Lead Opinion
Opinion
California’s “Three Strikes” law (Pen. Code, §§ 667, subds. (b)-(i), 1170.12, subds. (a)-(d))
The question arises in the following context: A series of United States Supreme Court decisions, beginning with Apprendi v. New Jersey (2000)
Here, in adult felony proceedings, the complaint charged, for purposes of sentence enhancement, that defendant previously had sustained a juvenile
Nonetheless, defendant claims the Apprendi rule barred use of the prior juvenile adjudication to enhance his maximum sentence in the current case because the prior juvenile proceeding, though it included most constitutional guarantees attendant upon adult criminal proceedings, did not afford him the right to a jury trial. (McKeiver v. Pennsylvania (1971)
The high court has given several reasons for treating “the fact of a prior conviction” differently from other sentencing facts that may increase the maximum punishment for an offense. The court has noted that “recidivism” is a highly traditional basis for a court to increase a current offender’s sentence, and that, unlike a typical “element,” this factor relates not to the circumstances of the current offense, but only to punishment. Finally, in remarks upon which defendant primarily relies, the court has stressed that prior convictions have been obtained in proceedings which themselves included substantial procedural protections, including proof beyond reasonable doubt and the right to a jury trial. (Apprendi, supra,
On this basis, the Court of Appeal agreed with defendant that, under Apprendi, the absence of a jury-trial right in juvenile proceedings bars the use
But the People urge that, because juvenile law adjudications of criminal conduct are subject to virtually all constitutional protections that apply to adult criminal trials—particularly including the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt—they fairly and reliably demonstrate the defendant’s “recidivism.” Thus, the People argue, if a prior juvenile proceeding included all the rights and guarantees constitutionally applicable therein, the resulting adjudication satisfies Apprendi’s justifications for the “prior conviction” exception, and is properly included within that exception, even though it did not include the right to a jury trial. Even if the “prior conviction” exception does not apply, the People assert, California complies with the basic holding of Apprendi by affording the right to a jury trial in the current case as to the sentencing “fact” therein at issue—i.e., the existence of the prior juvenile adjudication.
We generally agree with the People. As noted, Apprendi requires, at most, the right to a jury trial in the current criminal proceeding with respect to any sentencing fact that may increase the maximum punishment for the underlying conviction. California statutory law afforded defendant the right to have a jury determine the existence of the sentencing fact here at issue—whether he suffered a “prior felony conviction” as defined by the Three Strikes law—but he waived that right.
In any event, we find nothing in the Apprendi line of cases, or in other Supreme Court jurisprudence, that interferes, under the circumstances here presented, with what the high court deemed a sentencing court’s traditional authority to impose increased punishment on the basis of the defendant’s recidivism. That authority may properly be exercised, we conclude, when the recidivism is evidenced, as here, by a constitutionally valid prior adjudication of criminal conduct. As we explain below, the high court has expressly so held in analogous circumstances. (See Nichols v. United States (1994)
An amended complaint, filed in December 2004, charged defendant Vince Vinhtuong Nguyen
In March 2005, pursuant to a negotiated disposition, defendant pled no contest to one felony, firearm possession by an ex-felon, and to a misdemeanor, possession of a billy. The charges of possession of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia, ex-felon ammunition possession, and being under the influence of a controlled substance were dismissed.
Defendant waived his statutory right to a jury trial on the issue whether he “[had] suffered” the prior strike (§§ 1025, subds. (a)-(b), 1158), i.e., the 1999 juvenile adjudication. This question was tried to the court on the basis of documentary evidence, and the court found the strike allegation true. The court file in the 1999 juvenile matter indicates, among other things, that defendant there admitted to a violation of section 245, subdivision (a)(1).
Defendant objected that because he had no right to a jury in the juvenile proceeding, use of his juvenile adjudication as a strike in the current case was a violation of his Sixth Amendment rights.
Defendant appealed, raising only the Sixth Amendment sentencing issue. In its first opinion, the Court of Appeal held that, because of the lack of a jury trial right in juvenile cases, the Sixth Amendment forbids use of a contested juvenile adjudication as a prior conviction to enhance the sentence for a subsequent adult offense. However, the court originally held that because defendant had admitted, in the juvenile case, that he committed the criminal conduct there at issue, his current sentence was not affected by the earlier deprivation of a right to jury trial, and he therefore was not entitled to relief.
The Court of Appeal granted rehearing to reconsider this latter holding. On rehearing, the court reversed the trial court. This time, the majority held that, because minors tried for criminal offenses as juveniles are denied the right to jury trials, the use of any juvenile adjudications as prior convictions to enhance subsequent adult sentences is prohibited by the Sixth Amendment.
We granted review.
DISCUSSION
Defendant argues, and the Court of Appeal agreed, that because he had no right to a jury trial in the prior juvenile proceeding, the Fifth, Sixth, and
As indicated above, the high court determined in Apprendi that “[ojther than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.” (Apprendi, supra,
Defendant’s claim, of course, does not come within this express holding. The statutorily relevant sentencing “fact” in this case is whether defendant’s record includes a prior adjudication of criminal conduct that qualifies, under the Three Strikes law, as a basis for enhancing his current sentence. Aside from any exception that might apply here, the literal rule of Apprendi thus required only that a jury in the current proceeding determine the existence of such an alleged prior adjudication.
California statutory law afforded defendant precisely this right. Whenever, for purposes of enhancing the sentence on current charges, the prosecution alleges a prior conviction sustained by the defendant, and the defendant disputes the allegation, the question whether he or she “has suffered” the prior conviction must, unless a jury is waived, be submitted to a jury in the current proceeding. (§§ 1025, subds. (a), (b), 1158.) This jury-trial requirement would extend, of course, to a prior juvenile adjudication included within the Three Strikes law’s definition of a “prior felony conviction.” As we have explained, defendant expressly waived his right to a jury trial in the current proceeding on the issue whether he had suffered the alleged prior, and he' agreed to submit that issue to the court.
The “prior conviction” exception arises primarily from a pre-Apprendi case, Almendarez-Torres. There, an indictment charged the defendant with the offense of illegal reentry by a deported alien. The pertinent statute increased the maximum punishment if the prior deportation arose from the alien’s conviction of one or more aggravated felonies. The indictment did not allege this latter circumstance. However, at his plea hearing, the defendant admitted it, and the court imposed sentence accordingly. On appeal, the defendant urged, among other things, that the Constitution required treatment of his prior convictions as an element of the current criminal offense, which must be charged in the indictment and proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. The court disagreed, refusing to adopt a blanket rule that recidivism—a “highly traditional” basis upon which courts had imposed increased sentences—must be treated as an element. (Almendarez-Torres, supra,
In Jones, which also preceded Apprendi, the court addressed a federal statute that punished carjacking in interstate commerce with a maximum sentence of 15 years. However, maximum sentences of 25 years and life imprisonment, respectively, applied if the carjacking resulted in serious bodily injury or death. The government claimed the statute described only a single offense, subject to mere “sentencing enhancements” that need not be separately charged and could be imposed solely by a judge. The defendant
During an extensive discussion of the Sixth Amendment concerns thus presented, the Jones court conceded Almendarez-Torres had recently held that sentence-enhancing prior convictions do not require charging notice and proof beyond reasonable doubt to a jury. (Jones, supra,
In language upon which defendant relies here, the Jones court continued: “One basis for that possible constitutional distinctiveness is not hard to see: unlike virtually any other consideration used to enlarge the possible penalty for an offense, and certainly unlike the factor before us in this case, a prior conviction must itself have been established through procedures satisfying the fair notice, reasonable doubt, and jury trial guarantees.” (Jones, supra,
Soon after Almendarez-Torres and Jones, the court squarely held in Apprendi that except for the fact of a prior conviction, the Constitution requires any fact that authorizes a penalty beyond the prescribed statutory maximum for the charged offense to be separately alleged in the charging document and proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Apprendi addressed a New Jersey statute that specified the maximum sentence for the offense of possession of a firearm for an unlawful purpose, but provided additional punishment if the trial court found, by a preponderance of evidence, that the unlawful purpose was to intimidate on the basis of group bias.
The Apprendi court rejected New Jersey’s attempt to defend the statute by invoking Almendarez-Torres. For multiple reasons, the court explained, the rule of Almendarez-Torres was confined to recidivism as a sentencing fact. As in Jones, the court noted Almendarez-Torres’s emphasis on recidivism as a highly “ ‘traditional’ ” basis for imposition of increased punishment by sentencing courts. (Apprendi, supra,
Thus, the Apprendi court observed that “[b]ecause Almendarez-Torres had admitted the three earlier convictions for aggravated felonies—all of which had been entered pursuant to proceedings with substantial procedural safeguards of their own—no question concerning the right to a jury trial or the standard of proof that would apply to a contested issue of fact was before the Court.” (Apprendi, supra,
Finally, the Apprendi court distinguished Almendarez-Torres from the situation presented in Apprendi itself. The court observed: “The reasons supporting an exception from the general rule for the statute construed in [Almendarez-Torres] do not apply to the New Jersey [hate crime] statute [at issue in Apprendi]. Whereas recidivism ‘does not relate to the commission of the offense’ itself, [citation], New Jersey’s biased purpose inquiry goes precisely to what happened in the ‘commission of the offense.’ Moreover, there is a vast difference between accepting the validity of a prior judgment of conviction entered in a proceeding in which the defendant had the right to a jury trial and the right to require the prosecutor to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and allowing the judge to find the required fact under a lesser standard of proof.” (Apprendi, supra,
However, we do not read Apprendi so broadly. For reasons we set forth below, we agree with the majority view that the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments, as construed in Apprendi, do not preclude the sentence-enhancing use, against an adult felon, of a prior valid, fair, and reliable adjudication that the defendant, while a minor, previously engaged in felony misconduct, where the juvenile proceeding included all the constitutional protections applicable to such matters, even though these protections do not include the right to jury trial.
The United States Supreme Court has confirmed that minors accused under the juvenile law of criminal conduct for which they may be confined in a correctional institution are constitutionally entitled to virtually all the procedural rights and protections they would enjoy as adult criminal defendants. (See In re Gault (1967)
The various McKeiver opinions offered multiple reasons for declining to recognize such a right. At least five justices cited, as a paramount concern, a reluctance to deem juvenile adjudications “criminal proceedings” within the Sixth Amendment’s ambit, given the juvenile system’s greater emphasis on informality, rehabilitation, and parens patriae protection of the minor, as
On the other hand, five concurring justices in McKeiver also were strongly influenced by their determination that a jury is not essential to fair and reliable factfinding in a juvenile case. Thus, Justice Blackmun deemed it incorrect to say that “the jury is a necessary component of accurate factfinding” (McKeiver, supra,
These factors have persuaded the overwhelming majority of courts to reject the contention defendant makes in this case. Except for the decision here under review, all California Court of Appeal panels to address the issue in published opinions, both before and after Apprendi, have squarely held that the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments permit the use of prior juvenile adjudications to enhance the sentences for subsequent adult offenses, even though there is no right to a jury trial in juvenile proceedings. The United States Supreme Court has denied all petitions for certiorari arising from these cases. (People v. Del Rio (2008)
The majority decisions reason, in essence, as follows: Prior juvenile adjudications substantially satisfy all the reasons set forth in Almendarez-Torres, Jones, and Apprendi why prior convictions may be employed to increase the maximum punishment for a subsequent adult offense without the need for jury findings in the later case. Like prior adult criminal convictions, such prior juvenile judgments do not involve facts about the current offense that were withheld from a jury, in the current case, but instead concern the defendant’s recidivism—i.e., his or her status as a repeat offender—a basis on which courts, acting without juries, traditionally have imposed harsher sentences. Moreover, the prior criminal misconduct establishing this recidivism was previously and reliably adjudicated in proceedings that included all the procedural protections the Constitution requires for such proceedings— indeed, every substantial safeguard required in an adult criminal trial except the right to a jury. Use of such reliably obtained juvenile judgments of prior criminality to enhance later adult sentences does not offend an adult defendant’s constitutional right to a jury trial in an adult criminal proceeding. Conversely, it makes little sense to conclude, under Apprendi, that a judgment of juvenile criminality which the Constitution deemed fair and reliable enough, when rendered, to justify confinement of the minor in a correctional institution is nonetheless constitutionally inadequate for later use to establish
However, the minority view, urged by defendant and accepted by the Court of Appeal, is that the right to a jury trial in proceedings leading to the prior adjudication is essential to permitting its use for later enhancement of an adult sentence. As the Court of Appeal suggested, “the jury trial right is an indispensable part of ' “a fundamental triumvirate of procedural protections intended to guarantee the reliability of criminal convictions,” ’ ” and, under Apprendi, “ ' “one of the requisite procedural safeguards” necessary for a prior conviction to be exempt from its rule.’ ”
We agree with the majority view, and disagree with defendant and the instant Court of Appeal. For the reasons repeatedly stated by the majority decisions cited above, we conclude that the Apprendi rule does not preclude use of nonjury juvenile adjudications to enhance later adult sentences.
The United States Supreme Court has left no doubt of the importance of the jury trial guarantee, among other due process and fair trial protections, in the formal, fully adversary, and fully penal context in which one is convicted of, and sentenced for, a crime committed as an adult. Under Apprendi and its progeny, every previously unadjudicated fact about an adult offense or offender that authorizes an increase in the maximum sentence for the adult crime must be specifically alleged or charged, presented to a jury, and proved beyond reasonable doubt except to the extent the defendant waives those rights. Moreover, in concluding that prior convictions are available to enhance later sentences without new jury involvement, the court has stressed that the defendant enjoyed, among others, the right to a jury trial in those prior adult proceedings.
But the court has struck a delicate balance as to the constitutional treatment of juveniles alleged to have violated the criminal law. Such a juvenile, like an adult accused, faces both the stigma of adjudged criminality and the significant loss of liberty by confinement in a correctional institution if the allegations prove true. Thus, “[t]he same considerations that demand extreme caution in factfinding to protect the innocent adult apply as well to the innocent child.” (Winship, supra,
The court’s decision in McKeiver not to find a constitutional jury trial right in juvenile proceedings reflected its concern that the introduction of juries in that context would interfere too greatly with the effort to deal with youthful offenders by procedures less formal and adversarial, and more protective and rehabilitative—at least to a degree—than those applicable to adult defendants. (McKeiver, supra,
If the parens patriae features of the juvenile justice system have succeeded in rehabilitating a youthful offender, all well and good. But if the person was not deterred, and thus reoffends as an adult, this recidivism is a highly rational basis for enhancing the sentence for the adult offense. So long as an accused adult is accorded his or her right to a jury trial in the adult proceeding as to all facts that influence the maximum permissible sentence, no reason appears why a constitutionally reliable prior adjudication of criminality, obtained pursuant to all procedural guarantees constitutionally due to the offender in the prior proceeding—specifically including the right to proof beyond a reasonable doubt—should not also be among the facts available for that sentencing purpose.
We do not read the passages from Almendarez-Torres, supra,
We first note the obvious; Neither Jones nor Apprendi was directly concerned with deciding the circumstances under which prior adjudications of criminal conduct may be used to enhance the maximum sentence for a subsequent adult offense. Hence, the court’s comments on that subject were dictum.
Moreover, nothing in Jones or Apprendi, or in Almendarez-Torres itself, stated or implied that a prior criminal adjudication forming the basis of a
Finally, as indicated above, Apprendi and its progeny concern an adult’s right to jury findings, in the adult case, of all previously unadjudicated facts that bear upon the maximum sentence for the adult offense. On the other hand, these decisions have suggested that recidivism already adjudicated in fair and rehable prior proceedings may be used to enhance later sentences without new jury involvement, and the high court has not disturbed McKeiver’s determination that juvenile adjudications of criminality are constitutionally fair and reliable even though the Constitution does not require jury trials in juvenile proceedings.
Under these circumstances, we decline to hold that a prior juvenile adjudication, highly probative on the issue of recidivism, is unavailable to enhance the punishment for the individual’s subsequent adult offenses, for the sole reason that there was no right to a jury trial in the juvenile case.
Defendant and his amici curiae, like the Court of Appeal majority, stress the philosophical difference between juvenile and adult criminal proceedings. This line of reasoning proposes that proceedings under the juvenile law may dispense with jury trials only because, as parens patriae attempts by the state to protect, rehabilitate, and reform wayward minors, they are not fully “criminal” in nature, and they lack the truly penal objectives and consequences of the system that governs adult violations of law. Hence, the argument runs, even if a juvenile adjudication is reliable and procedurally fair enough for juvenile purposes, it is not sufficiently fair and reliable, without the right to a jury trial, for use to affect a later adult criminal sentence.
Again, we disagree, for the reasons indicated above. Sentence enhancement based on recidivism flows from the premise that the defendant’s current criminal conduct is more serious because he or she previously was found to have committed criminal conduct and did not thereafter reform. A prior juvenile adjudication, like a prior adult conviction, is a rational basis for increased punishment on the basis of recidivism. Indeed, a juvenile prior demonstrates that the defendant did not respond to the state’s attempt at early intervention to prevent a descent into further criminality. The high court has never held that the Constitution places a direct restriction on the use of prior juvenile adjudications for this purpose.
Under these circumstances, the philosophical and legal distinctions between the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems—differences that informed McKeiver’s determination not to impose a jury-trial entitlement in juvenile cases—fail to convince us that adjudications of criminal conduct obtained in juvenile proceedings without the right to jury trial are unavailable, under Apprendi, to increase the maximum punishment for later adult offenses.
Finally, we deem highly pertinent a decision of the high court in which, overruling prior authority, the court concluded, under analogous circumstances, that a constitutionally valid prior criminal adjudication may be used to enhance the maximum penalty for a subsequent felony offense, even though the prior proceeding did not include all the safeguards required for felony trials.
Thus, in Scott v. Illinois (1979)
In Nichols, the court overruled Baldosar, holding that a prior constitutionally valid uncounseled misdemeanor conviction could be employed in a subsequent federal felony proceeding to increase the defendant’s criminal history score, and thus his maximum punishment, for the felony offense. Among other things, the court noted, as relevant here, that recidivism is a traditional basis for sentence enhancement, that this factor goes only to punishment and does not involve the circumstances of the current offense, and that the criminal conduct evidenced by the prior conviction was subject
In its most recent examination of the Apprendi rule, the high court majority has explained that “[t]he rule’s animating principle is the preservation of the jury’s historic role as a bulwark between the State and the accused at the trial for an alleged offense. [Citation.] Guided by that principle, our opinions make clear that the Sixth Amendment does not countenance legislative encroachment on the jury’s traditional domain. [Citation.] We accordingly [have] considered whether the finding of a particular fact was understood as within ‘the domain of the jury ... by those who framed the Bill of Rights.’ [Citation.] In undertaking this inquiry, we remain cognizant that administration of a discrete criminal justice system is among the basic sovereign prerogatives States retain. [Citation.]” (Ice, supra,
As indicated above, the high court’s decisions establish that neither juvenile adjudications nor previously adjudicated recidivism as a sentencing factor is, as a matter of “historical practice,” within the “traditional domain”
We therefore hold, contrary to the Court of Appeal, that the absence of a constitutional or statutory right to jury trial under the juvenile law does not, under Apprendi, preclude the use of a prior juvenile adjudication of criminal misconduct to enhance the maximum sentence for a subsequent adult felony offense by the same person.
Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeal is reversed.
George, C. J., Werdegar, J., Chin, J., Moreno, J., and Corrigan, J., concurred.
Notes
All further unlabeled statutory references are to the Penal Code.
The Court of Appeal-spelled defendant’s middle name “Vinthuong,” as do the briefs in this court. However, all trial court records, including the amended complaint and the abstract of judgment, spell it “Vinhtuong.” We adopt the latter spelling.
The offense described in section 12020, subdivision (a)(1) is a “wobbler,” for which the defendant can be charged and/or convicted of either a felony or a misdemeanor. (See § 17, subds. (a), (b).)
As the Court of Appeal explained, the documents submitted to the court were not made part of the appellate record, and were subsequently lost. Acting on its own motion, the Court of Appeal thus took judicial notice of the juvenile court file.
Defendant does not claim that his juvenile adjudication fails to qualify, under the terms of the Three Strikes law, as a “prior felony conviction” for purposes of sentence enhancement. Nor, as the dissent points out, does he raise any constitutional objection other than the jury trial issue we address here.
Apprendi’s jury-trial requirement applies only to sentencing facts that increase the maximum penalty for an offense; a sentencing court retains, under Apprendi, its discretion to impose a sentence within the range permitted solely by the underlying conviction, on the basis of facts not found by a jury. (E.g., Apprendi, supra,
Amici curiae briefs have been filed in support of defendant by (1) Criminal Defense Clinic, Mills Legal Clinic of Stanford Law School, (2) California Public Defenders Association, and (3) Pacific Juvenile Defender Center, Juvenile Law Center, Juvenile Division of the Los
Defendant suggests in passing that, even if Apprendi guarantees only the right to a jury trial in the present case concerning the “fact” of his prior adjudication, California’s jury-trial statutes do not satisfy this requirement, because they sharply limit the issues to be decided by the jury trying a prior-conviction allegation. (§ 1025, subd. (c) [issue whether defendant is the
Both we and the United States Supreme Court have confirmed that the “prior conviction” exception extends beyond the bare “fact” that such a conviction occurred, and permits the sentencing court, without a jury, to determine related issues about a prior conviction’s relevance to the recidivist sentencing scheme, when those issues primarily involve either legal questions of a kind typically decided by judges, or factual matters that may be conclusively determined by examination of the official court record in the prior case. (See, e.g., Shepard v. United States (2005)
(E.g., U.S. v. Matthews (1st Cir. 2007)
Taking issue with McKeiver’s premise that the absence of a jury does not materially undermine factfinding accuracy, the Court of Appeal cited Ballew v. Georgia (1978)
Defendant also notes that in Ring v. Arizona (2002)
Amici curiae Pacific Juvenile Defender Center et alia argue that to allow the use of juvenile adjudications to enhance later adult sentences “is inconsistent with the purpose of juvenile court and disregards California’s carefully drawn boundaries between juvenile and adult court jurisdiction.” This argument, essentially based on nonconstitutional state law, overlooks the express provision in California’s Three Strikes law that certain serious prior juvenile adjudications shall be deemed “prior convictions” available for adult sentence enhancement. (§§ 667, subd. (d)(3), 1170.12, subd. (b)(3).)
We further observe that we see no fatal gap between our holding here and certain portions of our analysis in Towne, supra,
Indeed, the Three Strikes provisions embodied in section 1170.12, including its provision for use of prior juvenile adjudications as strikes, were enacted as an initiative measure by popular vote. (Prop. 184, as approved by voters, Gen. Elec. (Nov. 8, 1994).)
Dissenting Opinion
In California, a minor accused of a crime in a juvenile court proceeding—unlike a person accused in an adult criminal proceeding—has no right to a jury trial. The lack of that right becomes an issue when, as here, a juvenile court adjudication is based on one of certain statutorily specified felonies and later the juvenile, by then an adult, commits another felony. At that point, California’s “Three Strikes” law (Pen. Code, §§ 667, subds. (b)-(i), 1170.12) comes into play. Because of the prior juvenile court adjudication, the sentence for the new felony conviction is doubled, as happened here; with two such priors, the prison term is a minimum of 25 years to life.
Central here is the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey (2000)
I
As relevant in this case, defendant as an adult was charged with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, a felony. (Pen. Code, § 12021.1,
The trial court rejected that argument, found the allegation of the prior juvenile adjudication to be true, and sentenced defendant to a total of 32 months in prison (based on 16 months’ imprisonment for the current felony, doubled because of the prior adjudication). On defendant’s appeal, the Court of Appeal reversed the trial court’s judgment. This court granted the Attorney General’s petition for review.
II
In a quintet of relatively recent decisions (Oregon v. Ice (2009)
What led to the development of this constitutional rule was the high court’s concern about “a new trend in the legislative regulation of sentencing.”
California’s Three Strikes law exemplifies that current trend of harsh sentence enhancements. Under this law, any felony, even relatively minor ones ordinarily punishable by a maximum of three years in prison, must be punished by a sentence of at least 25 years to life in prison when the defendant has two qualifying prior juvenile adjudications.
The majority advances two reasons for concluding otherwise. As explained below, its reasons are not persuasive.
The majority is correct that under California’s Three Strikes law the existence of a prior juvenile court adjudication of criminal conduct is the fact that triggers increased punishment. But I construe the italicized language of Apprendi, supra,
The prior juvenile court adjudication forming the basis for the increased punishment is simply a legal document telling us that, in a proceeding in which the accused minor had no right to a jury trial, a juvenile court judge determined that the minor committed a criminal offense. The essential teaching of the high court’s decision in Apprendi, supra,
I now turn to the majority’s second reason for concluding that the use of a prior juvenile court adjudication to increase an adult defendant’s sentence beyond the “prescribed statutory maximum” (Apprendi, supra,
The majority observes that juvenile priors “concern the defendant’s recidivism—i.e., his or her status as a repeat offender” (maj. opn., ante, at p. 1021, italics omitted), and “the prior criminal misconduct establishing this recidivism was previously and reliably adjudicated in proceedings that included . . . every substantial safeguard required in an adult criminal trial except the right to a jury” (ibid.). Thus, the majority reasons, “the Apprendi rule does not preclude use of nonjury juvenile adjudications to enhance later adult sentences.” (Id. at p. 1022.) Implicit in that reasoning is the majority’s view that juvenile priors fall within Apprendi’s “fact of a prior conviction” language, which creates an exception to Apprendi’s holding that a defendant has a right to have a jury determination of the truth of any factual allegations used to increase the defendant’s sentence beyond the statutory maximum.
Apprendi itself says that the exception to the jury trial right applies only to the “fact of a prior conviction.” (Apprendi, supra,
The majority’s reasoning here—that prior juvenile court adjudications may constitutionally be used because they have been “reliably adjudicated in proceedings that included . . . every substantial safeguard” except the right to jury trial (maj. opn., ante, at p. 1021)—misses the point. “The Sixth Amendment jury trial right . . . does not turn on the relative rationality, fairness, or efficiency of potential factfinders.” (Ring v. Arizona (2002)
Appellant’s petition for a rehearing was denied August 19, 2009, and the opinion was modified to read as printed above. Kennard, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.
A prior adult conviction for violating subdivision (a)(1) of Penal Code section 245 is a strike if the assault was committed with a deadly weapon (Pen. Code, §§ 667, subd. (d)(1), 1192.7, subd. (c)(31)), but not if it was committed by means of force likely to inflict great bodily injury. (People v. Haykel (2002)
Although the increased penalties of California’s Three Strikes law are mandatory, a trial court has the power to order a juvenile prior as well as a prior adult conviction struck in the interest of justice. (See Pen. Code, § 1385; People v. Williams (1998)
When the juvenile court agrees with the prosecution that the minor is “not a fit and proper subject to be dealt with under the juvenile court law” (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 707, subd. (a)(1)), the minor is charged as an adult, in which case the minor has the right to a jury trial.