The holidays are over. Sorta. There's nothing published from any appellate court in California yet for 2018. So they're still on a break. (Though I'm confident they're working away.)
So let's take a break and mention something noteworthy from December. This opinion contains two things I hadn't seen before. Or at least don't recall seeing.
First, the defendant was convicted of possession of burglary tools. That's not strange. But the burglary tool that he was convicted of possessing was a foil-lined bag. Apparently, foil-lined bags are used to shoplift material from stores (here, to steal jeans); that way, the store's sensor doesn't go off when you take the stuff out of the store.
Didn't know that.
Second, the first line of the opinion reads: "Defendant James Shaw used a foil-lined bag to shoplift several pairs of jeans
from a San Francisco department store." But the caption is "People v. Linda Shaw." No, Linda is not his wife. He's transgender. Hence the divergence.
Don't recall seeing that before either.
