California v. Henderson
Annotate this CaseDefendant Nathan Henderson pleaded no contest to possession of a nunchaku, and admitted a prior prison term. In August 2018, the trial court imposed an aggregate sentence of four years, consisting of: three years for the nunchaku possession plus a consecutive year for the prior prison term enhancement pursuant to Penal Code section 667.5 (b). The trial court suspended execution of the final 1,096 days of the sentence and ordered them to be served as a period of mandatory supervision with various terms and conditions. Defendant subsequently admitted violating his mandatory supervision on four occasions. In May 2020, the trial court terminated defendant’s mandatory supervision, reaffirmed his sentence, but declined to strike the prior prison term enhancement pursuant to Senate Bill No. 136 (2019-2020 Reg. Sess.) (Senate Bill 136), effective January 1, 2020, concluding that defendant’s sentence had become a final judgment 60 days after his sentence was pronounced on August 8, 2018, and thus defendant was not entitled to retroactive relief. On appeal, Defendant contended the trial court erred in declining to strike the prior prison term enhancement. In the unpublished portion of its opinion, the Court of Appeal agreed. However, in light of the California Supreme Court’s decision in California v. Stamps, 9 Cal.5th 685 (2020), the Court asked for supplemental briefing on whether striking the prior prison term enhancement while maintaining the remainder of the plea agreement would deprive the State of the benefit of their bargain, such that the State should be afforded an opportunity to withdraw from the plea agreement. Defendant argued the Court could strike the enhancement and keep the plea deal intact, whereas the State argued the Court had to must remand to permit it to withdraw from the plea agreement. In the published portion of its opinion, the Court concluded Stamps was not on point because in this case the parties entered into an open plea agreement rather than agreeing to a stipulated sentence. The Court thus modified the judgment to strike defendant’s prior prison term enhancement and affirmed the judgment as modified.
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