Reyes

MEMORANDUM **

California state prisoner Santos L. Reyes (“Reyes”) appeals the district court’s order denying his 28 U.S.C. § 2254 habeas corpus petition challenging his sentence under California’s “three strikes” law 1 for perjury on a Department of Motor Vehicles driver’s license application. Reyes had filled out a license application and attempted to take the written portion of the exam under the name of his cousin Miguel Soto. At trial, Reyes testified that he tried to take the exam for Soto because Soto was illiterate and had failed to pass. Because the perjury conviction was Reyes’s third strike, he was sentenced to 26 years to life. Reyes is married and has two children who were one and three years old at the time of sentencing.

Reyes contends that his 26 years to life sentence is grossly disproportionate in violation of the Eighth Amendment. This argument is foreclosed by Lockyer v. An-drade, 538 U.S. 63 , 123 S.Ct. 1166, 1172-75 , 155 L.Ed.2d 144 (2003) (holding that a California state court’s affirmance of two consecutive 25 years to life sentences for petty theft was not contrary to or an unreasonable application of federal law), and Ewing v. California, 538 U.S. 11 ,…