People v. Pruitt CA3

FACTS AND HISTORY OF THE PROCEEDINGS

In February 2012, defendant entered a no contest plea, stipulating to a 30-year sentence consisting of five years for carjacking, doubled under the three strikes law, and a total of 20 years for four prior serious felony convictions—battery with serious bodily injury in 1989, making terrorist threats in 1994, second degree robbery in 1995, and second degree robbery with personal use of a firearm in 1998—pursuant to Penal Code section 667, subdivision (a). (Statutory section citations that follow are found in the Penal Code unless otherwise stated.) In January 2021, the Secretary of the CDCR (Secretary) sent a letter to the trial court recommending recall and resentencing of defendant pursuant to the former version of section 1170, subdivision (d)(1) (former section 1170(d)(1)), which authorized a court, at any time after receiving a recommendation from the CDCR, to recall an inmate’s sentence and resentence that inmate to a lesser sentence. The Secretary stated that “the COVID-19 pandemic has created an urgent necessity to decrease [CDCR’s] in-custody population,” especially for inmates such as defendant, then 53 years old, “who has…