In People v. Shaw, the Supreme Court today holds that a single criminal act that harms two victims counts as only one strike for sentencing under the Three Strikes law. The defendant’s previous convictions for killing a young mother and her baby while driving under the influence thus didn’t require a harsher third-strike sentence for his subsequent driving under the influence conviction. Today’s decision comes after the court ruled in People v. Vargas (2014) 59 Cal.4th 635 that two convictions arising out of a single act against a single victim is just one strike.
The court’s opinion by Justice Leondra Kruger is signed by all seven justices, but three justices file a separate concurrence. Those three justices want the court to overrule two of its earlier Three Strikes decisions.
It’s not that the Three Strikes statutes don’t provide that one act harming two victims is two strikes. Rather, the court concludes that a different statute, one that allows a court to dismiss a sentencing enhancement “in the furtherance of justice,” requires the sentencing court to dismiss one of the two prior strikes.
Justice Kruger writes, “the purpose of Three Strikes sentencing is not (and, for double jeopardy reasons, cannot be) to impose additional punishment for prior criminal acts that have already been punished.” Quoting Vargas, the opinion states, “where multiple criminal convictions stem from the commission of a single act, to impose a third-strike, indeterminate life term based on that act would contravene the voters’ ‘clear understanding of how the Three Strikes law was intended to work.’ [Citation.] It would authorize a third strike, indeterminate life sentence even when a ‘defendant has had only two swings of the bat.’ ”
Justice Joshua Groban, joined by Justices Goodwin Liu and Kelli Evans, concurs but advocates for overruling People v. Benson (1998) 18 Cal.4th 24 [Majority: Chief Justice Ronald George, Justices Joyce Kennard, Marvin Baxter, and Janice Brown; Dissenting: Justices Ming Chin, Stanley Mosk, and Kathryn Werdegar] and People v. Fuhrman (1997) 16 Cal.4th 930. As the concurrence explains, “In Benson, we determined that if a defendant breaks into a home and immediately thereafter assaults the homeowner, the break-in is a first offense and the assault is a separate, second strike,” and “[i]n Fuhrman, we determined that a defendant committed two strikes when he brandished a gun against one victim and then immediately used that gun to force his way into a second victim’s truck.” Justice Groban writes, “The logic of [Benson and Fuhrman] ignores the very purpose of the Three Strikes law, which is to more severely punish repeat offenders who failed to avail themselves of ‘two previous chances to reform.’ ” (Quoting Vargas and adding italics.)
With three votes to overrule Benson and Fuhrman and the majority not ruling out that possibility, any petition for review in a Benson– or Fuhrman-type case will have a good chance of being granted. As the concurrence concludes, “Today’s decision does not require us to revisit [the Benson and Fuhrman] departure from the Three Strikes law’s basic premise. Perhaps a future case will.”
The court reverses Third District Court of Appeal’s unpublished opinion and it disapproves the Fourth District, Division One, decision in People v. Rusconi (2015) 236 Cal.App.4th 273, which the Third District followed. The Supreme Court denied review in Rusconi. (See: Disapprovals of review-denied opinions show the Supreme Court is not an error-correction court.)
