The People, Plaintiff and Respondent v. Adam Sergio Rodriguez, Defendant and Appellant

Summary

The court held that a trial court may determine whether the judge who previously granted a suppression motion is “available” to hear a relitigated motion, but that discretion is constrained by the statute’s same-judge requirement. The court must take reasonable, good-faith steps to assign the motion to the original judge and must place any finding of unavailability on the record; the trial court failed to do so here, and the error was prejudicial. Justice Corrigan concurred in the judgment but questioned the majority’s comparison to the standards discussed in Arbuckle and its characterization of the prosecution’s conduct as comparable to the conduct in Jimenez.