People v. Sandoval CA6

I. INTRODUCTION

Defendant Miguel Angel Sandoval appeals from the denial of his Penal Code section 1172.61 resentencing petition after an evidentiary hearing.2 As relevant here, section 1172.6 allows individuals convicted of murder under the natural and probable consequences doctrine or other theory under which malice is imputed to a person based solely on that person’s participation in a crime to petition the superior court to vacate the conviction under recent changes to the law that limited the scope of murder liability. (See § 1172.6, subd. (a).) A jury convicted defendant of second degree murder (§ 187) in 2009, and found true the allegations that defendant committed the offense for the

1All further statutory references are to the Penal Code unless otherwise indicated. 2 Defendant filed the petition in 2019 pursuant to section 1170.95. Effective

June 30, 2022, the Legislature renumbered section 1170.95 to section 1172.6. (Stats. 2022, ch. 58, § 10.) There were no substantive changes to the statute. For purposes of clarity, we refer to the statute as section 1172.6 throughout the opinion. benefit of a criminal street gang (§ 186.22, subd. (b)(1)(C)) and that a…