Can a court dismiss a prior strike allegation under section 1385 for abuse of discretion?

California, United States of America


The following excerpt is from People v. Sudduth, B251321 (Cal. App. 2014):

We review the trial court's decision not to dismiss a prior strike allegation under section 1385 for abuse of discretion. (People v. Carmony (2004) 33 Cal.4th 367, 376.) "[T]he three strikes law not only establishes a sentencing norm, it carefully circumscribes the trial court' s power to depart from this norm and requires the court to explicitly justify its decision to do so. In doing so, the law creates a strong presumption that any sentence that conforms to these sentencing norms is both rational and proper. [] . . . [] . . . '[I]t is not enough to show that reasonable people might disagree about whether to strike one or more' prior conviction allegations. . . . Because 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." (Id. at p. 378.)

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