S286453
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF CALIFORNIA
December 15, 2025
Third Appellate District C098821; Placer County Superior Court 62176716Z
Justice Kruger authored the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice Guerrero and Justices Corrigan, Liu, Groban, Evans, and Jenkins* concurred.
Justice Groban filed a concurring opinion, in which Justices Liu and Evans concurred.
PEOPLE v. SHAW
S286453
Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J.
The Three Strikes law increases sentences for felony defendants who have previously been convicted of one or more “serious or violent” felonies, commonly referred to as “strikes.” (See
I.
In December 2020, officers found defendant Troy Lee Shaw unconscious behind the wheel of a car that was stopped in the middle of the road with its engine running. Though Shaw declined to complete any field sobriety tests, he admitted he had taken methamphetamine earlier that day. Officers observed that his gait was unsteady, his eyes were droopy, and his pupils were constricted. They searched Shaw and his car, finding two baggies of methamphetamine, drug paraphernalia, and several bags of marijuana. A blood test returned positive results for amphetamine and methamphetamine.
Shaw was charged with felony driving under the influence of a drug, possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia, and
For purposes of sentencing, Shaw admitted that he had suffered two prior convictions for gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated. Both convictions stemmed from a 2002 incident in which Shaw drove under the influence, ran a red light, and struck a car with three occupants, killing two of them: a 21-year-old mother and her 23-month-old son. These two prior homicide convictions made Shaw eligible for a third-strike, indeterminate term of 25 years to life. (
Shaw moved to dismiss one of the two prior strikes in furtherance of justice. (See
The Court of Appeal upheld Shaw‘s third-strike sentence in an unpublished opinion. Relying on People v. Rusconi (2015) 236 Cal.App.4th 273 (Rusconi), the court held that the trial court had not abused its discretion in refusing to dismiss one of the strikes because in this case, unlike in Vargas, Shaw‘s prior criminal act had harmed two victims and not just one. Quoting Rusconi, the court explained that the voters and legislators who passed the Three Strikes law could not have intended for “violent offenders who injure multiple victims” to be “treated like offenders who only injure one individual,” given the greater culpability of “perpetrators of multivictim violence.” (Rusconi, at pp. 280–281.)
We granted Shaw‘s petition for review and now reverse.
II.
In 1994, the Legislature and the electorate enacted nearly identical recidivist sentencing legislation, commonly known as the Three Strikes law. (
The
Under current law, defendants with two or more prior strikes are subject to a third-strike, indeterminate life sentence only under certain circumstances, including if their current offense is: serious or violent; a controlled substance charge involving large quantities; one of various enumerated sex offenses; or one in which the defendant used a firearm, was armed with a firearm or deadly weapon, or intended to cause great bodily injury. (
Not long after the Three Strikes law took effect, courts began to face questions about how strikes should be counted when a defendant had multiple convictions stemming from related underlying acts. We addressed such questions in a trio of cases, beginning with People v. Fuhrman (1997) 16 Cal.4th 930 (Fuhrman).
In Fuhrman, the defendant had suffered multiple convictions stemming from a series of incidents we described as follows: “[D]efendant, while driving a stolen car, collided with another vehicle. [Fn. omitted.] When the victim of the collision expressed her intent to call the police, defendant brandished a handgun. Defendant then forced his way at gunpoint into a truck that had stopped because of the collision. Defendant ordered the driver of the truck to take him from the scene. The driver thereafter drove approximately two-tenths of a mile, when defendant told her to stop and ordered her from the truck.” (Fuhrman, supra, 16 Cal.4th at p. 935.)
Fuhrman left open, however, whether the statute permits “separate strikes to be imposed for offenses that in a prior proceeding were determined to have been committed as part of an indivisible transaction, and as to which it was concluded that imposition of separate punishment for each offense would constitute multiple punishment proscribed by [Penal Code] section 654.” (Fuhrman, supra, 16 Cal.4th at p. 941.) We answered that question in People v. Benson (1998) 18 Cal.4th 24 (Benson). There, the defendant had suffered two prior convictions for residential burglary and assault with intent to commit murder, which arose from an incident in which he unlawfully entered his neighbor‘s apartment and then stabbed her. The sentence for the assault conviction was stayed under
The defendant in Benson argued that this reading of the text was untenable because counting every single conviction as a strike, no matter how closely related the underlying facts, would lead to “‘dramatic and harsh results.‘” (Benson, supra, 18 Cal.4th at p. 35.) In response to this concern, we pointed to Romero, supra, 13 Cal.4th 497, which had held that a sentencing court may, on its own motion, dismiss a prior strike in the interests of justice under
The third case in the series, Vargas, is the focus of our inquiry in this case. There we considered the question reserved in the Benson footnote: How should multiple convictions be treated when they stem not just from a single criminal proceeding (Fuhrman) or a single indivisible course of conduct (Benson), but from a single act?
The defendant in Vargas was convicted of various felony offenses, with sustained allegations that she had suffered two prior strikes based on convictions for robbery and carjacking. (Vargas, supra, 59 Cal.4th at p. 639Id. at p. 640.) We granted review to decide “whether the trial court should have dismissed one of defendant‘s two prior felony convictions, alleged as strikes under the Three Strikes law, where both convictions were based on the same act.” (Ibid.) We concluded the answer was yes: “[W]hen faced with two prior strike convictions based on the same act,” the trial court was “required to dismiss one of them.” (Ibid.; see id. at p. 649.)
We took as a given that the text of the Three Strikes law treats every prior conviction of a serious or violent felony as a separate strike. But as we had noted in Benson, this is not the end of the story: Under Romero, a trial court may dismiss a strike allegation or finding in the interests of justice — and, in certain exceptional situations, may be required to do so.
Our analysis thus began with a review of the standards governing the adjudication of Romero motions. In People v. Williams (1998) 17 Cal.4th 148, we instructed that, when considering whether to dismiss a strike under Romero, “the court in question must consider whether, in light of the nature and circumstances of [the defendant‘s] present felonies and prior serious and/or violent felony convictions, and the particulars of [the defendant‘s] background, character, and prospects, the defendant may be deemed outside the scheme‘s spirit, in whole or in part, and hence should be treated as though he had not previously been convicted of one or more serious and/or violent felonies.” (Williams, at p. 161.)
Later, in People v. Carmony (2004) 33 Cal.4th 367, 378, we considered the scope of a trial court‘s discretion not to dismiss a strike. We there explained that “[b]ecause the circumstances must be ‘extraordinary . . . by which a career criminal can be deemed to fall outside the spirit of the very scheme within which he squarely falls once he commits a strike as part of a long and continuous criminal record, the continuation of which the law was meant to attack’ [citation], the circumstances where no reasonable people could disagree that the criminal falls outside the spirit of the three strikes scheme must be even more extraordinary.” (Ibid.; see also Vargas, supra, 59 Cal.4th at pp. 641–642.)
The question in Vargas, then, was whether “the facts — . . . that defendant‘s two strikes were based on the same act — demonstrate that no reasonable person would disagree that defendant fell outside the spirit of the Three Strikes law.” (Vargas, supra, 59 Cal.4th at p. 642Romero, supra, 13 Cal.4th at p. 528 [ballot arguments of Three Strikes initiative is evidence of voters’ intent].)
“Given this information,” we said, “the voting public would reasonably have understood the ‘Three Strikes’ baseball metaphor to mean that a person would have three chances — three swings of the bat, if you will — before the harshest penalty could be imposed. The public also would have understood that no one can be called for two strikes on just one swing. Permitting the trial court . . . to treat [Vargas‘s] 1999 robbery and carjacking convictions as separate strikes — despite the fact [that] they were based on a single criminal
III.
The year after we decided Vargas, the Court of Appeal considered a request for relief from a third strike sentence brought by a defendant with two prior convictions for vehicular manslaughter, based on a single incident in which he drove while intoxicated and crashed into two victims. (Rusconi, supra, 236 Cal.App.4th at p. 276.) The defendant argued that relief was required under Vargas because both strikes stemmed from a single act. The Court of Appeal disagreed. It held that Vargas‘s dismissal requirement applies only when a defendant‘s single act against a single victim gave rise to multiple felony convictions — not when a single act that harmed multiple victims gave rise to multiple convictions. The Court of Appeal in this case relied on Rusconi to uphold Shaw‘s third-strike, indeterminate life sentence under materially identical circumstances.
The question now before us is whether the Court of Appeal correctly identified Vargas‘s reach. Does Vargas apply only in the circumstances there presented, in which the defendant had suffered multiple convictions stemming from a single act against a single victim? Or does Vargas also apply where, as here, the same act caused harm to multiple victims?
The reasoning of Vargas strongly suggests the answer to the question. Although we noted at the outset that the underlying facts concerned “two prior convictions arising out of a single act against a single victim” (Vargas, supra, 59 Cal.4th at p. 637), our opinion ascribed no particular significance to the single-victim aspect of the case. We instead repeatedly described the issue before us as “whether the trial court should have dismissed one of defendant‘s two prior felony convictions, alleged as strikes under the Three Strikes law, where both convictions were based on the same act.” (Id. at p. 640, italics added; accord, id. at p. 642 [“based on the same act“]; id. at p. 645 [“based on her commission of the same act“].) In answering yes, we explained that when a defendant‘s “two strikes [are] based on the same act . . . no reasonable person would disagree that [the] defendant fell outside the spirit of the Three Strikes law” — specifically, its provisions prescribing indeterminate life sentences for persons with two prior strikes. (Id. at p. 642, italics added; see id. at p. 649.) This is because, “[u]nlike those
Although the teachings of Vargas would appear to apply equally to any case in which a court is considering a third-strike sentence for a person who has “committed but one prior qualifying act” (Vargas, supra, 59 Cal.4th at p. 647), the Attorney General argues that Vargas should be cabined to its single-victim facts. According to the Attorney General, that is because when a prior criminal act has harmed multiple victims, not “every reasonable person” would agree that multiple-strike sentencing is outside the spirit of the Three Strikes law.
To support the argument, the Attorney General points to the law governing the charging and punishment of violent acts that harm multiple victims. Under that law, it is well established that “‘[a] defendant may properly be convicted of multiple counts for multiple victims of a single criminal act . . . where the act prohibited by the statute is centrally an “act of violence against the person.“‘” (People v. McFarland (1989) 47 Cal.3d 798, 803, italics omitted.) So, too, may a defendant be separately punished with respect to each victim. (Id. at pp. 803–804; see also, e.g., Neal v. State (1960) 55 Cal.2d 11, 20 [multiple convictions may be separately punished when they arise from “an act of violence with the intent to harm more than one person or by a means likely to cause harm to several persons“]; accord, e.g., People v. Oates (2004) 32 Cal.4th 1048, 1063.)
The Attorney General argues that the voters and legislators who enacted the Three Strikes law must be presumed to have been aware that the law generally treats the perpetrators of multivictim violence as more culpable and thus punishes them more harshly. As such, they should be presumed to have understood that a single criminal act with more than one victim might yield more than one strike for Three Strikes purposes. Here the Attorney General invokes the reasoning of Rusconi: “It is not reasonable to believe the authors of the three strikes law . . . intended that . . . violent offenders who injure multiple victims should be treated like offenders who only injure one individual. Such a dramatic and lenient departure from the severe punishment the law had already recognized the perpetrators of multivictim violence deserve would be at direct odds with the overall purpose of the three strikes law” to “‘require[] severe punishment‘” in cases of recidivism to combat “‘the perception [] that serious and violent criminals who committed multiple crimes were allowed to escape their just desserts [sic].‘” (Rusconi, supra, 236 Cal.App.4th at pp. 280–281.)