Multiple Victims Does Not Split Single Act Into Two Strikes

Tuesday, December 16, 2025

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California Supreme Court:

Multiple Victims Does Not Split Single Act Into Two Strikes

Opinion Says Even if Defendant Was Properly Found Liable for More Than One Crime, Three-Strikes Scheme Contemplates Multiple Failed ‘Swings at Bat’ Before Trial Judge Imposes Indeterminate Term

By Kimber Cooley, associate editor

The California Supreme Court held yesterday that a defendant who has suffered multiple prior homicide convictions, based on a traffic collision in which he caused the death of two victims, was wrongly sentenced to 25 years to life in prison on a later-filed intoxicated driving and drug possession case, declaring that a single bad act resulting in harm to more than one victim only counts as a single strike even if he was properly found liable for multiple crimes.

At issue is how severely a party may be punished under the Three Strikes sentencing scheme when multiple victims are hurt in a single incident. Under governing law, defendants who are found to have suffered one qualifying prior conviction will be subject to a doubling of the prison sentence otherwise applicable to the current offense.

After the enactment of the Three Strikes Reform Act of 2012, a defendant with two or more prior strike convictions is subject to an indeterminate life sentence only if the current offense is also serious, violent, or otherwise qualified under the scheme, or if their previous crimes are for homicide or other enumerated, particularly egregious transgressions.

Justice Leondra Kruger authored yesterday’s opinion for the unanimous court, saying:

“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.’…This case concerns how to count the number of strikes when a single criminal act has resulted in multiple prior felony convictions. In People v. Vargas (2014)…, we held that two prior convictions arising out of a single act against a single victim may not be treated as two strikes….In this case, we address a closely related question: May a single act that harms two victims be treated as two strikes for purposes of Three Strikes sentencing? Again, the answer is no.”

Retired Justice Martin J. Jenkins, sitting by assignment, joined in the opinion. Justice Joshua P. Groban, joined by Justice Goodwin H. Liu and Justice Kelli Evans, wrote separately to argue that the logic properly employed by the majority “raises questions” about prior decisions in which the high court has upheld three-strike sentences.

2020 Offense

The question arose after Troy Shaw was found by police officers, in December 2020, sitting unconscious in the driver’s seat of a running car stopped in the middle of a rural road in Placer County. He was convicted of driving under the influence of drugs and three drug-possession charges relating to the incident in June 2023.

Prosecutors alleged multiple prior strike convictions arising out of a single incident in which he was convicted of two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, in violation of Penal Code §191.5(a), relating to a 2002 collision in which a 21-year-old mother and her 23-month-old baby were killed.

Placer Superior Court Judge Suzanne Gazzaniga sentenced him to 25 years to life in prison in June 2023, rejecting his so-called Romero motion to strike one of the prior allegations in the interests of justice based on the Vargas case.

In July 2024, the Third District Court of Appeal affirmed. Yesterday’s decision reverses the judgment and disapproves of the 2015 opinion by Div. One of the Fourth District Court of Appeal in People v. Rusconi, which held that a single act may form the basis for two prior strike allegations if there were multiple convictions based on the number of victims.

Three-Strikes Jurisprudence

Kruger highlighted the court’s three-strikes jurisprudence, noting that under the 1996 People v. Superior Court (Romero) case and its progeny, a sentencing court may, on its own motion, dismiss a prior strike in the interests of justice under Penal Code section 1385 and may be required to eliminate the allegation under if the crimes are rooted in the same act.

Noting that caselaw has relied on the baseball analogy used in the title of the sentencing scheme to invalidate some otherwise qualifying convictions, she said, quoting the Vargas opinion:

“This is because, ‘[u]nlike those rightfully subject to a third strike sentence,’ a person who has ‘committed but one prior qualifying act’ has ‘had only two swings of the bat.’ (…italics added.)”

She continued:

“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’…, 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.”

More Than One Victim

Acknowledging that a defendant may be properly convicted for multiple crimes relating to a single act that results in harm to more than one victim, she opined:

“[F]undamentally, the Attorney General’s argument fails because it misses the point of a recidivist sentencing law like the Three Strikes law. It is true that an act that harms multiple people is more serious than an act that does not and may be punished accordingly. But the purpose of Three Strikes sentencing is not (and, for double jeopardy reasons, cannot be) to impose additional punishment for prior criminal acts that have already been punished. The purpose is instead to fix the appropriate punishment for the defendant’s current offense—an offense the law considers [aggravated by the fact that it is repetitive].”

Saying that “no one can dispute that Shaw’s intoxicated driving in 2002 was more serious because it tragically claimed the lives of two victims, rather than one,” she concluded:

“[I]t does not follow…that the voters and legislators who enacted the Three Strikes law intended to authorize imposing an indeterminate life term on Shaw for his current offense—even though his two prior strikes stemmed from just one criminal act—while merely doubling the term of another defendant who had previously engaged in identical conduct.”

The justice added:

“In sum, the rule we established in Vargas, that a trial court is required to dismiss a strike when two of a defendant’s prior strikes are the result of the same act, applies in cases in which the defendant’s single act harmed multiple victims.”

Groban’s Concurrence

Groban wrote:

“To resolve this matter, we need only consider whether…Shaw’s single act, which killed two victims, may be treated as two prior strike convictions….I concur in the majority’s conclusion that the answer to that question is ‘no.’ However, I write to highlight that this case raises questions about the logic employed in some of our prior cases involving a different set of facts.”

Noting that the “aim of the ‘Three Strikes’ law was to address recidivism, he said that the logic employed in Vargas and Kruger’s opinion calls into question “our court’s prior decisions” holding that two prior offenses committed seconds apart against a single victim may be treated as separate strikes. The jurist said:

“A defendant who breaks into a home and then immediately assaults the homeowner, or who threatens two victims with a gun mere moments apart, has had one chance at reform, not two. These holdings make exposure to a life sentence turn on a matter of seconds: fire a single shotgun blast that injures two victims and receive one strike. But fire two separate shotgun blasts in rapid succession and receive two strikes.”

Arguing that “[t]here is a far more logical solution” that is “consistent with the very premise of ‘three strikes at the bat’ ” analogy, he asserted:

“We should interpret the Three Strikes law as it was presented to voters, as punishing defendants who committed a third violent felony after two prior failed attempts at reform….[Our caselaw dealing with quick-succession actions] violate[s] this principle by calling for two strikes based upon just one swing. Today’s decision does not require us to revisit this departure from the Three Strikes law’s basic premise. Perhaps a future case will.”

The case is People v. Shaw, 2025 S.O.S. 3653.