3-strikes sentence cutbacks limited

The state Supreme Court made it harder Monday for some third-strikers to get their life sentences reduced if they were armed when they committed their last offense, even if the crime itself was neither serious nor violent.

For the second time this month, the justices agreed with prosecutors in a dispute over the scope of Proposition 36, a 2012 initiative that narrowed California’s 1994 “three strikes” law.

The 1994 law imposed a sentence of 25 years to life for anyone who had two previous convictions for serious or violent felonies and was then convicted of a third felony of any type, including some minor drug and theft offenses.

Prop. 36 limited third strikes to serious or violent felonies and allowed prisoners who were serving life terms for other third-strike felonies to have their sentences

reduced, unless a judge found that they posed an “unreasonable risk of danger.”

Under Prop. 36, however, a third strike is still considered a serious felony if the defendant was armed with a gun or another deadly weapon. The court said Monday that a judge can consider evidence from charges that were dismissed, as part of a plea agreement, to find that the defendant was armed during the thirdstrike crime, even if the crime itself was not serious or violent.

The case involved Mario Estrada, who pleaded guilty to grand theft in 1996 for stealing $400 from a Radio Shack store in Los Angeles County. With two previous robbery convictions, he was sentenced as a third-striker to 25 years to life.

After Prop. 36 passed, Estrada sought release on the grounds that grand theft is not classified as a serious or violent crime, and he had served his full sentence under other provisions of the threestrikes law. But the sentencing judge refused, citing testimony by a Radio Shack employee in 1996 that Estrada had pulled out a handgun after entering the store — a charge that prosecutors had dismissed in his 1996 plea agreement.

Estrada’s lawyers argued that prosecutors had agreed not to use the handgun evidence against him when they dropped that charge. But the Supreme Court said Monday that the judge was entitled to use the testimony to find that Estrada was armed when he committed the theft.

In allowing nonviolent third-strikers to win release from life sentences, Prop. 36 defined violent offenders to include “not only those inmates convicted of inherently violent offenses but also those who committed nonviolent offenses in a violent manner,” Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar said in the 7-0 ruling.

A judge considering a request for a reduced sentence can look at evidence from dismissed charges that shows the defendant was armed or acted violently during the crime for which the defendant was convicted, Cuéllar said.

In another Prop. 36 case, the court ruled 4-3 on July 3 that a more lenient definition of “unreasonable risk of danger,” approved by the voters in a later initiative, did not apply to third-strikers.

Prop. 47, passed in 2014, shortened sentences for many drug and theft crimes and allowed prisoners serving time for those crimes to go free unless a judge found an “unreasonable risk” that they would commit a violent felony. The court said thirdstrike inmates seeking release under Prop. 36 were bound by the measure’s non-specific, broader “unreasonable risk” standard.

Monday’s case is People vs. Estrada, S232114.