Cordova

BACKGROUND

A. Defendant’s Strikes.

In May 1973, at the age of 19, defendant was charged with a number of felonies arising from two incidents on successive days. One incident involved a home invasion robbery in which, according to the police report, defendant held a woman and her children at gunpoint while threatening violence against them. According to a later decision by this court, defendant eventually accumulated four convictions for serious or violent felonies—commonly known as strikes—for purposes of the Three Strikes law, Penal Code sections 667 and 1192.7. (People v. Cordova (Nov. 25, 1998, H015896) [nonpub. opn.] [at pp. 16-17].)

1 We have granted respondent’s request for judicial notice of the cited opinion as well as an earlier opinion concerning one of the 1973 offenses and a 1982 offense for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. (People v. Cordova (Dec. 27, 1985, A028169) [nonpub. opn.].) According to the District’s Attorneys opposition memorandum below, the latter charge arose when a plainclothes officer saw defendant 2 B. Three Strikes Law.

Two decades after defendant sustained the foregoing convictions, voters and the Legislature, respectively, adopted…