People v. Duenas (Cal. Ct. App., May 27, 2025, No. B335274) 2025 WL 1502018, at *1
Summary: In 2011, a jury convicted Robert Duenas of assault with a semiautomatic firearm, and it found true gang, firearm, and great bodily injury enhancements. The trial court sentenced Duenas to 23 years in prison, including four years for the firearm enhancement and three years for the great bodily injury enhancement.
In June 2022, Duenas filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus challenging his sentence. In August 2022, an order to show cause was issued to consider why Duenas was “not entitled to have the Penal Code section 12022.7 great bodily injury enhancement and the 12022.5 firearm enhancement stayed or have his unauthorized sentence otherwise remedied.” The trial court imposed and stayed the three-year great bodily injury enhancement, declined to stay or strike the firearm and gang enhancements, and left the six-year midterm on the substantive offense unchanged, reducing Duenas’s sentence from 23 years to 20 years.
On appeal, Duenas contends the trial court erred by refusing to conduct a full resentencing hearing, including considering recent ameliorative legislation, such as Assembly Bill No. 333 (2021–2022 Reg. Sess.), Senate Bill No. 567 (2021–2022 Reg. Sess.), and Assembly Bill No. 124 (2021–2022 Reg. Sess.). The California Supreme Court has explained that once a court determines that a defendant is entitled to resentencing on habeas review, “the result is vacatur of the original sentence, whereupon the trial court may impose any appropriate sentence.” (People v. Padilla (2022) 13 Cal.5th 152, 163 (Padilla).) Therefore, once the trial court resentenced Duenas, he was entitled to a full resentencing and retroactive application of new ameliorative legislation. The Court reversed and remanded for a new sentencing hearing.
Procedural history of Habeas petition
In March 2022, Duenas filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the trial court contending the imposition of the firearm, great bodily injury, and gang enhancements were unauthorized based on then-recent case law. The trial court denied Duenas’s petition.
In June 2022, Duenas filed a habeas petition in the Court of Appeal. In August 2022, the Court issued an order to show cause returnable to the trial court and concluded that Duenas’s “sentence violates section 1170.1, subdivisions (f) and (g). These sections prohibit twice enhancing a sentence for use of a firearm, or twice enhancing a sentence for inflicting great bodily injury, respectively, on the same victim in a single offense.” The order to show cause set a hearing to resolve why Duenas was “not entitled to have the section 12022.7 great bodily injury enhancement and the [section] 12022.5 firearm enhancement stayed or have his unauthorized sentence otherwise remedied.”
The trial court conducted a hearing on the order to show cause and the prosecutor agreed that the three-year great bodily injury enhancement should be stayed but disagreed on whether the court had the authority to make additional modifications to Duenas’s sentence. The parties addressed whether the court could consider Assembly Bill No. 333’s changes to the gang enhancement statute after Duenas’s sentence had become final. The prosecutor argued that Duenas’s sentence remained final even after the court modified it and that “the gang enhancement should not be touched.”
On October 19, 2023, the trial court issued a written decision modifying Duenas’s sentence and reducing it from 23 years to 20 years by imposing and staying the great bodily injury enhancement. The court declined to exercise its discretion to stay or strike the gang allegation and the firearm use allegation. The court also reasoned it had “no jurisdiction to consider the effect of the amendments” to the gang statute because the order to show cause from this court did not address it.
Duenas appealed.
Did trial court err by not conducting a full resentencing hearing?
Duenas argues that the trial court erred when it refused to conduct a full resentencing hearing. Specifically, he argues that once the court granted his habeas corpus petition and reduced his sentence in response to our order to show cause, his judgment became nonfinal and the court was required to reconsider his entire sentence, including whether to apply recent ameliorative legislation, such as Assembly Bill No. 124, Assembly Bill No. 333, and Senate Bill No. 567.
When a trial court corrects or strikes one part of a sentence, it generally must conduct a full resentencing, at which it “can exercise its sentencing discretion in light of the changed circumstances.” (People v. Buycks (2018) 5 Cal.5th 857, 893 (Buycks.) Under In re Estrada (1965) 63 Cal.2d 740 (Estrada), the trial court must apply new laws that reduce the possible punishment for a crime when resentencing a defendant whose judgment is not final. (Padilla, supra, 13 Cal.5th at p. 158.) It is well-settled that the full resentencing rule and Estrada’s presumption of retroactivity apply when a matter is remanded for resentencing on direct review, because the defendant’s judgment has yet to become final. The issue here is whether Duenas was entitled to full resentencing, including application of Estrada’s presumption of retroactivity, after the trial court granted his habeas petition and reduced his sentence by imposing and staying the great bodily injury enhancement.
Duenas’s sentence was vacated once the trial court granted his habeas petition and resentenced him in response to our order to show cause. Duenas’s judgment was then non-final and the trial court was required to conduct a full resentencing hearing. Once the trial court modified Duenas’s sentence, Duenas gained the right to appeal that decision, an indication of a nonfinal judgment.
Although neither this court nor the trial court stated that it was vacating Duenas’s sentence, such language was not required to render the judgment nonfinal. Once the trial court determines that a defendant is entitled to resentencing on habeas review, “the result is vacatur of the original sentence, whereupon the trial court may impose any appropriate sentence.” (Padilla, supra, 13 Cal.5th at p. 163.) When the trial court granted Duenas’s habeas petition and resentenced him, the result was vacatur of Duenas’s original sentence. At that point, Duenas’s sentence was nonfinal because the trial court regained the jurisdiction and obligation to reconsider Duenas’s entire sentence, and Duenas regained the ability to appeal whatever sentencing decision the trial court made.
When a judgment becomes non-final following a successful habeas petition, the trial court must conduct a full resentencing and apply the Estrada presumption of retroactivity,
Disposition
The judgment is reversed, and the cause is remanded for a new resentencing hearing at which the court is directed to consider all components of Duenas’s sentence.
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