Court: The crime is what you did, not what you could have done
California’s Proposition 47 reduces felony convictions to misdemeanors for property crimes of less than $950. But when Jullian Rendon tried to reclassify her forgery conviction as a misdemeanor because she was caught with $260 in counterfeit bills, prosecutors objected because Rendon also possessed materials — blank pre-cut paper money, Benjamin Franklin faces and other items — that she could have used to fabricate tens of thousands of dollars in additional fake bills. That was good enough for an El Dorado County judge, Dylan Sullivan, who kept Rendon in the books as a felony forger. But a state appeals court said Thursday that people can be punished only for the crimes