that “Olivas’s language
should not be interpreted so broadly as to require strict scrutiny ‘whenever
one challenges upon equal protection grounds a penal statute or statutes that
authorize different sentences for comparable crimes, because such statutes
always implicate the right to “personal liberty” of the affected individuals.’ ”
(People v. Williams (2024) 17 Cal.5th 99, 123.) “A defendant . . . ‘does not
have a fundamental interest in a specific term of imprisonment or in the
designation a particular crime receives.’ ” (People v. Wilkinson (2004)
33 Cal.4th 821, 838.) As a result, when a party challenges a classification
that does not involve a suspect class and does not implicate any interest like
that at issue in Olivas itself, in which an individual faced a longer
punishment when sentenced as a juvenile than as an adult, our Supreme
Court has instead applied rational basis review. (Ibid.) “Application of the
strict scrutiny standard [outside those contexts] would be incompatible with
the broad discretion the Legislature traditionally has been understood to

4
exercise in defining crimes and specifying punishment.” (Ibid.) Thus, the
Supreme Court has applied rational basis review to a challenge to statutes
punishing a battery on a custodial officer without injury more severely than a
battery on a custodial officer with injury (ibid.), and statutes allowing early
release from custody for inmates convicted at a young age of certain crimes
but not others (Williams, at pp. 110, 123–124). Because Batten’s equal
protection challenge does not concern a suspect class or an interest like that
in Olivas, we apply rational basis review.
“Rational basis review ‘sets a high bar’ for litigants challenging
legislative enactments. [Citation.] The reasons for this lie at the heart of our
democratic system of governance. ‘Coupled with a rebuttable presumption
that legislation is constitutional, [rational basis review] helps ensure that
democratically enacted laws are not invalidated merely based on a court’s
cursory conclusion that a statute’s tradeoffs seem unwise or unfair.’
[Citation.] [¶] Under this deferential standard, we presume that a given
statutory classification is valid ‘until the challenger shows that no rational
basis for the unequal treatment is reasonably conceivable.’ [Citation.] The
underlying rationale for a statutory classification need not have been ‘ever
actually articulated’ by lawmakers, nor ‘be empirically substantiated.’
[Citation.] Evaluating potential justifications for disparate treatment, a
court reviewing a statute under this standard must ‘treat the statute’s
potential logic and assumptions far more permissively than with other
standards of constitutional or regulatory review.’ [Citation.] ‘If a plausible
basis exists for the disparity, courts may not second-guess its “ ‘wisdom,
fairness, or logic.’ ” ’ [Citation.] ‘[T]he logic behind a potential justification
need [not] be persuasive or sensible— rather than simply rational.’ ”
(Hardin, supra, 15 Cal.5th at p. 852.)

5
Batten contends it is irrational to remand her to the CDCR because she
had performed well on parole and was mostly successful at reintegrating into
society. She asserts that there is no clear indication in the legislative history
why the Legislature chose not to apply section 3000.01 to people like her who
were released before July 1, 2020. She contends the trial court should have
had the authority under section 3000.08, subdivisions (f) and (g) to select the
most appropriate punishment for her parole violation.
Batten’s arguments invite us to perform precisely the type of second-
guessing of policy choices that rational basis review is designed to avoid.
Even if we were to agree with Batten that her record on parole suggests her
parole violation was an aberration from an otherwise encouraging record of
progress in reintegrating into society, it would not matter. The question is
whether there is any rational reason why the Legislature could have chosen
to make section 3000.01 operate only prospectively from July 1, 2020. The
People offer several rationales, but the most obvious one is that when the
Board is determining whether to offer parole to an inmate, it does so in part
based on conditions of treatment or control on parole. (Cal. Code Regs., tit.
15, § 2402.) The Board could decide that parole would not be appropriate for
some inmates if they would only be supervised for three years after release,
while parole would be appropriate if the term were longer. Likewise, the
Board could also determine that some inmates would only be suitable for
parole if subject to the heavy consequence of a mandatory remand to CDCR
custody for a parole violation. The Legislature could reasonably decide that
upending these Board considerations by changing the term of parole for such
inmates or releasing them from the mandatory consequences for a parole
violation would be unwise, and it could therefore rationally choose to make
section 3000.01 operate prospectively only.

6
Batten’s primary response to the rationales the People offer is to point
out there is no support for them in the legislative history. This is true but
irrelevant; “[t]he underlying rationale for a statutory classification need not
have been ‘ever actually articulated’ by lawmakers.” (Hardin, supra,
15 Cal.5th at p. 852; see ibid. [under rational basis review, courts must
“ ‘treat the statute’s potential logic and assumptions far more permissively
than with other standards of constitutional or regulatory review,’ ” italics
added].)
Batten also argues it is manifestly unfair to treat inmates differently in
parole revocation proceedings based only on the date on which they were
released on parole. She notes that she was released on parole in 2017 and
complied with her parole conditions until 2021, when her parole violation
triggered the mandatory remand provision in section 3000.08, subdivision (h).
In Reed, by contrast, the inmate was released in 2016, violated his parole
conditions and was remanded to the CDCR in 2017, was paroled again in
2021, and in 2022 and 2023 was found again to have violated the conditions
of parole, but was not subject to mandatory remand because of section
3000.01. (Reed, supra, 103 Cal.App.5th at pp. 47, 50, 54.) Batten concludes
it is unjust that she was remanded to the CDCR because she complied with
her parole conditions until her 2021 violations, while Reed was not subject to
the mandatory remand in 2021 despite violating his probation conditions
twice, once in 2017 and again after rerelease.
Batten’s single parole violation does compare favorably with Reed’s
multiple violations. But the difference between Batten and Reed is that the
Board presumably was aware when it released Reed the second time in 2021
that he would not be subject to mandatory remand for any future parole
violations, while the Board could have had no inkling of such a possibility

7
when it released Batten in 2017. The Legislature could have rationally
decided not to invalidate the Board’s reasoning retroactively by freeing all
existing parolees like Batten from the mandatory remand requirement.
Besides, as the People point out, Batten ignores the fact that she herself will
benefit from section 3000.01 and be free of the mandatory remand provision
in section 3000.08, subdivision (h) whenever she is next released on parole. If
she were to violate her conditions of parole again, like Reed did, the trial
court would have the authority to select the appropriate punishment, just
like the trial court in Reed.
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.

8
_________________________
Brown, P. J.

We concur:

_________________________
Streeter, J.

_________________________
Goldman, J.

A169597, People v. Batten

9
Trial Court: San Francisco City and County Superior Court

Trial Judge: Hon. Harry M. Dorfman

Counsel:

Shaghayegh Dinata-Hanson, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for
Defendant and Appellant.

Rob Bonta, Attorney General, Sara J. Romano, Assistant Attorney General,
Maria G. Chan and Janine W. Boomer, Deputy Attorneys General, for
Plaintiff and Respondent.

10

---

Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/10823930. Public record. Not legal advice.