Mercury News
By Nate Gartrell
In 2016, 42-year-old Vuong Dihn Phan had the odd misfortune of not being convicted of murder. If he had been, there’s a good chance he’d be out of prison right now.
Instead, Phan — accused of participating in an Oakland brothel robbery in which a cohort, Curtis Yee, ran upstairs by himself and fatally shot 31-year-old Jian Jin of San Jose — did what authorities wanted him to do: he accepted a plea deal, testified at Yee’s trial, and received a lighter sentence than the life term he was facing. But because of that decision, appeals courts ruled that Phan was ineligible for benefit from SB 1437, a 2019 law that says prosecutors can no longer file murder charges against lesser-involved accomplices to a felony that results in a killing and voids existing convictions of such accomplices.
Since SB 1437 took effect, California appeals courts have consistently ruled only those who were convicted of murder are eligible for relief under the law. That decision excludes the biggest pool of people charged under the old rule: those like Phan, who were convicted of lesser offenses in exchange for a reduced sentence through plea deals. In Phan’s case, he pleaded no contest to manslaughter as part of a plea deal.
“Justice is not on my side, that’s what I see,” Phan, an inmate at Avenal State Prison, said in a recent phone interview. “I didn’t know the law was going to change. I had to take the deal, because if I didn’t take the deal I’d have to take a life sentence.”
California lawmakers are now proposing a change to state law, SB 775 [by Senator Josh Becker] which would benefit people in Phan’s situation. The bill proposes to expand SB 1437’s application to manslaughter charges, and includes attempted murders as well.