Full opinion text
Opinion CANTIL-SAKAUYE, C. J. California’s “Three Strikes” law applies to a criminal defendant who is currently charged and convicted of a felony and who has previously been convicted of one or more serious or violent felonies. One aspect of the law that has proven controversial is that the lengthy punishment prescribed by the law may be imposed not only when such a defendant is convicted of another serious or violent felony but also when he or she is convicted of any offense that is categorized under California law as a felony. This is so even when the current, so-called triggering, offense is nonviolent and may be widely perceived as relatively minor. (Pen. Code, §§ 667, subd. (c), 1170.12, subd. (a); see, e.g., People v. Carmony (2004) 33 Cal.4th 367, 381 [14 Cal.Rptr.3d 880, 92 P.3d 369] (conc. opn. of Moreno, J., joined by Chin, J.) (Carmony I); Vitiello, California’s Three Strikes and We’re Out: Was Judicial Activism California’s Best Hope? (2004) 37 U.C. Davis L.Rev. 1025, 1026 [“Widely reported Three Strikes cases have involved trivial offenses—such as the theft of a bicycle, a slice of pizza, cookies or a bottle of vitamins—that have resulted in severe sentences.”].) Shortly after the Three Strikes law was enacted, a number of federal appellate decisions held that the 25-year-to-life minimum sentence mandated by the law for a third strike felony conviction constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the federal Constitution when imposed upon a defendant whose current felony offense was a comparatively minor, nonviolent offense. (See, e.g., Andrade v. Attorney General of State of California (9th Cir. 2001) 270 F.3d 743; Brown v. Mayle (9th Cir. 2002) 283 F.3d 1019.) The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in each of those cases, however, and in a related case, Ewing v. California (2003) 538 U.S. 11 [155 L.Ed.2d 108, 123 S.Ct. 1179] {Ewing), the federal high court addressed a cruel and unusual punishment challenge to the imposition of a sentence of 25 years to life under California’s Three Strikes law upon a defendant whose triggering offense was the nonviolent theft of three golf clubs worth a total of $1,200. In Ewing, the high court concluded, in a five-to-four decision, that, in light of the antirecidivist purpose of the Three Strikes law and the defendant’s criminal history, the sentence imposed upon the defendant in that case was not unconstitutional. The lead opinion in Ewing (authored by Justice O’Connor), however, did not eliminate the possibility that some triggering offense, although designated a felony under California law, might be so minor and unrelated to the goal of deterring recidivism that a 25-year-to-life sentence would be “grossly disproportionate” and constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment, even when imposed upon a defendant with a serious criminal record. Subsequently, in People v. Carmony (2005) 127 Cal.App.4th 1066 [26 Cal.Rptr.3d 365] (Carmony II), a panel of the California Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District, concluded in a two-to-one decision that a 25-year-to-life sentence under the Three Strikes law constituted cruel and/or unusual punishment, in violation of the federal and state Constitutions, as applied to a defendant whose triggering offense was the failure to annually update his sex offender registration within five working days of his birthday. The defendant in Carmony II had properly registered as a sex offender at his current address one month before his birthday, had continued to reside at the same address throughout the relevant period, had remained in contact with his parole agent, and was arrested at that same address by his parole agent one month after his birthday. Observing that “because defendant did not evade or intend to evade law enforcement officers, his offense was the most technical and harmless violation of the registration law we have seen” (127 Cal.App.4th at p. 1078), the majority opinion in Carmony II concluded that, notwithstanding the defendant’s record of serious prior offenses, the imposition of a 25-year-to-life sentence was grossly disproportionate to the gravity of the defendant’s offenses and violated the constitutional prohibition of cruel and/or unusual punishment. Thereafter, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, addressing a cruel and unusual punishment claim in a factual setting very similar to that presented in Carmony II, reached the same conclusion as the California appellate court in Carmony II. (Gonzalez v. Duncan (9th Cir. 2008) 551 F.3d 875.) In the present habeas corpus proceeding, a panel of the Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division Five, considering the constitutionality of a 25-year-to-life sentence imposed upon a defendant who also was convicted of failing to update his sex offender registration within five working days of his birthday, expressly disagreed with the analysis and conclusion of the appellate court in Carmony II and held that the punishment was constitutionally permissible. In light of the conflict in the two Court of Appeal decisions, we granted review. We agree with the Court of Appeal in the present case that imposition of a 25-year-to-life sentence upon petitioner in this matter does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the federal Constitution, but, for the reasons discussed more fully hereafter, we conclude that we need not and should not rest our holding upon a determination that the Court of Appeal opinion in Carmony II was wrongly decided. The conduct of petitioner in this case, as found by the trial court, is clearly distinguishable in a significant respect from the conduct of the defendant in Carmony II. Unlike the defendant in Carmony II, who had very recently registered at his current address and who the Court of Appeal found “did not evade or intend to evade law enforcement officers” (Carmony II, supra, 127 Cal.App.4th at p. 1078), the trial court in this case, in refusing to strike any of petitioner’s prior convictions and in imposing a 25-year-to-life sentence under the Three Strikes law, found that petitioner’s triggering offense was not simply a minor or technical oversight by a defendant who had made a good faith effort to comply with the sex offender registration law. Rather, the court found that petitioner had never registered as a sex offender at his current address and had knowingly and intentionally refused to comply with his obligations under the sex offender registration law. Petitioner’s conduct, as found by the trial court, demonstrated that, despite the significant punishment petitioner had incurred as a result of his prior serious offenses, he was still intentionally unwilling to comply with an important legal obligation, and thus his triggering criminal conduct bore both a rational and substantial relationship to the antirecidivist purposes of the Three Strikes law. Given that relationship and the extremely serious and heinous nature of petitioner’s prior criminal history, we conclude that, under Ewing, supra, 538 U.S. 11, the imposition of a 25-year-to-life sentence does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the circumstances of this case. In light of the facts underlying the offense in this case as found by the trial court, we need not decide whether the Eighth Amendment prohibits the imposition of a 25-year-to-life sentence under the Three Strikes law in a factual situation like that in Carmony II, in which a defendant had properly registered his current residential address and demonstrated a good faith attempt to comply with the sex offender registration law but due to a negligent oversight had failed to update his registration within five working days of his birthday. I. Facts and Proceedings Below Prior to the commission of his latest offense, petitioner Willie Clifford Coley had a lengthy and very significant criminal history. In 1978, when he was 18 or 19 years old, petitioner was convicted of burglary in Florida and was sentenced to 15 years in state prison. He was released from prison in Florida in 1986, and thereafter moved to California. In 1988, petitioner was convicted in California of three serious and violent felony offenses— voluntary manslaughter (Pen. Code, § 192), robbery (§ 211), and acting in concert to aid and abet the commission of rape (§ 264.1)—and was sentenced to 20 years in state prison. After having been released on parole and subsequently returned to prison for parole violations on three prior occasions, petitioner was again released from prison on parole on January 7, 2001. As a result of his 1988 conviction of aiding and abetting rape, petitioner was required to register as a sex offender for the remainder of his life. (§ 290, subds. (b), (c).) In August 2001, petitioner was arrested and subsequently convicted of violating a provision of California’s sex offender registration statutes and was sentenced to 25 years to life under the Three Strikes law. Petitioner challenges the constitutionality of this sentence in the present habeas corpus proceeding. Because there is a dispute regarding the nature of petitioner’s conduct underlying his most recent conviction—a dispute that bears directly upon the cruel and unusual punishment claim before us—we describe in some detail the relevant evidence presented at trial as well as additional facts disclosed by the probation report and other documents that were before the trial court. As noted, petitioner was released from prison on parole on January 7, 2001. Although required to do so, petitioner failed to contact his parole officer upon his release, and the former Board of Prison Terms promptly summarily suspended his parole on January 10, 2001. Petitioner’s parole officer was unaware of petitioner’s whereabouts, however, and petitioner was not immediately apprehended. In addition to being required to contact his parole officer upon his release from prison, petitioner was required to register as a sex offender within five days of his release from prison. Evidence at trial indicated that the Department of Justice had no record that, after his release from prison on January 7, 2001, petitioner had registered as a sex offender at any location within the state. In August 2001, law enforcement officers conducted a general “parole sweep” in the Lancaster/Palmdale area for parolees who were suspected of having outstanding parole violations. As part of the sweep, officers discovered that petitioner had recently filed a document with the Department of Motor Vehicles listing a residential address in the City of Palmdale. The officers went to the new address and arrested petitioner at that address on August 23, 2001. The district attorney thereafter charged petitioner with two felony offenses: (1) failure to register as a sex offender upon arrival in a jurisdiction (§ 290, former subd. (a)(1)(A), now §§ 290, subd. (b), 290.013, 290.015) and (2) failure to update his sex offender registration within five working days of his birthday (which for petitioner fell on May 22, 2001) (§ 290, former subd. (a)(1)(D), now § 290.012). The information also alleged that petitioner had sustained three prior serious or violent felony convictions within the meaning of the Three Strikes law, bringing petitioner within the reach of the increased punishment prescribed by that law. At trial, the prosecution presented a number of witnesses, as well as documentary evidence, establishing that petitioner had been personally and repeatedly advised of the sex offender registration requirements imposed by the sex offender registration statutes, including the obligation to register as a sex offender with the local sheriff’s department within five days of arrival in a city, and, independently, the obligation to update the registration every year within five working days of his birthday. The prosecution’s evidence also established that after being released from prison in January 2001, petitioner had moved in with his girlfriend and her children who resided in the City of Palmdale and had continued to reside there until he was arrested in August 2001. As noted above, the prosecution also presented evidence that records from the Department of Justice indicated that petitioner had not registered as a sex offender or updated his sex offender registration after his release from prison in January 2001. A clerk/technician employed by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department station in Palmdale testified that she was the only person who registered sex offenders at the Palmdale sheriff’s department and had no record of having ever registered petitioner, that she was positive that she had not registered him, and that she did not believe that she had ever seen petitioner. On cross-examination, defense counsel questioned the quality of the technician’s recordkeeping and computer skills, implying that she may have been mistaken regarding not having registered petitioner and may have failed properly to enter his registration in the department’s computer database. One of the law enforcement officers who arrested petitioner at his Palmdale residence in August 2001 testified that, at the time of his arrest, petitioner, after being advised of his constitutional rights, acknowledged that he had lived at that address in Palmdale since January 2001 and told the officer that he (petitioner) had failed to register or to contact his parole officer because “he wanted to try to get by through life without contact with the sheriff’s department or parole.” Another officer testified that he had found numerous personal papers of petitioner in the drawer of the nightstand in petitioner’s bedroom, including a document from the Department of Motor Vehicles; the papers found in the drawer did not include any document indicating that petitioner had in fact registered as a sex offender at the Palmdale sheriff’s department upon his release from prison. Petitioner testified in his own defense. Petitioner acknowledged that he knew he was required to register as a sex offender upon his release from prison and testified that he had in fact registered as a sex offender on January 12, 2001, at the Palmdale sheriff’s department, had received a receipt reflecting that registration, and had put the receipt in the drawer in his nightstand where “all my paperwork goes.” In the course of his testimony, petitioner provided a description of the exterior and interior of the building housing the sheriff’s department, identified the clerk/technician employed by the Palmdale sheriff’s department who had testified for the prosecution as the individual who had handled his registration on January 12, 2001, and purported to describe the registration process. Petitioner further testified that although he knew that he had to register when he was released from prison and when he moved, he believed that he only had to register once a year, and thought that because he had registered with the Palmdale sheriff’s department in January 2001 he did not have to register again until his birthday the following year (that is, until May 2002); he admitted that he had not updated his registration within five days of his birthday in May 2001. On cross-examination, petitioner acknowledged that although he believed that the alleged receipt of his asserted January 12, 2001 sex offender registration at the Palmdale sheriff’s department was in his nightstand drawer when he was arrested in August 2001, he had not informed the arresting officers that he had in fact registered as a sex offender in January 2001 or that a receipt reflecting that registration was in his nightstand drawer. In rebuttal, the prosecution recalled the Palmdale clerk/technician who had testified earlier. The technician testified that petitioner’s description of both the exterior and interior of the sheriff’s department building was inaccurate in many very substantial respects, including the layout of the interior of the building and the size, shape, and layout of the room in which she worked and in which she registered sex offenders. The prosecution also recalled one of the arresting officers, who testified that although he informed petitioner that he was being arrested for failure to register as a sex offender, petitioner had not offered to provide any type of documentation to prove that he had in fact registered. At the conclusion of the trial and after several hours of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict acquitting petitioner of the charge of failing to register upon his arrival in the jurisdiction, but convicting him of failing to update his registration within five working days of his birthday. Prior to the sentencing hearing, petitioner admitted that he had been convicted of the three prior serious or violent felonies charged in the information (voluntary manslaughter, robbery, and aiding and abetting rape), and requested that the trial court, on its own motion, strike at least two of the prior convictions in the interest of justice. In support of that request, petitioner emphasized the assertedly minor and nonaggravated nature of the triggering offense of which he had been convicted, characterizing his current criminal conduct as a mere “nonact” and further arguing that, as applied to him, the punishment prescribed by the Three Strikes law would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. In ruling upon the request to strike priors, the trial court, in addition to reviewing petitioner’s lengthy and serious prior criminal record and noting that the offense in this case occurred only a few months after petitioner’s release on parole, stated with regard to the facts of the current offense: “With respect to the defendant’s testimony that he went down to the Palmdale station and registered, and that for some reason the paperwork was lost or not completed, or the registrar failed to input his registration into the computer. I don’t know if the jury accepted that testimony or not, but the court did not believe that testimony for a moment. So my review of evidence supports the fact that the only time that the defendant ever made an effort to register was either when he was in prison for a parole violation, or was taken to register by his parole agent. The defendant is well aware of his obligation to register. He had been told about it on a number of occasions. He is the one that chose to risk the sanctions for having failed to register.” (Italics added.) Finding that “[m]y review of the record indicates to me that [petitioner] has consistently refused to register as a sex offender,” the trial court refused to strike any of petitioner’s prior serious or violent felony convictions and sentenced defendant as a third strike defendant, imposing a 25-year-to-life sentence under the Three Strikes law. In the course of its sentencing ruling, the trial court expressly distinguished the facts of petitioner’s current offense from the facts involved in People v. Cluff (2001) 87 Cal.App.4th 991 [105 Cal.Rptr.2d 80], a then recent Court of Appeal decision in which the appellate court concluded that the trial court had abused its discretion in refusing to strike prior convictions in a Three Strikes case in which the defendant’s triggering offense was also a failure to update his sex registration within five days of his birthday. The trial court in the present case stated in this regard: “With respect to the Court of Appeal’s decision in People v. Cluff . . . , I think that is an appropriate disposition under the facts of that case, but the facts of this case appear to me to be in stark contrast to those in the Cluff case, because in the Cluff case that defendant made previous efforts to register and did register on previous occasions.” On appeal, the appellate court affirmed petitioner’s conviction and sentence, specifically rejecting claims that (1) the trial court had abused its discretion in failing to strike two prior serious or violent felony convictions and (2) that the 25-year-to-life sentence imposed upon petitioner constituted cruel and unusual punishment. (People v. Coley (May 13, 2003, B158564) [nonpub. opn.], review den. July 23, 2003, S116799.) Several years after the affirmance of petitioner’s conviction and sentence became final, the Court of Appeal in Carmony II, supra, 127 Cal.App.4th 1066, concluded that the imposition of a 25-year-to-life sentence under the Three Strikes law upon a defendant who had been convicted of failing to annually update his sex registration within five days of his birthday violated the prohibition against cruel and/or unusual punishment contained in the federal and California Constitutions. We discuss the Carmony II decision below (post, at pp. 544-548). Thereafter, petitioner filed the present habeas corpus proceeding, contending that, as in Carmony II, supra, 127 Cal.App.4th 1066, his 25-year-to-life sentence violated the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment set forth in the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Although, as noted, petitioner had raised an Eighth Amendment challenge to his sentence in his direct appeal and that claim had been rejected on appeal, and although a habeas corpus petition generally may not rely upon an issue that has been raised and rejected on appeal (see, e.g., In re Waltreus (1965) 62 Cal.2d 218, 225 [42 Cal.Rptr. 9, 397 P.2d 1001]), California decisions have recognized an exception to this general rule in instances in which there has been a subsequent change in the law in petitioner’s favor. (See, e.g., In re Harris (1993) 5 Cal.4th 813, 841 [21 Cal.Rptr.2d 373, 855 P.2d 391].) Because the decision in Carmony II was decided after petitioner’s appeal had become final, we determined that petitioner’s Eighth Amendment claim was not procedurally barred, and we issued an order to show cause returnable before the Court of Appeal, with directions to consider the question whether petitioner was entitled to relief in light of the decision in Carmony II. After briefing and argument, the Court of Appeal addressed petitioner’s Eighth Amendment claim on the merits, concluding that the Court of Appeal decision in Carmony II, supra, 127 Cal.App.4th 1066, was wrongly decided and that petitioner’s 25-year-to-life sentence did not violate the Eighth Amendment of the federal Constitution. In light of the conflict between the Court of Appeal opinion in this case and the Court of Appeal decision in Carmony II, we granted review. II. Review of Relevant United States Supreme Court Eighth Amendment Decisions The Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution provides in full: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Although it has always been uniformly accepted that the federal cruel and unusual punishment clause prohibits the infliction of certain modes of punishment (for example, inherently barbaric punishments such as “punishments of torture” (see, e.g., Wilkerson v. Utah (1879) 99 U.S. 130, 136 [25 L.Ed. 345])), there has been some dispute, particularly outside the context of capital punishment, whether the provision also prohibits the imposition of punishment that is “excessive” or “disproportionate” in relation to the offense or offenses for which the punishment is imposed. Over the past two decades, several high court justices have expressed doubts whether the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual punishment clause was intended to grant courts any authority to evaluate the length of prison sentences enacted by legislative bodies to determine whether such sentences are excessive or disproportionate in light of the offense or offenses for which the sentences are imposed. (See Harmelin v. Michigan (1991) 501 U.S. 957, 962-994 [115 L.Ed.2d 836, 111 S.Ct. 2680] [separate opn. of Scalia, J., joined in relevant part by Rehnquist, C. J.] (Harmelin); Ewing, supra, 538 U.S. at pp. 31-32 [cone. opn. of Scalia, J.]; Ewing, at p. 32 [cone. opn. of Thomas, J.].) A majority of the high court, however, has consistently rejected this limited view of the scope of the federal cruel and unusual punishment clause, and it is now firmly established that “[t]he concept of proportionality is central to the Eighth Amendment,” and that “[e]mbodied in the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments is the ‘precept of justice that punishment for crime should be graduated and proportioned to [the] offense.’ [Citation.]” (Graham v. Florida (2010) 560 U.S. 48,_[176 L.Ed.2d 825, 835, 130 S.Ct. 2011] (Graham); see also Solem v. Helm (1983) 463 U.S. 277, 284—292 [77 L.Ed.2d 637, 103 S.Ct. 3001] (Solem); Harmelin, supra, at pp. 996-1001, 997 [cone. opn. of Kennedy, J., joined by O’Connor and Souter, JJ.] [8th Amend, encompasses “a narrow proportionality principle” that “also applies to noncapital sentences”]; Harmelin, at pp. 1009-1021 [dis. opn. of White, J., joined by Blackmun and Stevens, JJ.]; Harmelin, at p. 1027 [dis. opn. of Marshall, J.]; Ewing, supra, at pp. 20-24 [lead opn. of O’Connor, J., joined by Rehnquist, C. J. and Kennedy, J.]; Ewing, at pp. 32-35 [dis. opn. of Stevens, J., joined by Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ.].) In past cases, the high court has addressed the claim that a sentence of imprisonment for a term of years is unconstitutionally excessive in a variety of contexts, but in view of the circumstances of the present case the most pertinent of the high court’s past proportionality decisions are those that have considered the validity of lengthy terms of imprisonment imposed under “habitual offender” or recidivist sentencing provisions analogous to California’s Three Strikes law. As we shall see, each of these cases was decided by a closely divided court and illustrates the particularly difficult nature of line drawing in this context. In Rummel v. Estelle (1980) 445 U.S. 263 [63 L.Ed.2d 382, 100 S.Ct. 1133] (Rummel), the initial case in this line of decisions, the defendant had been sentenced to a term of life in prison with the possibility of parole under a Texas statute that mandated a life sentence for any person convicted of a third felony offense. In Rummel itself, the defendant’s triggering offense was a conviction for “felony theft,” based upon the defendant’s conduct of “obtaining $120.75 by false pretenses.” (445 U.S. at p. 266.) The defendant had two prior felony convictions, the first for “fraudulent use of a credit card to obtain $80 worth of goods or services” {id. at p. 265) and the second for “passing a forged check in the amount of $28.36.” {Ibid.) In a five-to-four decision, the court in Rummel rejected the defendant’s contention that a sentence of life imprisonment with the possibility of parole constituted cruel and unusual punishment as applied to the circumstances of his case. In response to a criticism advanced by the dissenting opinion in that case, the court in Rummel acknowledged that a sentence for a term of years might be unconstitutionally disproportionate in a very extreme case—for example, “if a legislature made overtime parking a felony punishable by life imprisonment” (445 U.S. at p. 274, fn. 11)—but the court concluded that the facts before it did not constitute such an extreme case. The court held that “[hjaving twice imprisoned him for felonies, Texas was entitled to place upon Rummel the onus of one who is simply unable to bring his conduct within the social norms prescribed by the criminal law of the State.” {Id. at p. 284.) In Rummel, four justices dissented in an opinion authored by Justice Powell. (Rummel, supra, 445 U.S. at pp. 285-307.) The dissent emphasized that each of the defendant’s felony convictions was for a nonviolent theft offense and that in total defendant had unlawfully defrauded others of only $230. The dissent concluded that “[t]he sentence imposed upon the petitioner would be viewed as grossly unjust by virtually every layman and lawyer” and that “objective criteria clearly establish that a mandatory life sentence for defrauding persons of about $230 crosses any rationally drawn line separating punishment that lawfully may be imposed from that which is proscribed by the Eighth Amendment.” (445 U.S. at p. 307 (dis. opn. of Powell, J.).) Just three years after the decision in Rummel, supra, 445 U.S. 263, the United States Supreme Court, with Justice Powell now writing for a five-judge majority, reached a contrary conclusion in Solem, supra, 463 U.S. 277. In Solem, the defendant had a prior criminal record of relatively minor, nonviolent crimes and was convicted in the current prosecution of a felony offense for “uttering a ‘no account’ check for $100.” (463 U.S. at p. 281.) In Solem, however, the triggering offense was the defendant’s seventh felony conviction, and the trial court sentenced him under South Dakota’s recidivist sentencing provision to a term of life imprisonment, a term which, under South Dakota law, was not subject to parole. In analyzing whether the defendant’s sentence violated the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment set forth in the Eighth Amendment, the court in Solem first reviewed the history of the Eighth Amendment and concluded “as a matter of principle that a criminal sentence must be proportionate to the crime for which the defendant has been convicted.” (Solem, supra, 463 U.S. at p. 290.) At the same time, the court in Solem cautioned that “[Reviewing courts, of course, should grant substantial deference to the broad authority that legislatures necessarily possess in determining the types and limits of punishments for crimes, as well as to the discretion that trial courts possess in sentencing convicted criminals” (ibid.), and further emphasized that “a court’s proportionality analysis under the Eighth Amendment should be guided by objective criteria, including (i) the gravity of the offense and the harshness of the penalty; (ii) the sentences imposed on other criminals in the same jurisdiction; and (iii) the sentences imposed for commission of the same crime in other jurisdictions.” (Solem, supra, at p. 292.) Reviewing the sentence in question under these criteria, the majority in Solem determined (1) that the defendant’s triggering offense “was ‘one of the most passive felonies a person could commit’ ” (id. at p. 296), (2) that “[h]is prior offenses, although classified as felonies, were all relatively minor [and] nonviolent” (id. at pp. 296-297), (3) that his sentence—life without the possibility of parole— was “far more severe” than the sentence considered in Rummel (Solem, supra, at p. 297) and was the same sentence that South Dakota imposed for much more serious offenses and upon much more culpable habitual offenders (id. at pp. 298-299), and, finally, (4) that it appeared that the defendant’s sentence was more severe than the sentence that would have been imposed upon a similarly situated defendant in any other state (id. at pp. 299-300). Under these circumstances, the court in Solem concluded that the defendant’s sentence “is significantly disproportionate to his crime, and is therefore prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.” (Id. at p. 303.) The court in Solem, however, did not purport to overrule Rummel, expressly noting that the facts before it were distinguishable from Rummel because “[w]hereas Rummel was eligible for a reasonably early parole, Helm, at age 36, was sentenced to life with no possibility of parole.” (Solem, supra, at p. 303, fn. 32.) Four justices dissented in Solem, concluding that the majority opinion in that case was irreconcilable with the reasoning and conclusion in Rummel. Although the dissent acknowledged “that in extraordinary cases—such as a life sentence for overtime parking—it might be permissible for a court to decide whether the sentence is grossly disproportionate to the crime” (Solem, supra, 463 U.S. at p. 311, fn. 3 (dis. opn. of Burger, C. J.)), it concluded that given the defendant’s lengthy criminal history the sentence imposed in Solem did not reflect “such an extraordinary case that reasonable men could not differ about the appropriateness of this punishment.” (Ibid.) In 2003, 20 years after the decision in Solem, the Supreme Court next addressed a cruel and unusual punishment challenge to a sentence imposed under a recidivist sentencing statute in Ewing, supra, 538 U.S. 11—a case that, as we have already noted, arose under California’s Three Strikes law. In Ewing, the defendant had a lengthy prior criminal history that included one conviction of robbery (in which the defendant had threatened a victim with a knife) as well as numerous convictions for burglary, theft, and unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia and a firearm. (See 538 U.S. at pp. 18-19.) After serving several years in prison, the defendant in Ewing was paroled in 1999. Ten months later, he stole three golf clubs, each priced at $399, from a pro shop at a golf course, walking out of the shop with the clubs concealed in his pants leg. An employee who saw him limp out of the shop telephoned the police and the defendant was apprehended shortly thereafter in the golf course parking lot. In response to his most recent offense, the prosecution charged the defendant in Ewing under the Three Strikes law, alleging that the defendant had previously been convicted of four serious or violent felonies (robbery and three burglaries) and seeking the 25-year-to-life sentence authorized by the Three Strikes law. After being convicted of one count of felony grand theft—an offense treated as a “wobbler” under California law (that is, an offense that may be punished as either a felony or a misdemeanor)—based on his theft of the three golf clubs, the defendant asked the trial court to reduce the grand theft conviction to a misdemeanor or, alternatively, to strike some or all of his prior convictions, so as to avoid a third strike sentence. The trial court declined to reduce the grand theft conviction to a misdemeanor or to strike any of the prior serious or violent felony convictions, and sentenced the defendant to the 25-year-to-life sentence authorized by the Three Strikes law. On appeal, the defendant in Ewing contended that imposition of a 25-year-to-life sentence for a conviction based on the nonviolent theft of three golf clubs constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. After the California Court of Appeal rejected the contention and affirmed the conviction and sentence and this court denied a petition for review, the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari and ultimately rejected the defendant’s cruel and unusual punishment claim by a five-to-four vote. In Ewing, the lead opinion, authored by Justice O’Connor (and joined by Rehnquist, C. J. and Kennedy, J.), after briefly reviewing the decisions in Rummel, Solem, and two other decisions that addressed cmel and unusual punishment challenges to lengthy noncapital sentences that had been imposed outside the antirecidivist context (see Hutto v. Davis (1982) 454 U.S. 370 [70 L.Ed.2d 556, 102 S.Ct. 703] [rejecting 8th Amend, challenge to 40-year sentence for distributing a small quantity of marijuana]; Harmelin, supra, 501 U.S. 957 [rejecting 8th Amend, challenge to life-without-parole sentence for possessing over 650 gm. (1.5 lb.) cocaine]), proceeded to analyze the merits of the cruel and unusual punishment claim in Ewing using the approach that had been articulated and applied by Justice Kennedy in his concurring opinion in Harmelin. (See Harmelin, supra, at pp. 996-1005 (cone. opn. of Kennedy, J.).) As described in the high court’s more recent proportionality decision in Graham, supra, 560 U.S. 48 [176 L.Ed.2d 825], Justice Kennedy’s concurring opinion in Harmelin had synthesized the court’s prior decisions in this realm as embodying the general rule “that the Eighth Amendment contains a ‘narrow proportionality principle,’ that ‘does not require strict proportionality between crime and sentence’ but rather ‘forbids only extreme sentences that are “grossly disproportionate” to the crime.’ ” (Graham, supra, 560 U.S. at p._[176 L.Ed.2d at p. 836].) Justice Kennedy’s concurring opinion in Harmelin further went on to explain how that principle is to be applied. As summarized in Graham, under the approach set forth in the Harmelin concurrence, “[a] court must begin by comparing the gravity of the offense and severity of the sentence. [Citation.] ‘[I]n the rare case in which [this] threshold comparison . . . leads to an inference of gross disproportionality’ the court should then compare the defendant’s sentence with the sentences received by other offenders in the same jurisdiction and with the sentences imposed for the same crime in other jurisdictions. [Citation.] If this comparative analysis ‘validate[s] an initial judgment that [the] sentence is grossly disproportionate, ’ the sentence is cruel and unusual. [Citation.]” (Graham, supra, at p._[176 L.Ed.2d at p. 836].) Applying this analysis in Ewing, Justice O’Connor’s opinion turned first to an evaluation of the gravity of the defendant’s offense compared to the severity of the penalty. (Ewing, supra, 538 U.S. at p. 28.) The opinion initially observed that “[e]ven standing alone, Ewing’s theft” of nearly $1,200 worth of merchandise “should not be taken lightly. His crime was certainly not ‘one of the most passive felonies a person could commit.’ ” (Ibid.) The opinion further emphasized, however, that “[i]n weighing the gravity of Ewing’s offense, we must place on the scales not only his current felony, but also his long history of felony recidivism. Any other approach would fail to accord proper deference to the policy judgments that find expression in the legislature’s choice of sanctions. In imposing a three strikes sentence, the State’s interest is not merely punishing the offense of conviction, or the ‘triggering’ offense: ‘[I]t is in addition the interest... in dealing in a harsher manner with those who by repeated criminal acts have shown that they are simply incapable of conforming to the norms of society as established by its criminal law.’’ ” (Id. at p. 29, italics added.) Although Justice O’Connor’s opinion in Ewing recognized that the 25-year-to-life sentence imposed upon Ewing “is a long one” {Ewing, supra, 538 U.S. at p. 30), the opinion concluded that the sentence was justified “by the State’s public-safety interest in incapacitating and deterring recidivist felons, and amply supported by [Ewing’s] own long, serious criminal record” (id. at pp. 29-30). The opinion explained that Ewing’s sentence “reflects a rational legislative judgment, entitled to deference, that offenders who have committed serious or violent felonies and who continue to commit felonies must be incapacitated. The State of California ‘was entitled to place upon [Ewing] the onus of one who is simply unable to bring his conduct within the social norms prescribed by the criminal law of the State.’ ” (Id. at p. 30, quoting Rummel, supra, 445 U.S. at p. 284.) Determining that “Ewing’s is not ‘the rare case in which a threshold comparison of the crime committed and the sentence imposed leads to an inference of gross disproportionality’ ” (Ewing, supra, 538 U.S. at p. 30), Justice O’Connor’s opinion concluded, “Ewing’s sentence of 25 years to life in prison, imposed for the offense of felony grand theft under the three strikes law . . . does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments.” (Id. at pp. 30-31.) In Ewing, two justices—Justices Scalia and Thomas—each wrote a separate concurring opinion, both agreeing that Ewing’s sentence did not violate the Eighth Amendment but basing their concurrence in the judgment on the view that the Eighth Amendment contains no proportionality principle at all. (See Ewing, supra, 538 U.S. at pp. 31-32 (conc. opn. of Scalia, J.); id. at p. 32 (conc. opn. of Thomas, J.).) The three justices who signed Justice O’Connor’s opinion and the two concurring justices comprised the five-justice majority in Ewing. Four justices dissented in Ewing. Like Justice O’Connor’s opinion, the dissenting opinion by Justice Breyer, joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg, applied the analytical framework set forth in Justice Kennedy’s concurring opinion in Harmelin (Ewing, supra, 538 U.S. at p. 36 (dis. opn. of Breyer, J.)), but unlike the lead opinion the dissent, in applying that approach, concluded that the case before it did constitute one of the rare cases “in which a court can say with reasonable confidence that the punishment is ‘grossly disproportionate’ to the crime.” (Ewing, supra, 538 U.S. at p. 37 (dis. opn. of Breyer, J.).) In reaching that conclusion, the dissent, after considering the “[t]hree kinds of sentence-related characteristics” that it believed “define the relevant comparative spectrum”—“(a) the length of the prison term in real time, i.e., the time that the offender is likely actually to spend in prison; (b) the sentence-triggering criminal conduct, i.e., the offender’s actual behavior or other offense-related circumstances; and (c) the offender’s criminal history” (id. at p. 37)—determined that the circumstances presented in Ewing fell between the circumstances presented in the court’s previous recidivist sentencing decisions in Rummel and Solem, and ultimately found that, as in Solem, “Ewing’s sentence (life imprisonment with a minimum term of 25 years) is grossly disproportionate to the triggering offense conduct—stealing three golf clubs—Ewing’s recidivism notwithstanding.” (Ewing, supra, at p. 53 (dis. opn. of Breyer, J.).) III. Review of Relevant Post-Ewing Decisions A. Carmony II Two years after the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Ewing, supra, 538 U.S. 11, a panel of the California Court of Appeal was faced with the question whether a 25-year-to-life sentence under the Three Strikes law violated either the federal constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments or the state constitutional prohibition on cruel or unusual punishment, when imposed upon a defendant whose triggering offense was the failure to update his sex offender registration within five working days of his birthday. (Carmony II, supra, 127 Cal.App.4th 1066.) Keith Carmony, the defendant in Carmony II, had been convicted in 1983 of oral copulation by force or fear with a minor under the age of 14 years and as a consequence was required to register as a sex offender. Upon his release from prison on September 16, 1999, Carmony promptly registered as a sex offender as required by law. A week later, on September 23, 1999, after moving to a new residence, Carmony registered again, informing the authorities of his new address. Carmony’s birthday fell on October 22—the following month—and although his parole officer reminded him that he was required to update his registration annually within five working days of his birthday, Carmony—who continued to reside at the same address—forgot to reregister within five days of his birthday. On November 23, 1999, a month after Carmony’s birthday, Carmony’s parole officer went to Carmony’s registered residential address and arrested him there for failing to comply with the annual registration requirement. The Court of Appeal in Carmony II pointed out that the “[defendant had recently married, maintained a residence, participated in Alcoholics Anonymous, sought job training and placement, and was employed. Just prior to the current offense, he worked as a forklift operator for Hartsell Trucking in Redding and was employed by them until November 24, 1999, the day following his- arrest for the present offense.” (Carmony II, supra, 127 Cal.App.4th at p. 1073.) In response to the current charge, Carmony admitted that he had failed to reregister within five working days of his birthday and pled guilty to that offense. He also admitted that he had previously been convicted of three serious or violent felonies, but requested that the trial court strike at least two of those prior convictions to avoid a mandatory 25-year-to-life sentence under the Three Strikes law. The trial court declined to strike any of the prior convictions and sentenced him to a 25-year-to-life sentence under the Three Strikes law. On appeal, the Court of Appeal had initially concluded that the trial court had abused the discretion afforded by the Three Strikes law in refusing to strike any of his prior convictions in the interest of justice (see People v. Superior Court (Romero) (1996) 13 Cal.4th 497 [53 Cal.Rptr.2d 789, 917 P.2d 628]) and reversed the sentence on that basis; as a consequence, the appellate court did not reach the question whether the 25-year-to-life sentence constituted cruel and/or unusual punishment. We granted review. After first concluding that a trial court’s refusal to strike a prior under the Three Strikes law is properly reviewable under an abuse of discretion standard (Carmony 1, supra, 33 Cal.4th at pp. 373-376), this court held that in light of Carmony’s prior record, the Court of Appeal had erred in finding that the trial court had abused its discretion in refusing to strike the prior convictions in that case (33 Cal.4th at pp. 376-380). At the same time, our opinion explicitly noted that “[w]e do not . . . address the issue of whether the sentence violates the constitutional guarantees against cruel and/or unusual punishment or double jeopardy, and leave the resolution of this issue for the Court of Appeal on remand.” (Id. at p. 380, fn. 6.) On remand, the Court of Appeal addressed the constitutional issue in its decision in Carmony II, supra, 127 Cal.App.4th 1066, and concluded, in a two-to-one decision, that, under the circumstances of that case, the 25-year-to-life sentence imposed under the Three Strikes law violated both the federal Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments and the state Constitution’s prohibition of cruel or unusual punishment. (Carmony II, supra, at pp. 1074-1089.) In addressing the federal constitutional question through application of the approach endorsed by the lead opinion in Ewing, supra, 538 U.S 11, the court in Carmony II first discussed the relative gravity of the defendant’s triggering offense. The court observed in this regard: “While a violation of section 290 [(the sex offender registration provision)] is classified as a felony, the instant offense was a passive, nonviolent, regulatory offense that posed no direct or immediate danger to society. Defendant committed this offense by violating the annual registration requirement . . . , having correctly registered the proper information the month before. Obviously, no change had occurred in the intervening period and defendant’s parole agent was aware of this fact. Thus, because defendant did not evade or intend to evade law enforcement officers, his offense was the most technical and harmless violation of the registration law we have seen.” (Carmony II, supra, 127 Cal.App.4th at p. 1078, citation omitted.) After reviewing the legislative history of the specific provision imposing the annual registration requirement, the court in Carmony II explained that “the available legislative history suggests the annual registration requirement was intended to address the problem of offenders who fail to notify authorities of an address change because they are no longer under active parole supervision. Although this requirement serves a legitimate purpose, it is nevertheless a backup measure to ensure that authorities have current accurate information. In this case, when defendant failed to register within five days of his birthday, he was still on parole, had recently updated his registration, had not moved or changed any other required registration information during the one month since he registered, and was in contact with his parole officer. Therefore, his failure to register was completely harmless and no worse than a breach of an overtime parking ordinance.” (Carmony II, supra, 127 Cal.App.4th at p. 1079.) The majority in Carmony II then considered the severity of the sentence that had been imposed upon the defendant, noting that the defendant “was sentenced to a term of 25 years to life in prison” and that “[i]n real terms, [the defendant] must serve 25 years in prison before he is eligible for parole.” (Carmony II, supra, 127 Cal.App.4th at p. 1079.) The court stated that “[i]t is beyond dispute that a life sentence is grossly disproportionate to the offense just described.” (Ibid.) The court in Carmony II recognized that in determining the validity of the sentence under the Eighth Amendment it must take into consideration that the defendant was a repeat offender whom the Legislature may punish more severely than it punishes a first-time offender. The majority in Carmony II reasoned, however, that because “the double jeopardy clause prohibits successive punishment for the same offense,” the “policy of the clause . . . circumscribes the relevance of recidivism,” and “[t]o the extent the ‘punishment greatly exceeds that warranted by the [triggering] offense, it begins to look very much as if the offender is actually being punished again for his prior offenses.’ ” (Carmony II, supra, 127 Cal.App.4th at p. 1080.) The majority in Carmony II found that “[g]iven the minimal and completely harmless nature of defendant’s [triggering] offense and the relatively light penalty prescribed for a simple violation of the registration requirements, defendant’s prior serious and violent felonies almost wholly account for the extreme penalty imposed on defendant.” (Ibid.) Furthermore, because in the appellate court’s view the defendant’s triggering offense in that case “reveals no tendency to commit additional offenses that pose a threat to public safety” (id. at p. 1081), the court concluded that “a prison term of 25 years to life is grossly disproportionate to the gravity of the duplicate registration offense” (ibid.) even taking into account the defendant’s multiple serious prior convictions. The court in Carmony II then compared the defendant’s sentence with the sentences available for other offenses within California and for the sentences imposed under comparable circumstances in other states (id. at pp. 1081-1084), and ultimately concluded that “this case is one of those rare cases in which the harshness of the Three Strikes sentence is grossly disproportionate to the gravity of the predicate offense . . . and violates the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the United States Constitution” (id. at p. 1084). This court denied a petition for review, with Justices Kennard and Baxter voting to grant review. B. Gonzalez v. Duncan Three years after the Carmony II decision, a similar cruel and unusual punishment claim came before the federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Gonzalez v. Duncan, supra, 551 F.3d 875 (Gonzalez). As in Carmony II, the defendant in Gonzalez had previously been convicted of a number of serious and violent felonies, but the defendant’s triggering offense that had resulted in a 25-year-to-life sentence under the Three Strikes law was a conviction of failing to update his sex offender registration within five working days of his birthday. In analyzing the gravity of the defendant’s offense in accordance with the controlling constitutional principles set forth by the United States Supreme Court in Ewing, supra, 538 U.S. 11, and Andrade, supra, 538 U.S. 63, the court in Gonzalez embraced the Carmony II court’s characterization of the annual registration requirement as “merely a ‘backup measure to ensure that authorities have current accurate information’ ” and of a failure to comply with that requirement as “ ‘the most technical violation of the section 290 registration requirement.’ ” (Gonzalez, supra, 551 F.3d at p. 884.) The court in Gonzalez then stated: “Indeed, we are unable to discern any actual harm resulting from Gonzalez’s failure to comply with the annual registration requirement. Gonzalez updated his sex offender registration nine months before and three months after his February 24, 2001, birthday, and he remained at his last registered address throughout that time period. There is nothing in the record remotely indicating that Gonzalez’s failure to reregister the same address a third time in the same twelve month period could have interfered with the ability of police to monitor his activities. The record confirms that Gonzalez was in fact ‘readily available for police surveillance’: Gonzalez was arrested ‘fairly close’ to his registered address, and the arresting officers were familiar with Gonzalez and had spoken to him previously at that location. . . . We conclude that ‘ [t]he purpose of the registration statute was not undermined by [Gonzalez’s] failure to annually update his registration. ’ ” (Id. at pp. 884-885, fn. & citation omitted.) The court in Gonzalez recognized that “California has a valid ‘public-safety interest in incapacitating and deterring recidivist felons’ ” (Gonzalez, supra, 551 F.3d at p. 886) and that, under Ewing, supra, 538 U.S. 11, it was required to consider the defendant’s criminal history in determining the validity of the defendant’s sentence for Eighth Amendment purposes. Further, the court in Gonzalez acknowledged that “Gonzalez’s criminal history is extensive” and that “[his] prior convictions, which include both crimes of violence and sexual predation, are very serious.” (Gonzalez, supra, at p. 886.) The court in Gonzalez explained, however, that “we are unable to discern any rational relationship between Gonzalez’s failure to update his sex offender registration annually and the probability that he will recidivate as a violent criminal or sex offender. ...[][] Gonzalez’s present offense does not reveal any propensity to recidivate. California certainly may be ‘justified in punishing a recidivist more severely than it punishes a first offender,’ [citation], where ‘ “the latest crime ... is considered to be an aggravated offense because [it is] a repetitive one,” ’ [citation]. However, what California has done here is fundamentally different. It has imposed an extraordinarily harsh sentence on Gonzalez based on a violation of a technical regulatory requirement that resulted in no social harm and to which little or no moral culpability attaches. Absent some connection between Gonzalez’s past violent and sexual offenses, his present regulatory violation, and his propensity to recidivate as a violent or sexual offender, we cannot conclude that California’s interest in deterring and incapacitating recidivist offenders justifies the severity of the indeterminate life sentence imposed.” (Gonzalez, supra, 551 F.3d at p. 887.) Concluding, for the foregoing reasons, that Gonzalez’s sentence “raises an inference of gross disproportionality” (Gonzalez, supra, 551 F.3d at p. 887), the court in Gonzalez went on to undertake a comparison of Gonzalez’s sentence with the sentences imposed for other crimes in California and for the same crime in other states. (Id. at pp. 887-888.) After conducting that comparison, the court found that it confirmed the view that Gonzalez’s sentence was grossly disproportionate and thus violated the Eighth Amendment. (Id. at p. 889; see Bradshaw v. State (2008) 284 Ga. 675 [671 S.E.2d 485, 488-493] [mandatory sentence of life imprisonment imposed under a recidivist sentencing provision for failure to comply with sex offender registration requirement constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the 8th Amend, as applied to a defendant whose conduct reflected a good faith effort to comply with the requirement and no intent to evade detection].) C. People v. Nichols One year after the decision in Gonzalez and four years after the decision in Carmony II, in the case of People v. Nichols (2009) 176 Cal.App.4th 428 [97 Cal.Rptr.3d 702] (Nichols), another panel of the Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District (the same district that had decided Carmony II), faced the constitutionality of a third strike sentence imposed for another sex offender registration claim. The triggering offense in Nichols was the defendant’s failure to comply with the distinct provision of the sex offender registration statute requiring a sex offender to register a new address within five working days of a change of residence. The defendant contended that the decision in Carmony II required the appellate court to find that the 25-year-to-life sentence imposed by the trial court in that case constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The court in Nichols emphatically rejected the defendant’s contention, pointing out that “[t]he Carmony II court distinguished the seriousness of the registration offense before it with the one before the [court in People v. Meeks, supra, 123 Cal.App.4th 695]. The Carmony II court noted ‘the offense committed by Meeks was not the technical violation committed by defendant. Meeks failed to register after changing his residence and therefore, unlike in the present case, law enforcement authorities did not have Meeks’s, correct address and information.’ ” (Nichols, supra, 176 Cal.App.4th at p. 436, quoting Carmony II, supra, 127 Cal.App.4th at p. 1082, fn. 11.) The court in Nichols continued: “It is this distinction that supports the sentence given in this case. Unlike the failure in Carmony II, defendant’s failure to register thwarted the fundamental purpose of the registration law, thereby leaving the public at risk. ‘The purpose of the sex offender registration law is to require that the offender identify his present address to law enforcement authorities so that he or she is readily available for police surveillance.’ ” (Nichols, supra, 176 Cal.App.4th at p. 437, quoting Carmony II, supra, at p. 1072.) Reviewing the facts presented in the Nichols case, the court stated: “Here, for a period of over eight months, defendant’s whereabouts were unknown. Even his federal parole officer did not know where he was. . . . Such blatant disregard of the registration act and complete undercutting of the act’s purposes is a serious offense.” (Nichols, supra, 176 Cal.App.4th at p. 437.) “Defendant’s failure to register when he left Rocklin and his thwarting the purpose of the registration act of being able to be located, coupled with the seriousness of his prior convictions and his sustained criminality, all demonstrate his sentence was not grossly disproportionate to his offense.” (Ibid.) D. Crosby v. Schwartz Most recently, in Crosby v. Schwartz (9th Cir. 2012) 678 F.3d 784 (Crosby), another three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit rejected a habeas corpus petitioner’s contention that the 26-year-to-life sentence imposed upon him under the Three Strikes law violated the Eighth Amendment. In that case, the petitioner had been convicted of both failing to annually update his sex offender registration within five days of his birthday and of failing to register within five days of a change of address, and the court, in rejecting the cruel and unusual punishment claim, emphasized that unlike the circumstances in the prior Ninth Circuit decision in Gonzalez, supra, 551 F.3d 875, the petitioner in Crosby had not committed “a mere technical offense” but rather had intentionally “impeded the police’s ability to find him for surveillance.” (Crosby, supra, at p. 794.) IV. Application to Present Case In the briefs filed in this court, petitioner does not take issue with the distinction that has been drawn in Carmony II, supra, 127 Cal.App.4th 1066, Gonzalez, supra, 551 F.3d 875, Nichols, supra, 176 Cal.App.4th 428, and Crosby, supra, 678 F.3d 784, between two categories of defendants who, these cases hold, may properly be treated differently for cruel and unusual punishment purposes. Thus, on the one hand, these decisions conclude that a 25-year-to-life sentence under