Almost nobody charged with carjacking in Los Angeles County did the thing the word describes.
The picture people have is an armed stranger dragging a driver out of a car. That happens, and when it does the case is prosecuted accordingly. But Penal Code 215 reaches much further than that, and the cases actually filed look nothing like it. A couple argues and one of them drives off in a car they both used. Two people who paid for the same vehicle end up fighting over who really owns it. Someone takes a car four blocks to get away from a scene and abandons it, or is simply a passenger afterward who had nothing to do with taking it. If your case looks more like one of those than like the picture the word creates, the charge is doing work the facts may not support. Boyadzhyan Legal Shield defends carjacking cases across Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, from our office in Encino.
Those cases carry three, five, or nine years in state prison before a single enhancement is added. Carjacking is both a serious and a violent felony, which means it's a strike and roughly 85 percent of any sentence is actually served. It cannot be reduced to a misdemeanor.
There's one argument that matters more than every other argument in a carjacking case, and it isn’t about what happened. It’s about whether the charge should be carjacking at all.
Carjacking is taking a motor vehicle from the possession of another person, from that person's immediate presence or the immediate presence of a passenger, against their will, by means of force or fear, with intent to deprive them of possession either permanently or temporarily.
Two features of that definition do nearly all of the work.
The vehicle must be taken from a person's immediate presence. This is the element that most often does not fit the facts. A car taken from a driveway, a parking structure, or the curb with nobody in or near it is not carjacking, however it was taken.
This is what separates carjacking from most theft law. There's no requirement that anyone intended to keep the vehicle. Taking a car to get away from a scene and abandoning it a mile later satisfies the statute completely. People assume that returning or abandoning the car defeats the charge. It does not.
Two further elements matter but are less often decisive. Force or fear means the same thing it means in robbery: fear does not require a weapon or a spoken threat, and gesturing toward a concealed object while demanding keys can be enough, but force has to be more than what is incidental to driving away. And passengers are victims too. The statute expressly covers taking a vehicle from the immediate presence of a passenger, not just the driver.
Three separate offenses cover taking a vehicle that isn't yours. They carry radically different consequences, and which one gets charged is decided by a prosecutor reading a police report.
Requires a person present, and force or fear. Three, five, or nine years. A strike. A violent felony, so roughly 85 percent of the sentence is served. Cannot be reduced to a misdemeanor.
Taking a vehicle worth more than $950 with intent to permanently deprive the owner. No person needs to be present. No force or fear. A wobbler, so it can be a misdemeanor. Not a strike.
Taking or driving a vehicle without the owner's consent, with intent to deprive them of possession permanently or temporarily. No person present, no force required. A wobbler. Not a strike.
The gap between the first and the other two is the difference between a strike offense with nine years of exposure and a wobbler that may resolve as a misdemeanor. Nothing else that happens in the case comes close to mattering as much.
That gap is bridged by two questions. Was anyone actually in or immediately near the vehicle? And was force or fear genuinely used to take it, as opposed to the vehicle simply being taken during a confrontation that was about something else?
Where the answer to either is no, the charge is wrong. Where the answer is arguable, that’s the fight worth having, and it’s worth having before charges are filed if there’s still time.
Once carjacking is the charge, the numbers escalate through mechanisms that have nothing to do with how many cars were involved.
A vehicle with a driver and two passengers can support three carjacking charges, and those terms can run consecutively. This is the single fastest way carjacking exposure grows, and it surprises nearly everyone.
Penal Code 12022.53 applies to carjacking. Ten years for personally using a firearm, twenty for intentionally discharging one, and 25 years to life where the discharge causes great bodily injury or death. The firearm does not have to be loaded or operable.
Penal Code 12022.7 adds three or more years where great bodily injury was inflicted.
Carjacking and robbery can both be charged for the same incident under Penal Code 215(c), though a defendant cannot be punished twice for the same act.
Since Senate Bill 620, judges have discretion under Penal Code 1385 to strike firearm enhancements in the interest of justice, and Senate Bill 81 expanded what courts must weigh in exercising it. In a carjacking case with an enhancement attached, that discretion is often where the largest amount of actual time is available, and it's won on the strength of a mitigation record rather than on the facts of the offense.
Penal Code 209.5 deserves separate treatment because it changes the character of everything.
If the victim is moved a substantial distance during the carjacking, and that movement was more than merely incidental to the carjacking and increased the risk of harm, the charge becomes kidnapping during a carjacking. It carries life in prison with the possibility of parole.
That’s a more serious allegation than the carjacking itself, and it should never be treated as an add-on to the main charge. Each of its requirements is genuinely litigable. How far a substantial distance has to be, whether movement inside or alongside a vehicle was incidental to taking the car or something separate from it, and whether the risk of harm actually increased.
Where a 209.5 allegation has been filed, defeating it is frequently worth more than anything else available in the case, and it needs its own defense rather than a share of the main one.
Whether anyone was in or near the vehicle is the first thing we examine in every case.
Where keys were handed over during an argument, where the person left the vehicle voluntarily, or where the alleged fear does not survive contact with what actually happened, the element fails.
Carjacking charges arise with real frequency between people who know each other, and this is the scenario the statute was never written for. Former partners. Family members. Roommates. People who shared use of a car, or who both put money into buying it, or whose names sit on different documents.
In those cases the police arrive at a dispute they have thirty minutes to understand, take the account of whoever called, and the report becomes the case. What that report almost never contains is the history: who paid for the vehicle, who insured it, who drove it daily, what was said in the months before, and what the actual arrangement between these two people was. That history is frequently the entire defense, and it exists in your documents and messages rather than in anyone's memory of that night.
Carjackings are fast and frightening and often involve strangers observed under terrible conditions. Where a case rests on an eyewitness identification or a field showup conducted shortly after an arrest, the reliability of that identification is the case.
Being in a vehicle afterward is not the same as having participated in taking it. Aiding and abetting has elements the prosecution has to prove, and knowledge after the fact is not one of them.
Knarik Boyadzhyan served as a Deputy Public Defender, representing people facing the most serious felony charges California files. She earlier worked as a paralegal in the U.S. Department of Justice's Violent and Organized Crime Section. She appears regularly in the Van Nuys and Glendale courthouses and throughout Los Angeles County, and Boyadzhyan Legal Shield works with clients from the firm's office in Encino.
Whether anyone was in or immediately near the vehicle, and whether force or fear was genuinely used, determines whether this is a nine-year strike offense or a vehicle theft case. That’s where the work starts.
If you knew the other person, the history between you is the most important evidence in the case and the least likely to appear in a police report. Title, registration, insurance, payment records, messages, and witnesses who knew the arrangement.
A firearm allegation and a 209.5 allegation each have their own elements and their own evidence. In carjacking cases the enhancements frequently carry more time than the underlying charge, and they can be defeated independently of it.
Gas station cameras, business cameras, traffic cameras, doorbell cameras, and rideshare footage all have short retention windows. So do phone location records. Written preservation demands go out in the first days, not after discovery.
What the witness was told, what they said first, the conditions of the observation, and how the showup or lineup was conducted.
With a strike, a violent felony, and possible enhancements in play, the record about who our client is affects charging decisions, negotiations, and sentencing. That record takes months to assemble properly.
Whether a case is filed as carjacking or as vehicle theft is decided by a person reading a police report, and that decision shapes everything that follows.
Carjacking is both a serious and a violent felony. It counts as a strike, doubling the sentence on any future felony conviction, and custody credits are limited so that most of the term is actually served.
Carjacking is treated as an aggravated felony under federal immigration law, a federal category decided by the wording of the statute rather than by what happened. For anyone who is not a United States citizen, the immigration consequences of a conviction can be more severe and more permanent than the criminal sentence, and they have to shape the defense from the first conversation, including what sentence length any plea carries.
A felony conviction means a lifetime prohibition in California.
This is the kind of conviction a background check surfaces for good. Landlords and licensing boards weigh a violent felony more heavily than almost anything else on a record, and it stays answerable on a job application long after the sentence ends. There’s no wobbler relief available here, so the outcome of the case itself is the only chance to affect any of it. That is why we work on the charge before it is filed wherever there is still time to.
Not that it was partly yours, not that they let you take it, not that you were going to bring it back. Every one of those statements concedes an element while trying to explain it away.
Not the complaining witness, not their family, not through friends. In a case between people who know each other, contact creates new charges and destroys credibility.
Title, registration, insurance, loan or payment records, repair receipts, anything with a name on it. If ownership or permission is part of your case, this is the evidence, and it is the first thing we want to see.
Cameras you noticed, businesses nearby, people who were present. Retention windows are short.
Messages, call logs, photos, location history. Do not delete anything, including material you think looks bad.
Calls from custody are recorded and prosecutors listen to them. The same is true of anything you post or send while the case is open.
The distinction between carjacking and vehicle theft is made at the filing stage, and it’s worth everything.
If your question is not answered here, call (310) 877-7770 to discuss your situation.
Boyadzhyan Legal Shield defends carjacking cases throughout Los Angeles County from the firm's office in Encino. Whether you have been arrested, are waiting on a filing decision, or a family member is in custody, we can talk through the exposure and what the realistic paths look like.
Initial consultations are free and confidential, with no obligation to hire the firm.
This page is general legal information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. California statute references link to the official California Legislative Information site.
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