6DCA Oral Argument - 2026/07/16 Morning Session - Jul 16, 2026

argument

6DCA Oral Argument - 2026/07/16 Morning Session

California Sixth District Court of Appeal 23 min 8 chapters transcribed 10 days ago official recording ↗

▲ 0

Transcript

jump: chapters · find in transcript

Transcript

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What is the case and who are the parties appearing in this oral argument?

Unknown 3:12

Welcome to the 6th District Court of Appeal for Oral Argument. We have one matter on the calendar this morning. I will call it now, H052919, the people, plaintiff, and respondent versus Charles Ernst, defendant and appellant. We'll begin with appellant appearances and time estimate, please.

Dan Chambers 3:42

Yes. Good morning. This is Dan Chambers on behalf of the appellant Charles Ernst. A total of 10 minutes. I'd like to reserve three of that for rebuttal.

Unknown 3:50

Of course. And I will keep track of the time here at the desk and let you know when you are about a minute out. And for the people.

4:04

Okay.

Unknown 4:04

Please support.

4:05

My name is Jennifer Matthews, certified law student here on behalf of the people under the supervision of Deputy Attorney

Unknown 4:09

Good morning to you both. And your time estimate, please, Ms. Matthews. I believe 15 minutes. Okay, great. And Ms. Matthews, when it's your time to talk, I will have you come to the podium so that we can get it on recording. So thank you.

How does appellant Charles Ernst argue that his lack of violent conduct warrants reversal of the Romero denial?

Unknown 4:30

But you're fine now. Thank you. Mr. Ernst, good morning again to you, sir. We look forward to hearing your comments. Please go ahead. I'm sorry, Mr. Chambers for Mr. Ernst. Excuse me.

Dan Chambers 4:42

Mr. Chambers, please

Unknown 4:43

go ahead.

Dan Chambers 4:44

Perfectly all right. Good morning, Your Honors, and may it please the Court. Appellant Charles Ernst asks this Court to reverse the trial court's denial of his Romero motion at his resentencing pursuant to Penal Code Section 1172.75. As we noted in our brief, we believe there's two main sources of error in this case in which the court abused its discretion. First, and probably most importantly, Mr. Ernst presents this court with a very interesting set of facts that we don't see normally in these types of cases, specifically the length of his criminal record, which obviously the appellant acknowledges. The trial court and the people at the trial court level outlined Mr. Ernst's lengthy criminal history.

Dan Chambers 5:39

And of course, the facts of the underlying case undeniably are horrific in terms of what happened to Mr. Carlson back in 2006, all the facts that we acknowledge. However, when the court was evaluating under the Romero factors as also elicited by or should say expanded upon by the Williams court, Mr. Ernst presents an interesting situation in that he has had a lengthy period of time since his incarceration with no acts of violence. He's been incarcerated now since 2007, at least at the state prison level, approximately 18 years prior to or 18 years elapsed since his resentencing that occurred in January of 2025. The court did note that Mr. Williams did have, I'm sorry, Mr. Ernst

Unknown 6:36

did

Dan Chambers 6:36

have a lack of violent acts, also has a minimal classification score. and also has done programming and in fact has been a model citizen since he's been incarcerated. The reason that we believe that this is a source of error in the case, however, is that when the court acknowledged Mr. Ernst's lack of violent acts since being incarcerated, the court noted that it did not have anything before it to suggest that Mr. Ernst would not pose a danger to the community or to society. However, the appellant, as we state in our brief, believe that that puts the situation in the reverse. And by that, I mean that appellant has no current evidence that he poses a risk of danger. In fact, the mitigation materials submitted to the trial court indicates quite the opposite, that Mr. Ernst has not committed any violent acts for many, many years since this murder took place.

Why does appellant claim the trial court erred by ignoring his childhood trauma in the Romero analysis?

Dan Chambers 7:41

So we believe the court simply looked at it from the opposite point of view. The court was pointing out that it didn't have any evidence before it to say he was not a danger. However, the court had evidence before it he was not a danger and is not a danger to the community because of that lengthy period of time. I think it's also worth noting, although the trial court did also mention this, that Mr. Ernst, his prior acts of violence were decades old. Mr. Ernst in the interim engaged in criminal behavior such as theft, forgery, and while he did not remain free from incarceration, I think it was noteworthy that Mr. Ernst did not have a violent strike in his past for decades prior to this murder.