Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Madera County Nos. MCR028160 & MCR021614, Eric C. Wyatt, Judge.
Michael McPartland, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Michael P. Farrell, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Carlos A. Martinez and Marcia A. Fay, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
OPINION
Before Wiseman, Acting P.J., Levy, J., and Dawson, J.
On October 12, 2007, appellant Johnny Ray Childs pled guilty to felony failure to register as a sex offender (Pen. Code, § 290, subd. (a)(1)(A)), and admitted an allegation that he had suffered a prior juvenile adjudication that qualified as a “strike.” Also on that date, the court found that appellant had violated his probation in two other cases. On December 7, 2007, appellant filed an “OBJECTION …,” in which he argued that imposition of sentence under the three strikes law based on his prior juvenile adjudication would violate his rights under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution because he did not have a right to trial by jury in the proceeding in which he suffered that adjudication. On January 4, 2008, the court treated appellant’s objection as a motion for arrest of judgment, denied the motion, and imposed a prison term of 32 months, consisting of the 16-month lower term on the substantive offense, doubled pursuant to the three strikes law (Pen. Code, §§ 667, subd. (e)(1), 1170.12, subd. (c)(1)). The court also imposed concurrent terms of three years in each of the two cases in which appellant violated probation.
We use the term “strike” as a synonym for “prior felony conviction” within the meaning of the “three strikes” law (Pen. Code, §§ 667, subds. (b)-(i), 1170.12), i.e., a prior felony conviction or juvenile adjudication that subjects a defendant to the increased punishment specified in the three strikes law.
On appeal, appellant renews his contention that the court’s use of his prior juvenile adjudication as a prior felony conviction within the meaning of the three strikes law violated his right to a jury trial and due process of law under the United States Constitution.
DISCUSSION
This court rejected a virtually identical argument in People v. Buchanan (2006) 143 Cal.App.4th 139. We again conclude, as we did in Buchanan, that “‘a prior juvenile adjudication may constitutionally be used as a “strike” despite the fact that there is no right to a jury trial in juvenile proceedings.’” (Id. at p. 149.) Appellant’s constitutional challenge to the imposition of sentence under the three strikes law is without merit.
As the parties note, the question of whether a juvenile adjudication can qualify as a strike even though a juvenile is not entitled to a jury trial is currently before the California Supreme Court in People v. Nguyen, review granted October 10, 2007, S154847.
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.