People v. Guevara, 2025 Cal. App. LEXIS 707 (Cal. Ct. App. 2025)

The First District Court of Appeal in California held that defense counsel was ineffective for failing to present mitigation evidence at a resentencing hearing. The court stated in relevant part:

“The judge might also have struck the enhancement as a reasonable response to the evidence of defendant’s intellectual disability and the abuse or neglect he suffered as a child. [REDACTED] Evidence of this type may be considered in mitigation when courts make discretionary sentencing decisions. (See, e.g., § 1170, subd. (b)(6)(A) [relevance of childhood trauma in determinate sentencing]; Atkins v. Virginia (2002) 536 U.S. 304, 318 [153 L.Ed.2d 335, 122 S.Ct. 2242] [“diminished capacities” of persons with intellectual disabilities “do not warrant an exemption from criminal sanctions, but they do diminish their personal culpability”].)

The judge might also have been influenced by the fact that defendant was eligible for a life sentence in this case only because of a crime defendant committed when he was barely 20 years old. Defendant committed his first strike prior in 1982, at the age of 20, and his second two years later, in 1984. Defendant was under 26 years of age when he committed these crimes, and thus a “‘youth’” for purposes of assessing mitigation in certain sentencing and parole contexts. (§§ 1016.7, subd. (b); 1170, subd. (b)(6)(B); 3051, subd. (a)(1).) Again, the point is not that these statutes required the sentencing court to strike the enhancement (or the strike priors), but only that competent defense counsel might have persuaded the court that if defendant was to receive a life sentence here because of crimes he committed as a youth, the court should at least exercise its discretion to strike the enhancement that would extend the sentence by three additional years.”