California v. Strike
Annotate this CaseThe sole issue on appeal is whether defendant Christopher Strike’s prior gang participation conviction qualified as a strike under California's "Three Strikes" law. The State alleged defendant was convicted in 2007 of violating Penal Code section 186.22(a), and that this conviction was a prior serious felony under the Three Strikes law. Defendant waived his right to a jury trial on the prior conviction allegation. On appeal, defendant contended the trial court engaged in impermissible “judicial factfinding” in violation of his rights under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution by finding facts that established his prior conviction qualified as a strike. The Court of Appeal found that at the time defendant entered his plea, an individual could be convicted of violating section 186.22(a) as a sole perpetrator. Five years later, in California v. Rodriguez, 55 Cal.4th 1125 (2012), the California Supreme Court clarified section 186.22(a) was not violated by a gang member acting alone but is violated only when an active gang member commits a felony offense with one or more members of his or her gang. During the trial proceedings in 2017, the court was tasked with determining whether defendant had admitted all the elements of section 186.22(a) as now understood, when, in 2007, he pleaded guilty to violating section 186.22(a); specifically, whether defendant had admitted committing a felony offense with at least one other member of his gang. The trial court considered not only the facts defendant admitted as the factual basis for his 2007 guilty plea, but also factual allegations in the 2007 charging document concerning the prior gang participation offense. Based on allegations in the charging document that the codefendant was a member of defendant’s gang, the court found defendant’s prior conviction constituted a strike. The Court of Appeal found that the record did not show that defendant admitted the factual allegations contained in the 2007 charging document as part of the factual basis for his guilty plea, therefore the trial court did indeed engage in impermissible judicial factfinding. Accordingly, defendant’s prior strike had to be stricken, his sentence vacated, and the matter remanded for further proceedings.
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