Pinkston

ORDER GRANTING PETITION FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS

INTRODUCTION

Petitioner, a California prisoner, filed this pro se petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 raising two cognizable claims: (1) that his Sixth Amendment right to counsel was violated because his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance at his resentencing hearing; and (2) his sentence of 25-years-to-life under California’s “three strikes” law violates his Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. Following briefing by the parties, the court denied the petition on the merits in an order dated October, 30, 2001.

After the order denying the petition was issued, the law in this- circuit governing plaintiffs Eighth Amendment claim changed significantly. In Andrade v. Att orney General, 270 F.3d 743 (9th Cir.2001), ce rt. granted, Lockyer v. Andrade, 535 U.S. 969 , 122 S.Ct. 1434 , 152 L.Ed.2d 379 (2002), the Ninth Circuit found that petitioner’s 50-years-to-life sentence under California’s three strikes law for two counts of petty theft with a prior violated the Eighth Amendment. Andrade, 270 F.3d at 766 . In Brown v. Mayle, 283 F.3d 1019 (9th Cir.2002), the Ninth…