Hugo Camp gets charged with, and pleads guilty to, a theft offense, and gets ordered to serve 14 months in jail and, thereafter, 14 months of "mandatory supervision" by the probation office. The probation office then notices that there's an immigration hold on the guy, and he's scheduled to be deported to South Africa. Hard to supervise a guy there. So the probation office, the trial court, and the defendant say it doesn't make sense to do the second 14 month stint, so let's just deport the guy immediately. The People say whatever the trial court decides is fine.
So the trial court enters an order that keeps the 14 months in jail but then let's the guy get deported.
The People then appeal. Saying that, no, the trial court should have been compelled to put the guy in jail for 28 months; that it wasn't allowed to remove supervision even though the guy will be sent away to another continent.
I'll let you read what Justice Aaron -- who's fine with what the trial court did -- says about this, and contrast it to what Justice O'Rourke (who's not okay with it) says about it in his dissent.
I'll just add one other, nonlegal, point.
I'm not sure why the San Diego District Attorney's Office has such a (belated) interest in not letting this guy get deported ASAP. Yes, I'm sure he did something wrong, and needs to be punished. But if you were fine with putting the guy in jail for 14 months and then getting "supervision" for the next 14 months in the community, I'm not sure why you're all of the sudden unhappy with the guy being in jail for 14 months and then getting immediately deported.
Seems like the latter thing is good for everyone -- or at least everyone in the U.S. Costs less money. Stops him from committing more crimes here. Gets him, in short, out of our hair.
As between 14 months of probation and immediate deportation, doesn't the latter seem the better policy?
