Applying U.S. Supreme Court precedent, the California Supreme Court today holds in People v. Catarino that a statute requiring full-term consecutive prison sentences for certain sex crimes found by a judge to have been committed “on separate occasions” does not offend the Sixth Amendment jury trial right. Without the challenged statute, a judge would generally impose partial-term consecutive sentences and it’s the full-term mandate, not the consecutive-sentences requirement, that the defendant claimed was constitutionally objectionable.
The court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Goodwin Liu finds it dispositive that, under Oregon v. Ice (2009) 555 U.S. 160, the sentencing statute “does not define or alter the term for any particular offense in a manner that invades the historical province of the jury.”
The court affirms the Fourth District, Division One, Court of Appeal’s unpublished opinion. Resolving a split in authority that developed after the court granted review, it also disapproves People v. Johnson (2023) 88 Cal.App.5th 487, a First District, Division Four, decision that is a grant-and-hold for today’s case. Another grant-and-hold — the First District, Division Two, opinion in People v. Wandrey (2022) 80 Cal.App.5th 962 — is consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision.