Page 1
California Supreme Court:
Stay of Now-Defunct Enhancement Does Not Interfere With Right to Full Resentencing
Opinion Says Fact That Prior Prison Sentencing Aggravator Did Not Lengthen Incarceration Does Not Eliminate Right to Reconsideration of Sentence
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The California Supreme Court held yesterday that a criminal defendant, for whom a prior prison term enhancement was imposed and stayed under former Penal Code §667.5(b), is entitled to have a full resentencing hearing based on recent amendments to the Penal Code invalidating such sentencing aggravators, even though he was not subjected to any additional time for the now-defunct allegation.
Resolving a split in authority as to whether a stay rendered resentencing unnecessary, yesterday’s unanimous decision, written by Justice Leondra Kruger, addresses the reach of Penal Code §1172.75, which was adopted in 2019 to eliminate most sentencing enhancements relating to previous incarcerations.
Sec. 1172.75(a) provides that, subject to certain exceptions, “[a]ny sentence enhancement that was imposed prior to January 1, 2020, pursuant to subdivision (b) of Section 667.5,…is legally invalid” and creates a procedure for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (“CDCR”) to identify inmates serving time for the now-defunct allegation.
Other subdivisions specify that “[i]f the court determines that the current judgment includes an enhancement described in subdivision (a), the court shall recall the sentence and resentence the defendant” and the procedure “shall result in a lesser sentence than the one originally imposed…unless the court finds by clear and convincing evidence that imposing a lesser sentence would endanger public safety.”
Under the statutory scheme, judges are instructed to “apply any other changes in law that reduce sentences” at a hearing prompted by §1172.75.
Looking to the plain language of the law, Kruger declared:
“Had the Legislature drafting the rule of retroactive invalidation in section 1172.75(a) wished to establish a different set of rules for cases involving stayed prior-prison-term enhancements, we expect that it would have said so….But the statute’s broad statement of legal invalidity makes no mention of stayed enhancements. We see thus no sound basis to conclude that the Legislature intended to exempt stayed enhancements from prompt invalidation and reexamination….”
Multiple Convictions
Challenging his sentence was Andrew Rhodius, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison after he was convicted of multiple drug and firearm charges in 2017. The Riverside Superior Court judge also imposed, and stayed, one year of additional time for each of two allegations filed under former Penal Code §667.5(b).
After the CDCR identified Rhodius as an inmate serving an invalid sentence under §1172.75 in 2022, Riverside Superior Court Judge John D. Molloy denied the inmate’s request for a full resentencing hearing, concluding that the prior-prison enhancements were not “imposed” within the meaning of the statute because they were stayed and never executed. On appeal, the Fourth District Court of Appeal affirmed the denial.
Disagreeing with the lower courts, Kruger wrote:
“The question presented is whether a defendant is entitled to resentencing under Penal Code section 1172.75 when the judgment in the defendant’s criminal case includes a prior prison-term enhancement that was imposed but then stayed. The Court of Appeal answered no. We conclude otherwise: Penal Code section 1172.75 entitles a defendant to resentencing if the underlying judgment includes a prior-prison-term enhancement that was imposed before January 1, 2020, regardless of whether the enhancement was then executed or instead stayed. We reverse the Court of Appeal’s judgment to the contrary.”
Meaning of ‘Imposed’
Saying that the “critical question before us concerns the meaning of the word ‘imposed,’ ” Kruger pointed out that an enhancement is generally considered to have been “imposed” when it is “made part of a legally effective order” but confusion has arisen because “[c]ourts frequently employ the term” to mean something different.
The jurist noted case law finding that the Legislature has used the term as shorthand for “imposed and then executed” in other sentencing schemes and said:
“Echoing the reasoning of the Court of Appeal, the Attorney General argues that if subdivision (d)(1) prescribes a ‘lesser sentence’ as the usual remedy for the inclusion of an invalid enhancement, that must mean that ‘the repealed enhancement increased the length of the sentence’—a result that is possible only if the repealed enhancement had been ‘imposed and executed’ rather than imposed and stayed.”
Rejecting that contention, she remarked:
“The premise of the argument is that a ‘lesser’ sentence must mean a sentence that inevitably results in less time served than the original sentence….It is of course true…that in the typical case involving an executed enhancement, to order a ‘lesser’ sentence will mean ordering a shorter one. But we see no obvious reason why a trial court cannot also comply with the instruction to order a ‘lesser’ sentence in a case in which a section 667.5(b) enhancement was stayed rather than executed.”
Reasoning that a stayed sentence still carries with it the potential for an increased sentence in the future, she opined that any penalty excluding the enhancement will offer a “lesser” sentence, as required by §1172.75.
Legislative Purpose
Kruger commented that the legislative history supports the court’s reading. She acknowledged that the statutory scheme was “intended to prioritize resentencing for defendants for whom review would result in immediate release.”
However, she wrote: “The history makes amply clear that the Legislature was motivated in large part by a purpose of reducing incarceration and thereby reducing public prison expenditures and overcrowding. But this purpose does not, as the Attorney General would have it, necessarily presuppose that defendants must be currently facing the certain prospect of ‘additional incarceration as a result of a section 667.5(b) prior.’…It is reasonable to conclude that the Legislature also intended for section 1172.75 to accomplish this purpose through its full resentencing procedures for defendants whose judgments contain now-invalidated section 667.5(b) enhancements, regardless of whether the enhancements were stayed or executed.”
Under these circumstances, she reasoned:
“[C]onsidering what the history reveals about the Legislature’s purpose for enacting section 1172.75, we see no to persuasive reason to think that the Legislature intended implicitly to distinguish between defendants whose enhancements were imposed and executed and those for whom an enhancement was imposed, but punishment was stayed.”
The case is People v. Rhodius, 2025 S.O.S. 1801.
Copyright 2025, Metropolitan News Company