Hamlin

A jury found defendant Richard William Hamlin guilty of torture, making a criminal threat, three counts of inflicting corporal injury on his wife, and three counts of misdemeanor child abuse. The trial court sentenced him to life in prison for torture, the upper term of three years for making a criminal threat, and the upper term of four years for each of the three counts of inflicting corporal injury, but the court ordered the terms on the latter four counts stayed pursuant to Penal Code section 654. The court also sentenced defendant to three consecutive terms of 180 days each for the child abuse counts.

On appeal, defendant raises numerous issues, including claims of insufficiency of the evidence, evidentiary errors, instructional errors, error in denying his new trial motion, and sentencing errors.

We reject defendant’s challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence and most of his claims of error, with two exceptions: we conclude (1) the trial court erred in imposing upper terms on defendant’s convictions for making a criminal threat and inflicting corporal injury on a spouse based on facts not found to exist by the jury, admitted by defendant, or justified based on…