Reported / Citable
Background
Vincent Tourville is a military veteran with documented PTSD and an alcohol-abuse disorder. He was charged with felony corporal injury to a spouse after a violent attack on the mother of his newborn child, and he had a history of prior violence. He moved for pretrial mental-health diversion under Penal Code section 1001.36, which lets a court divert qualifying defendants out of the criminal justice system into community-based mental-health treatment. If treatment is successful, the charges are dismissed.
The trial court found Tourville eligible — including the statutory finding that he did not pose an "unreasonable risk of danger to public safety" — but doubted the two-year diversion window would be enough to treat his PTSD and alcohol abuse adequately and to protect the victim. So instead of granting diversion, the court offered Tourville a deal: plead no contest to the corporal-injury charge, and the court would place him on probation conditioned on completing the same mental-health and substance-abuse treatment program he would have entered under diversion. Tourville accepted, pleaded no contest, and appealed the conviction.
The Court’s Holding
The Second District (Division Seven) reversed. The court held that conditioning the same treatment on a guilty/no-contest plea, when the defendant has been found both eligible and suitable for diversion, is directly at odds with section 1001.36’s purpose: to treat people with qualifying mental disorders in the community, instead of having them enter or re-enter the criminal justice system. Diversion is supposed to keep the defendant out of a conviction; trading a conviction for the identical treatment program inverts that.
The court acknowledged trial judges retain residual discretion to deny diversion where doing so is consistent with the statute’s purposes — for example, where a defendant truly poses an unreasonable risk of danger that community treatment cannot mitigate. But that discretion does not include forcing a plea bargain as the cost of identical treatment. Where the court itself has already made the eligibility and suitability findings (including the public-safety finding) and is willing to order the same program through probation, the additional requirement of a conviction adds nothing to public protection — it just guarantees the defendant carries a felony record the statute was designed to prevent.
The court reversed the judgment with directions. On remand, the trial court must either grant diversion under section 1001.36 or, if it declines, articulate reasons consistent with the statute’s purpose that don’t reduce to "I’d rather you plead first."
Key Takeaways
- Diversion-eligible defendants cannot be forced into a plea to obtain the same treatment. If the trial court has made the eligibility and suitability findings (including the public-safety finding), it cannot demand a conviction as the price of mental-health treatment available under section 1001.36.
- The statute’s purpose controls. Section 1001.36 exists to keep mentally ill defendants out of the criminal-justice system; a procedure that requires a felony plea to access the diversion-style treatment defeats that purpose.
- Residual discretion remains for trial courts to deny diversion in genuine cases of unmanageable risk — but the discretion has to track the statute’s purpose, not work around it.
- For defense counsel handling section 1001.36 motions: if the trial court is leaning toward a "plead and you’ll get the same treatment" offer, this opinion is your authority to insist on a clean diversion grant.
- For prosecutors: this closes a workaround. Where the court finds the defendant suitable for diversion, the prosecution doesn’t get to extract a plea on the side.
Why It Matters
Penal Code section 1001.36 is one of California’s signature criminal-justice reform measures from the past several years, channeling defendants with diagnosable mental disorders out of incarceration and into community treatment. Tourville reinforces that the statute means what it says: when the defendant qualifies, the path is treatment without conviction. Trial courts that are uncomfortable with diversion sometimes try to split the difference — get the defendant treatment, but also lock in a conviction — and this opinion says no.
For the practical population most affected — veterans with PTSD, defendants with substance-induced disorders, and others whose criminal conduct is meaningfully tied to a treatable condition — Tourville means the diversion option must be honored as enacted. For California prosecutors, it removes a leverage point that some had been using to push pleas in cases that would otherwise have ended in dismissal under successful diversion.