People v. Galvan
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The Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court's denial of defendant's petition for resentencing under Penal Code section 1170.95 on his murder conviction. The trial court found that defendant was ineligible for relief because his conviction included a felony-murder special circumstance, which required the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that he was a major participant in the underlying robbery and that he acted with reckless indifference to human life.
The court held that the proper remedy for challenging a special circumstance finding is by a petition for habeas corpus, not a petition for resentencing under section 1170.95. The court agreed with People v. Gomez (June 29, 2020, D076101) ___ Cal.App.5th ___ [2020 WL 3960294] (Gomez), which held that the defendant's petition was in effect a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence to support the special circumstance findings against the defendant. The court disagreed with People v. Torres (2020) 46 Cal.App.5th 1168, 1179, review granted June 24, 2020, S262011, and the result in People v. Smith (2020) 49 Cal.App.5th 85, review granted July 22, 2020, S262835, because it is inconsistent with the court's approach to the construction of section 1170.95.
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