The California Supreme Court has overturned an appellate court’s ruling effectively stripping incarcerated persons of the right to use a recently enacted state law to challenge gang-related sentencing enhancements.
Assembly Bill 333, better known as California’s STEP Forward Act, became law in 2022, requiring street gang enhancements to be prosecuted separately from any underlying criminal charges.
The court ruled 7-2 that incarcerated persons currently serving sentences for gang enhancements have no right to resentencing under the law. Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero wrote on behalf of the majority, reported the Courthousenews.com.
San Quentin resident Ray Rivera, 39, said he worried that the ruling affected the possibility of his resentencing.
“My public defender contacted me a while back about resentencing,” Rivera said. “She told me a lot of laws had changed that would make me a candidate, but that first we needed to work on getting the gang enhancement removed. After all this, I’m not really sure where I stand.”
Rivera said he was a 21-year-old living on the street with his cousin when they attempted to steal a car.
Although he readily admits to growing up in a gang, Rivera said they were just two unhoused kids trying to sell car parts for quick cash.
Rivera said he pled guilty to carjacking. He added that his public defender informed him that his gang ties would be used to sway a jury and convict him of more signifi- cant charges. Rivera said he received a 30-years-to-life sentence included gun and street-gang enhancements. Ten of those years are for the gang enhancements, something he considered unfair.
In the report, Chief Justice Guerrero acknowledged that similarly enacted laws allowing for lesser punishments are normally applied retroactively. In this case, she argued, the law had changed only trial procedures and not sentencing requirements.
“There is no question that the legislative findings accompanying Assembly Bill 333 reflect significant concerns about gang enhancements in general, including about their usefulness in stemming crime and their disproportionate impact on people of color in particular,” the Chief Justice wrote.
“However,” she added, “we do not discern from these findings a ‘clear and unavoidable implication’ that the Legislature intended Assembly Bill 333’s bifurcation provisions to apply retroactively.”