Lockyer v. Andrade | |
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Argued November 5, 2002 Decided March 5, 2003 | |
Full case name | Bill Lockyer, Attorney General of California, v. Leandro Andrade |
Citations | 538 U.S. 63 (more) 123 S. Ct. 1166; 155 L. Ed. 2d 144 |
Case history | |
Prior | Defendant convicted, Los Angeles County Superior Court; conviction affirmed, California Court of Appeal. Then defendant filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the U.S. district court for the Central District of California. The petition was denied, but the decision was reversed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Andrade v. Att'y Gen., 270 F.3d 743 (9th Cir. 2001). The Supreme Court granted certiorari, 535 U.S. 969 (2002). |
Holding | |
It is clearly established federal law that sentence imposed under California's three strikes law is not cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. | |
Court membership | |
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Case opinions | |
Majority | O'Connor, joined by Rehnquist, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas |
Dissent | Souter, joined by Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer |
Laws applied | |
U.S. Const. amend. VIII; 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1); Cal. Penal Code § 667 |
Lockyer v. Andrade, 538 U.S. 63 (2003),[1] decided the same day as Ewing v. California (a case with a similar subject matter),[2] held that there would be no relief by means of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus from a sentence imposed under California's three strikes law as a violation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments. Relying on the reasoning of Ewing and Harmelin v. Michigan,[3] the Court ruled that because no "clearly established" law held that a three-strikes sentence was cruel and unusual punishment, the 50-years-to-life sentence imposed in this case was not cruel and unusual punishment.
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