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6. CAL. PENAL CODE
§ 667(c)-(d) (West Supp. 1998); see also id. §
667.5(c) (West Supp.
1998) (listing violent felonies); id. § 1192.7(c)
(WestSupp. 1998) (listing serious felonies).
7. See id. § 667. In
California, a felony is any crime punishable by
imprisonment in the state prison or by death. See
id. § 17(a) (West Supp. 1998).
A misdemeanor is any
other crime except those public offenses classified
as infractions. See id. Many criminal offenses,
however, fall into the category known as “wobblers.”
These are crimes that are not statutorily defined
as either felonies or misdemeanors. Whether a wobbler
will be considered a felony or misdemeanor in a
particular case depends upon the prosecutor’s charging
decision and the actual punishment imposed by the
trial court. See id. § 17(b)
(West Supp. 1998) (describing
circumstances under which such crimes are considered
misdemeanors); see also Loren L. Barr, Comment,
The “Three Strikes” Dilemma: Crime Reduction at
Any Price?, 36 SANTA CLARA L. REV.107, 117-19 (1995)
(describing prosecutorial discretion in charging
a wobbler as a felony and the authority of the trial
court to then reduce it to a misdemeanor).
A large number of crimes
qualify as wobblers including petty theft with a
prior petty theft or felony conviction. See id.
at 117 n.91. 8. See CAL. PENAL CODE § 667(c)(5)
(West Supp. 1998); see also id. § 2933.1(a) (limiting
the worktime credits).
- (O.Eng.Law) An offense which occasions a total forfeiture either lands or
goods, or both, at the common law, and to which capital or other punishment may
be added, according to the degree of guilt.
A heinous crime;
especially, a crime punishable by death or imprisonment.
Note: Forfeiture
for crime having been generally abolished in the United States, the term felony,
in American law, has lost this point of distinction; and its meaning, where not
fixed by statute, is somewhat vague and undefined; generally, however, it is
used to denote an offense of a high grade, punishable either capitally or by a
term of imprisonment. In Massachusetts, by statute, any crime punishable by
death or imprisonment in the state prison, and no other, is a felony; so in New
York. the tendency now is to obliterate the distinction between felonies and
misdemeanors; and this has been done partially in England, and completely in
some of the States of the Union. The distinction is purely arbitrary, and its
entire abolition is only a question of time.
Note: There is no lawyer who
would undertake to tell what a felony is, otherwise than by enumerating the
various kinds of offenses which are so called. originally, the word felony had a
meaning: it denoted all offenses the penalty of which included forfeiture of
goods; but subsequent acts of Parliament have declared various offenses to be
felonies, without enjoining that penalty, and have taken away the penalty from
others, which continue, nevertheless, to be called felonies, insomuch that the
acts so called have now no property whatever in common, save that of being
unlawful and purnishable. --J. S. Mill.
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Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA,
Inc. |
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