People v. Conatser
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In 2015, the defendant pled no contest to felony possession of a controlled substance for sale and admitted two prior drug-related convictions. The court sentenced him to two years on the possession offense and imposed two consecutive three-year terms on the prior convictions, in a split sentence with the first two years to be served in county jail and the remaining six years to be served under mandatory supervision. The court of appeal affirmed in 2016. Senate Bill 180, effective January 1, 2018, made amendments to Health and Safety Code section 11370. The defendant's convictions no longer qualified for the imposition of sentence enhancements. The court denied the defendant's motion to strike the enhancements, finding the new law did not apply because his judgment was final before the amendments became effective.
The California Supreme Court, following its 2020 "McKenzie" decision, transferred the case back. On reconsideration, in light of McKenzie, the court of appeal concluded the defendant is entitled to the benefit of the amendments because “this criminal prosecution or proceeding” had not been “concluded before the ameliorative legislation took effect.” The split sentence “constitutes ‘a judgment provisional or conditional in nature.’ The court remanded the matter to the trial court with directions to strike the sentencing enhancements.
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