Title: In re Cabrera
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: S271178
State: California
Issuer: California Supreme Court
Date: March 2, 2023

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF 
CALIFORNIA 
 
In re MIGUEL ANGEL CABRERA  
on Habeas Corpus. 
 
S271178 
 
Third Appellate District 
C091962 
 
 
March 2, 2023 
 
Justice Liu authored the opinion of the Court, in which Chief 
Justice Guerrero and Justices Corrigan, Kruger, Groban, 
Jenkins, and Cantil-Sakauye* concurred. 
 
 
* 
Retired Chief Justice of California, assigned by the Chief 
Justice pursuant to article VI, section 6 of the California 
Constitution. 
 
1 
In re CABRERA 
S271178 
 
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
 
During an argument at the home of a man he had met 
earlier that day, petitioner Miguel Angel Cabrera punched his 
new acquaintance in the face, causing the man to lose 
consciousness, fall down, and strike his head on the driveway 
where they stood.  Cabrera was charged with a number of 
offenses, among them battery with “serious bodily injury” in 
violation of Penal Code section 243 and allegations of inflicting 
“great bodily injury” in violation of Penal Code section 12022.7.  
The jury returned a guilty verdict on the count of battery with 
serious bodily injury, but it struggled to decide whether Cabrera 
had inflicted great bodily injury.  The jury submitted questions 
to the court about the differences between serious bodily injury 
and great bodily injury, asking whether a finding of serious 
bodily injury necessarily required a finding that great bodily 
injury occurred.  Ultimately, the jury was unable to reach a 
verdict on the great bodily injury allegations, and the court 
declared a mistrial on them. 
 
At Cabrera’s sentencing, the trial court determined that 
the battery charge and two related charges qualified as “serious 
felonies” — a finding that exposed Cabrera to an additional 
five-year term — because “ ‘there [was] great bodily injury.’ ”  
(People v. Cabrera (2018) 21 Cal.App.5th 470, 474 (Cabrera).)  
Cabrera argued that this finding of great bodily injury by the 
trial court violated the Sixth Amendment principle announced 
in Apprendi v. New Jersey (2000) 530 U.S. 466 (Apprendi):  
In re CABRERA  
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
2 
“Other than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases 
the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory 
maximum must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a 
reasonable doubt.”  (Id. at p. 490.)  The sentencing court 
disagreed and imposed the five-year enhancement. 
 
We granted review to consider whether the sentencing 
court’s finding that Cabrera inflicted great bodily injury violates 
Apprendi in light of the jury’s failure to reach a verdict on the 
great bodily injury allegations.  We hold that the court’s finding 
did violate Apprendi and remand this case for further 
proceedings consistent with this opinion. 
I. 
 
Cabrera met Curtis Barnum in July 2006 at a bar in 
Siskiyou County.  Barnum invited Cabrera and a few of 
Cabrera’s friends back to his home.  After they arrived at the 
house, Cabrera and Barnum got into an argument, which 
culminated in Cabrera suddenly punching Barnum in the face 
while they were standing in the driveway next to Barnum’s 
truck.  According to the testimony of a witness present at the 
time, this punch knocked Barnum “out cold on contact.”  
Barnum collapsed and struck his head on the cement.  He was 
unconscious for several minutes in a pool of blood about twice 
the size of his head.  Cabrera fled, and Barnum was taken to the 
hospital.  He received three stitches to close a one-inch 
laceration in the back of his head, which was necessary to 
control the bleeding.  His treating physician testified that the 
wound was larger than the length of the laceration because of 
swelling around it, and that Barnum’s skull was “easily visible 
within the wound.”  Barnum testified that he had experienced 
In re CABRERA  
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
3 
some dizzy spells since the injury.  He said he had a “little bit” 
of problems with headaches and they were “not bad.”   
 
Cabrera was charged with assault by means of force likely 
to produce great bodily injury, battery with serious bodily 
injury, assault with a deadly weapon, and participating in a 
street gang.  (Cabrera, supra, 21 Cal.App.5th at p. 473.)  He was 
also charged with gang allegations on several of the counts, 
allegations that he had personally inflicted great bodily injury, 
and having four prior convictions constituting serious felonies 
and strikes.  (Ibid.)   
 
The jury was instructed that serious bodily injury means 
“a serious impairment of physical condition,” which “may 
include but is no [sic] limited to loss of consciousness, 
concussion, bone fracture, protracted loss or impairment of 
function of any bodily member or organ, a wound requiring 
extensive suturing and serious disfigurement.”  The instructions 
specifically stated that “[l]oss of consciousness and a wound or 
cut requiring extensive suturing is a serious bodily injury.”  The 
jury was also instructed that great bodily injury means 
“significant or substantial physical injury” and that it is “an 
injury that is greater than minor or moderate harm.” 
 
During its deliberations, the jury asked the court for 
“specific definitions of mild and moderate injury” as those terms 
were used in the instructions on great bodily injury.  The court 
informed the jury that “there really are no specific definitions,” 
and it directed the jurors to the definition in the instruction it 
had given.  The court declined “to try to fine-tune that or define 
it any further,” explaining that “we know of no legal definition” 
other than the instruction. 
In re CABRERA  
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
4 
 
Two days later, the jury sent another question to the court.  
The jurors explained that they were “having problems 
reconciling the differences between great bodily injury and 
serious bodily injury.”  They asked, “If we agree the injury was 
severe, are we bound to agree that great bodily injury occurred?”  
The court referred the jurors back to the instructions defining 
great bodily injury and serious bodily injury, noting that 
“serious bodily injury is not defined exactly the same as great 
bodily injury” but “they are not necessarily mutually exclusive.”   
 
Later that day, the jury indicated that it had reached 
verdicts on the first assault charge, the battery charge, and the 
charge of participating in a street gang.  It found Cabrera guilty 
of each of those counts, but it found the gang allegations not 
true.  It found true the allegations of four prior serious felonies.  
The jury deadlocked on the charge of assault with a deadly 
weapon and on the allegations that Cabrera had inflicted great 
bodily injury.  The court declared a mistrial on the deadlocked 
counts.   
 
Cabrera’s sentence depended in part on whether his 
convictions counted as “serious felon[ies]”; if so, because of his 
prior serious felonies, he faced a five-year sentencing 
enhancement.  (Pen. Code, § 667, subd. (a)(1).)  The Penal Code 
defines serious felonies to include “any felony in which the 
defendant personally inflicts great bodily injury on any person, 
other than an accomplice.”  (Id., § 1192.7, subd. (c)(8).)  The 
relevant provisions of the Penal Code are unchanged from the 
time of Cabrera’s sentencing. 
At sentencing, the prosecutor argued that Cabrera’s 
charges were serious felonies because “[t]he evidence was that 
when the defendant swung, [the victim] went down, his knees 
In re CABRERA  
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
5 
buckled, his head . . . hit the cement and resulted in a 
concussion.”  The prosecutor said this showed that “in fact, the 
defendant inflicted great bodily injury.”  The prosecutor also 
argued that great bodily injury could be inferred from the jury’s 
finding of serious bodily injury, citing People v. Burroughs 
(1984) 35 Cal.3d 824 (Burroughs) and People v. Hawkins (1993) 
15 Cal.App.4th 1373 (Hawkins) for the proposition that “battery 
with serious bodily injury is great bodily injury.”  Defense 
counsel responded that Cabrera was “entitled to a jury finding 
on anything that would have had the effect of making his 
punishment more severe.”  He argued that a finding by the court 
that Cabrera inflicted great bodily injury would “invade[] the 
province of the jury.” 
The court concluded that Cabrera’s charges were serious 
felonies because “there is great bodily injury,” citing Burroughs 
and Hawkins, and imposed a five-year enhancement.   
 
On appeal, Cabrera’s conviction for participating in a 
street gang was reversed, but he did not challenge the 
sentencing court’s finding of great bodily injury.  (Cabrera, 
supra, 21 Cal.App.5th at p. 474.)  Cabrera later sought a writ of 
habeas corpus in the Court of Appeal, arguing that his appellate 
counsel’s failure to challenge the great bodily injury finding 
constituted ineffective assistance.  The Court of Appeal denied 
his petition in an unpublished opinion.  We granted review to 
consider whether the sentencing court’s finding of great bodily 
injury violated Cabrera’s Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment 
rights under Apprendi. 
II. 
 
In Apprendi, the United States Supreme Court held that 
except for “the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases 
In re CABRERA  
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
6 
the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory 
maximum must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a 
reasonable doubt.”  (Apprendi, supra, 530 U.S. at p. 490.)  This 
“statutory maximum,” the high court later explained, “is the 
maximum sentence a judge may impose solely on the basis of 
the facts reflected in the jury verdict or admitted by the 
defendant.”  (Blakely v. Washington (2004) 542 U.S. 296, 303 
(Blakely), italics omitted.)  The elevation of a defendant’s 
sentence based on facts that “are neither inherent in the jury’s 
verdict nor embraced by the defendant’s plea” violates “a 
defendant’s right to trial by jury safeguarded by the Sixth and 
Fourteenth Amendments.”  (Cunningham v. California (2007) 
549 U.S. 270, 274 (Cunningham).) 
 
Under this principle, a judge may not find facts that 
increase the defendant’s punishment beyond what is authorized 
by the “guilty verdict standing alone.”  (Ring v. Arizona (2002) 
536 U.S. 584, 605 (Ring).)  This is so even if the evidence clearly 
demonstrates the existence of the judge-found fact.  In Ring, for 
example, where the crime involved the murder of the driver of 
an armored bank van and the theft of more than $800,000 from 
the van, the sentencing court violated Apprendi when it found 
that the crime was committed “in expectation of receiving 
something of ‘pecuniary value.’ ”  (Ring, at pp. 589, 594–595.)  
And it is so even if the evidence supporting the fact was 
presented to the jury, as long as finding the fact was not 
essential to the jury’s verdict.  For instance, when both the 
charging instrument and verdict form specified that a 
company’s conduct bearing a per-day criminal fine occurred “ ‘on 
or about’ ” a particular range of dates, a court’s calculation of the 
total fine based on a finding that those dates were exact violated 
Apprendi even though evidence of the dates was presented to 
In re CABRERA  
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
7 
the jury.  (Southern Union Co. v. United States (2012) 567 U.S. 
343, 346 (Southern Union Co.); see also U.S. v. Southern Union 
Co. (D.R.I., July 9, 2009, Cr. No. 07–134 S) 2009 WL 2032097, 
p. *2 [discussing evidence of daily work logs and testimony 
about start and end dates of conduct].)  Sentencing courts may 
not peer behind the verdict to assess whether the evidence 
supports a fact not reflected in the jury’s decision. 
The Attorney General does not dispute that this rule 
applies to the finding of great bodily injury that increased 
Cabrera’s sentence.  He argues instead that the jury’s finding of 
serious bodily injury necessarily establishes great bodily injury.  
He asserts that the two require the same severity of injury, with 
great bodily injury covering a wider range of injuries.   
 
Serious bodily injury is defined in the Penal Code as “a 
serious impairment of physical condition,” with further 
specification given in the statute by the same nonexclusive list 
of injuries with which Cabrera’s jury was instructed:  “loss of 
consciousness; concussion; bone fracture; protracted loss or 
impairment of function of any bodily member or organ; a wound 
requiring extensive suturing; and serious disfigurement.”  (Pen. 
Code, § 243, subd. (f)(4).)  Great bodily injury is not defined in 
the sections of the Penal Code that specify Cabrera’s serious 
felony enhancement.  (See id., §§ 667, 1192.7.)  But it is defined 
elsewhere as “a significant or substantial physical injury.”  (Id., 
§ 12022.7, subd. (f).)  This provision codified the standard 
definition of great bodily injury and is consistent with both 
standard jury instructions and the instructions given in this 
case.  (See People v. Escobar (1992) 3 Cal.4th 740, 748 (Escobar); 
CALCRIM No. 3160.)  Accordingly, we find the definition of 
great bodily injury provided in Penal Code section 12022.7 
appropriate here.  No further specification is given in the 
In re CABRERA  
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
8 
statute, and the standard jury instructions add only that great 
bodily injury is “greater than minor or moderate harm.”  
(CALCRIM No. 3160; see also CALJIC No. 17.20 [“[m]inor, 
trivial or moderate injuries do not constitute great bodily 
injury”].)  
Great bodily injury and serious bodily injury are similar 
terms; we have more than once called them “ ‘essentially 
equivalent.’ ”  (Burroughs, supra, 35 Cal.3d at p. 831; People v. 
Knoller (2007) 41 Cal.4th 139, 143, fn. 2.)  But we have also 
acknowledged that “there are some differences in the statutory 
definitions.”  (Knoller, at p. 143, fn. 2.)  Notwithstanding their 
substantial overlap, “the terms in fact ‘have separate and 
distinct statutory definitions.’ ”  (People v. Santana (2013) 56 
Cal.4th 999, 1008 (Santana), quoting People v. Taylor (2004) 118 
Cal.App.4th 11, 24 (Taylor).)  That much is apparent from the 
Penal Code’s language:  “ ‘[T]he statutory definition of great 
bodily injury does not include a list of qualifying injuries’ ” like  
the statutory definition of serious bodily injury does.  (Santana, 
at p. 1008.)  For that reason, we have held that when great 
bodily injury is an element of an offense, a jury instruction that 
the crime requires serious bodily injury is erroneous.  (Id. at 
pp. 1008–1010.) 
Consistent with the generality of the definition of great 
bodily injury, we have declined invitations in the past to decide 
whether a particular type of injury amounts to great bodily 
injury as a matter of law.  (People v. Wolcott (1983) 34 Cal.3d 92, 
107.)  What meets the statutory standard is a factual question 
for the jury.  (People v. Cross (2008) 45 Cal.4th 58, 64 (Cross); 
see Escobar, supra, 3 Cal.4th at p. 750 [“[T]he determination of 
great bodily injury is essentially a question of fact, not of law.”].)  
There is a “ ‘ “fine line” ’ ” between injuries that qualify as great 
In re CABRERA  
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
9 
bodily injury and those “ ‘ “that do[] not quite meet the 
description,” ’ ” and “[w]here to draw that line is for the jury to 
decide.”  (Cross, at p. 64.)  For instance, juries may evaluate a 
broken bone “along a continuum from a small hairline fracture, 
needing no medical intervention, to the compound fracture of a 
major bone, requiring surgical repair.”  (Id. at p. 73 (conc. opn. 
of Corrigan, J.).)  It is the jury’s responsibility to determine 
where along that continuum it believes the harm becomes a 
“ ‘significant or substantial physical injury’ ” rather than a 
“ ‘moderate’ or ‘minor’ ” one.  (Ibid.; see People v. Quinonez 
(2020) 46 Cal.App.5th 457, 464–465 [“ ‘every bone fracture’ is 
not great bodily injury as a matter of law” but instead may be 
found by a jury to be great bodily injury “as a matter of fact”].) 
The Attorney General argues that serious bodily injury 
necessarily establishes great bodily injury because the two 
terms “require the same threshold severity of injury” — that is, 
they “describe levels of physical injury that are virtually 
identical.”  The Attorney General says this follows from the 
language of the statutory definitions, in which “the relevant 
modifiers — serious, significant, and substantial — are closely 
analogous.”  But comparing the statutory text at this level of 
generality does not resolve whether every kind of injury that 
qualifies as a serious bodily injury necessarily amounts to great 
bodily injury.  Nor is it sufficient that serious bodily injury and 
great bodily injury both “increase criminal punishment based on 
the level of injury suffered by the victim,” as the Attorney 
General argues.  A jury’s finding of one fact does not authorize 
the sentencing court to find all others that serve a similar 
function in the Penal Code. 
Our decision in Santana does not demonstrate otherwise.  
In Santana, we considered the jury instructions for the crime of 
In re CABRERA  
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
10 
mayhem, which courts have held to include great bodily injury 
as an element.  (Santana, supra, 56 Cal.4th at p. 1008.)  We held 
it was improper to instruct a jury that serious bodily injury is 
an element of mayhem.  (Id. at p. 1010.)  After considering many 
of the differences between the definitions of great bodily injury 
and serious bodily injury that we discuss today, we reasoned 
that these distinctions “may make a difference when evaluating 
jury instructions that provide different definitions for the two 
terms,” and we concluded that the definition of serious bodily 
injury was “imprecise and ill fitting” for the crime of mayhem.  
(Id. at pp. 1008–1009, 1010.) 
Our conclusion that serious bodily injury and great bodily 
injury are not interchangeable in the context of the jury 
instructions on mayhem shows that the two terms are not 
equivalent as a matter of law.  Indeed, Santana’s refusal to 
“conclude that the offense of mayhem includes a serious bodily 
injury requirement simply based on cases holding that mayhem 
includes a great bodily injury component” (Santana, supra, 56 
Cal.4th at p. 1009) confirms that great bodily injury does not 
establish serious bodily injury and says nothing about whether 
serious bodily injury establishes great bodily injury. 
The history of the enactment of the great bodily injury 
definition does not support the view that a finding of serious 
bodily injury necessarily establishes great bodily injury.  We 
discussed this history at length in Escobar, noting that the 
original version of the section of the Penal Code describing great 
bodily injury defined it differently than the current law.  That 
version of the statute declared great bodily injury to mean “ ‘ “a 
serious impairment of physical condition” ’ ” — the same 
language the Penal Code uses to define serious bodily injury — 
and provided a list of specific injuries that generally paralleled 
In re CABRERA  
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
11 
the injuries listed in the serious bodily injury provision.  
(Escobar, supra, 3 Cal.4th at p. 747.)  However, several of the 
listed injuries were more restrictive, requiring, for example, 
“ ‘ “[p]rolonged 
loss 
of 
consciousness” ’ ” 
or 
“ ‘ “[s]evere 
concussion,” ’ ” and the statute did not include the language 
from the serious bodily injury provision that makes the list of 
injuries in that section nonexclusive.  (Ibid., italics added.) 
Before this version went into effect, the law was amended 
twice to make “a number of significant alterations to the 
definition of great bodily injury.”  (Escobar, supra, 3 Cal.4th at 
p. 747.)  The list of qualifying injuries was deleted and the 
remainder of the definition was changed “from a ‘serious 
impairment of physical condition’ to ‘a significant or substantial 
physical injury,’ ” the phrasing that appears today.  (Ibid.)  We 
determined in Escobar that these amendments were meant “to 
discard the original, detailed definition of great bodily injury 
and substitute the more general standard” that was drawn from 
jury instructions on great bodily injury in use at the time the 
law passed.  (Id. at p. 748, italics omitted; cf. People v. 
Richardson (1972) 23 Cal.App.3d 403, 411 [approving 
“ ‘ “significant or substantial” ’ ” instruction]; id. at p. 409 
[finding that great bodily injury did not occur when victim 
experienced “one blow on her back and neck, which she 
described as ‘terrific’ ” and which may have caused brief loss of 
consciousness].) 
The Legislature thus replaced a definition narrower than 
serious bodily injury with more general language.  The Attorney 
General argues from this history that “the Legislature intended 
great bodily injury to cover a broader range of injuries than 
serious bodily injury.”  Escobar makes clear that the Legislature 
intended the amended great bodily injury statute to cover a 
In re CABRERA  
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
12 
broader range of injuries than the previous version of the law.  
(See Escobar, supra, 3 Cal.4th at p. 750 [the amended “standard 
contains no specific requirement that the victim suffer 
‘permanent,’ 
‘prolonged’ 
or 
‘protracted’ 
disfigurement, 
impairment, or loss of bodily function”].)  But amending the 
definition of great bodily injury to use more generic terms does 
not show that the Legislature must have intended it to be 
equivalent in severity to the injuries that might constitute 
serious bodily injury, such that a finding of serious bodily injury 
necessarily establishes great bodily injury.  Indeed, even under 
the original version of the bill — which defined great bodily 
injury in a manner similar to serious bodily injury — the 
Legislature saw the two terms as distinct.  The original version 
would have imposed the enhancement on any person who 
“intentionally inflicts serious or great bodily injury on any 
person other than an accomplice.”  (Assem. Bill No. 476 (1977–
1978 Reg. Sess.) § 94, as introduced Feb. 10, 1977, italics added.)  
The use of both terms suggests they had different meanings.   
That great bodily injury and serious bodily injury are 
distinct is also consistent with the history of the definition of 
serious felony provided in Penal Code section 1192.7, 
subdivision (c).  The current definition of serious bodily injury 
was added to the battery statute in 1975.  (Sen. Bill No. 554 
(1975–1976 Reg. Sess.).)  Battery with serious bodily injury was 
thus an established crime at the time section 1192.7 was added 
to the Penal Code seven years later in 1982 through a voter 
initiative.  We have previously noted that the “list of serious 
felonies enumerated in section 1192.7 appears to be based 
largely upon” a provision enacted that same year that “included 
a list of 26 ‘violent offenses.’ ”  (People v. Jackson (1985) 37 
Cal.3d 826, 831.)  Yet despite the fact that the definition of 
In re CABRERA  
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
13 
serious felony provides a long list of qualifying offenses, battery 
with serious bodily injury was never designated as one.  (See 
Pen. Code, § 1192.7, subd. (c)(1)–(42).)  Moreover, the definition 
of serious felony at issue here — “any felony in which the 
defendant personally inflicts great bodily injury on any person, 
other than an accomplice” — does not use the phrase “serious 
bodily injury,” even though the phrase had been defined years 
before section 1192.7 was added to the Penal Code.  (Pen. Code, 
§ 1192.7, subd. (c)(8).)  These omissions do not support the 
Attorney General’s assertion that a finding of serious bodily 
injury necessarily establishes great bodily injury.  
Whether an injury satisfies the current definition of great 
bodily injury — i.e., whether the injury is “significant or 
substantial” (Pen. Code, § 12022.7, subd. (f)) — is for the jury to 
determine case by case.  What matters here is whether a jury 
could reasonably apply the statutory definitions of great bodily 
injury and serious bodily injury and find that an injury was 
serious but not great bodily injury. 
Juries have so found.  In Taylor, the victim suffered, 
among other things, a fracture of the bone around one of her 
eyes, and her treating physician opined that the fracture “would 
normally heal itself without treatment.”  (Taylor, supra, 118 
Cal.App.4th at p. 17.)  The jury convicted Taylor of battery with 
serious bodily injury but found not true several charged 
allegations of personal infliction of great bodily injury.  (Id. at 
p. 21.)  The court nonetheless imposed the same five-year 
enhancement at issue in this case on the same ground urged by 
the Attorney General here:  that a finding of serious bodily 
injury is “legally equivalent to a finding of ‘great bodily injury.’ ”  
(Id. at p. 22.) 
In re CABRERA  
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
14 
 
The Court of Appeal reversed.  It reviewed the record and 
found the jury had correctly “focused on . . . whether the victim’s 
bone fracture was sufficiently serious to constitute anything 
more than a ‘moderate’ injury within the meaning” of great 
bodily injury.  (Taylor, supra, 118 Cal.App.4th at p. 25; see 
Cross, supra, 45 Cal.4th at p. 73 (conc. opn. of Corrigan, J.) 
[suggesting this is the appropriate inquiry for the jury when 
deciding whether a bone fracture amounts to great bodily 
injury].)  The court in Taylor concluded that the verdict made 
clear the jury had found that the fracture did not amount to 
great bodily injury.  (Taylor, at p. 25.)  It held that “the 
conviction for battery with serious bodily injury is not legally or 
factually equivalent to a finding of great bodily injury.”  (Id. at 
p. 24; see also id. at pp. 24–25.)  
 
Another example is People v. Thomas (2019) 39 
Cal.App.5th 930, where the defendant punched the victim 
without warning twice in the jaw.  The victim fell backward and 
“ ‘saw stars,’ ” and his jaw was broken in two places, requiring 
surgery “during which screws and plates were inserted.”  (Id. at 
pp. 933, 934.)  “His jaw was wired shut after the surgery,” and 
he received stitches for a gash on his face.  (Id. at p. 934.)  The 
attack “left him with permanent nerve damage.”  (Ibid.)  In that 
case, as in Taylor, the jury convicted the defendant of battery 
with serious bodily injury but found that he had not inflicted 
great bodily injury.  (Id. at p. 933.) 
Here, the jury found that Cabrera inflicted serious bodily 
injury, but it deadlocked on whether he inflicted great bodily 
injury.  On these facts, a jury could have found that Cabrera 
inflicted “a significant or substantial physical injury” (Pen. 
Code, § 12022.7, subd. (f)):  He knocked Barnum unconscious 
and caused an inch-long laceration on his head that exposed his 
In re CABRERA  
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
15 
skull and required stitches to stop the bleeding.  A jury also 
could reasonably have found that the injury was not more than 
“minor or moderate harm” by its understanding of those terms.  
(CALCRIM No. 3160.)  Barnum was unconscious for only a few 
minutes, his treating physician testified that the wound was not 
one that “would take a long period of time to repair,” and the 
lingering effects to which Barnum testified were not especially 
severe.  Ultimately, whether Barnum suffered great bodily 
injury is a factual issue for the jury.  The facts of this case, like 
those of Taylor and Thomas, illustrate that not all jury findings 
of serious bodily injury necessarily entail a finding of great 
bodily injury. 
This is true regardless of whether the jury was instructed 
in a manner suggesting that any injury listed in Penal Code 
section 243, subdivision (f)(4) is a serious bodily injury, 
regardless of its severity.  In Taylor, the jury instructions and 
closing arguments “may have misled the jury by erroneously 
suggesting that any bone fracture constitutes serious bodily 
injury, no matter how minor.”  (Taylor, supra, 118 Cal.App.4th 
at p. 25, fn. 4.)  The instructions here may have created a similar 
implication; the jury was instructed that “[l]oss of consciousness 
and a wound or cut requiring extensive suturing is a serious 
bodily injury.”  These instructions might lead a jury to perceive 
a wider gap between serious bodily injury and great bodily 
injury, and thus more readily find serious bodily injury without 
finding great bodily injury.  But even if a jury was not instructed 
in such a manner, serious bodily injury and great bodily injury 
remain distinct. 
 
The jury in this case found only that Cabrera inflicted 
serious bodily injury.  It did not find that Cabrera inflicted great 
bodily injury.  Instead, the jury deadlocked on the great bodily 
In re CABRERA  
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
16 
injury allegations, resulting in the court declaring a mistrial on 
those allegations.  So long as a jury could reasonably apply the 
statutory definitions and find a serious bodily injury not to be a 
great bodily injury, the jury’s finding of serious bodily injury in 
this case did not necessarily establish that Cabrera inflicted 
great bodily injury; such a determination was not “inherent in 
the jury’s verdict.”  (Cunningham, supra, 549 U.S. at p. 274.)  
Instead, it was the court that found “an additional fact to impose 
the longer term” (id. at p. 290) — namely, that the particular 
serious bodily injury Cabrera inflicted was one that also 
constituted great bodily injury.  Imposing an enhancement 
based on that finding violated Cabrera’s “Sixth Amendment 
right to have essential facts found by a jury beyond a reasonable 
doubt.”  (Dillon v. United States (2010) 560 U.S. 817, 828.)  Even 
if most juries would find most serious bodily injuries to be great 
bodily injuries as well, a court’s assessment of the evidence to 
find that a specific serious bodily injury in fact falls within the 
overlap between those terms is precisely what Apprendi forbids:  
judicial factfinding that increases the penalty for the 
defendant’s crime “beyond what the jury’s verdict or the 
defendant’s admissions allow.”  (Southern Union Co., supra, 567 
U.S. at p. 352.) 
III. 
The Court of Appeal here distinguished Taylor on the 
ground that the jury there made a “determination contrary to a 
finding of” great bodily injury, while “[t]here was no such 
determination in this case.”  Other courts considering this issue 
since Taylor have done the same.  (See People v. Johnson (2016) 
244 Cal.App.4th 384, 395–396; People v. Arnett (2006) 139 
Cal.App.4th 1609, 1615.)  But this purported distinction gets the 
Apprendi inquiry backwards.  What matters is whether the jury 
In re CABRERA  
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
17 
has found that the defendant inflicted great bodily injury, not 
whether it has rejected such a finding.  As the Attorney General 
acknowledges, quoting Yaeger v. United States (2009) 557 U.S. 
110, 125, “ ‘the fact that a jury hangs is evidence of nothing.’ ”    
Whether the jury in this case rejected great bodily injury or 
simply failed to find it, judicial factfinding to fill the gap violated 
Cabrera’s right to have a jury find every fact increasing the 
penalty for his offense. 
Burroughs is not to the contrary.  That case addressed a 
felony murder conviction based on the felonious practice of 
medicine without a license, a crime requiring a “ ‘risk of great 
bodily harm.’ ”  (Burroughs, supra, 35 Cal.3d at pp. 827, 830.)  
The question was whether the great bodily harm element of the 
unlicensed practice of medicine made that crime “inherently 
dangerous to human life” for purposes of the felony-murder rule.  
(Id. at p. 831.)  In answering no, we analogized “great bodily 
harm” to the terms “serious bodily injury” and “great bodily 
injury,” whose definitions include injuries that “do not, by their 
nature, jeopardize the life of the victim.”  (Ibid.)  It was in that 
context — i.e., assessing whether “serious bodily injury,” “great 
bodily injury,” and “great bodily harm” denote an injury that 
“rise[s] to the level of being inherently life-threatening” — that 
we said “[t]here is no indication the Legislature intended to 
ascribe a different meaning to ‘great bodily harm’ . . . than is 
signified by ‘great bodily injury,’ or, for that matter, ‘serious 
bodily injury’ . . . .”  (Ibid.)  We had no occasion to consider 
whether “great bodily injury” and “serious bodily injury” are 
identical for purposes of the Sixth Amendment.  (See B.B. v. City 
of Los Angeles (2020) 10 Cal.5th 1, 11 [“ ‘ “cases are not authority 
for propositions not considered” ’ ”].) 
In re CABRERA  
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
18 
The holding in this case does not call into question our 
assertion in Burroughs that serious bodily injury and great 
bodily 
injury 
are 
“ ‘essentially 
equivalent 
elements.’ ”  
(Burroughs, supra, 35 Cal.3d at p. 831.)  Nor do we express an 
opinion on cases that have relied on that assertion in other 
contexts.  For example, the Courts of Appeal have long 
construed Penal Code section 12022.7, subdivision (g)’s bar on 
imposing the great bodily injury enhancement when “infliction 
of great bodily injury is an element of the offense” to mean that 
the enhancement may not be imposed where serious bodily 
injury is an element of the underlying offense.  (See, e.g., People 
v. Beltran (2000) 82 Cal.App.4th 693, 696–697; Hawkins, supra, 
15 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1375–1376.)  In Hawkins, the court stated 
that great bodily injury and serious bodily injury have 
“substantially the same meaning” and on that basis concluded 
that “great bodily injury is indeed an element of battery under 
section 243, subdivision (d).”  (Hawkins, at p. 1375.)  Hawkins 
was decided before Apprendi, and the degree of similarity that 
Hawkins assigned to these terms in reaching its conclusion says 
nothing about the degree of similarity they must have to satisfy 
Apprendi.  Even if it is sufficient for serious bodily injury and 
great bodily injury to be “substantially the same” (Hawkins, at 
p. 1375, italics added) for purposes of applying Penal Code 
section 12022.7, more is required to satisfy Apprendi’s strict 
allocation of roles between judge and jury under the Sixth 
Amendment. 
Further, nothing we say here undermines our suggestion 
in dicta in People v. Sloan (2007) 42 Cal.4th 110 that if we were 
to consider a great bodily injury enhancement as part of the 
underlying offense for the purpose of either constitutional 
double jeopardy protections or the judicially created rule 
In re CABRERA  
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
19 
prohibiting multiple convictions for necessarily included 
offenses, a conviction for willful infliction of corporal injury on a 
spouse with such an enhancement “would effectively establish 
the elements of . . . battery with serious bodily injury.”  (Id. at 
p. 117.)  Our statement in Sloan rested on the assumption that 
all great bodily injuries are serious bodily injuries.  Here we are 
considering the converse question of whether all serious bodily 
injuries are great bodily injuries.  If anything, we would seem to 
cast doubt on our dicta in Sloan if we were to agree with the 
Attorney General that serious bodily injury necessarily 
establishes great bodily injury. 
Our opinion today is also consistent with cases holding 
that a broken bone can constitute great bodily injury (People v. 
Johnson (1980) 104 Cal.App.3d 598, 608–610 (Johnson)) and 
that an injury need not require medical treatment in order to 
qualify as serious bodily injury or great bodily injury (People v. 
Wade (2012) 204 Cal.App.4th 1142, 1149–1150).  The severity of 
injury may often amount to both great and serious bodily injury.  
In addition, our decision does not disturb other cases cited by 
the Attorney General, which hold that the jury instructions on 
great and serious bodily injury may stand on their own without 
further instruction distinguishing them (People v. Kent (1979) 
96 Cal.App.3d 130, 136–137) and that battery with serious 
bodily injury does not, without more, qualify as a violent felony 
(People v. Hawkins (2003) 108 Cal.App.4th 527, 531) or a serious 
felony (People v. Roberts (2011) 195 Cal.App.4th 1106, 1119; 
People v. Bueno (2006) 143 Cal.App.4th 1503, 1508 & fn. 5). 
In sum, we do not question Burroughs’s statement that 
great bodily injury and serious bodily injury are “ ‘essentially 
equivalent elements.’ ”  (Burroughs, supra, 35 Cal.3d at p. 831.)  
But in the specific context of Apprendi, “ ‘essentially 
In re CABRERA  
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
20 
equivalent’ ” (Burroughs, at p. 831) or “substantially the same” 
(Hawkins, supra, 15 Cal.App.4th at p. 1375) or “substantially 
similar” (Johnson, supra, 104 Cal.App.3d at p. 610) is not 
enough.  The maximum sentence a defendant can receive is the 
sentence “a judge may impose solely on the basis of the facts 
reflected in the jury verdict or admitted by the defendant.”  
(Blakely, supra, 542 U.S. at p. 303, italics omitted.)  Apprendi 
demands that we consider only what was necessarily 
established by the “guilty verdict standing alone,” not what the 
evidence otherwise demonstrated.  (Ring, supra, 536 U.S. at 
p. 605; see People v. Gallardo (2017) 4 Cal.5th 120, 136 [a court 
“may not determine the ‘nature or basis’ of [a] prior conviction 
based on its independent conclusions about what facts or 
conduct ‘realistically’ supported the conviction” but is instead 
“limited to identifying those facts that were established by 
virtue of the conviction itself”]; see also Gallardo at pp. 124–125, 
134.)  Near equivalence does not mean that a finding of serious 
bodily injury necessarily entails great bodily injury, and the 
Sixth Amendment bars sentencing courts from looking beyond 
the verdict to find that a particular serious bodily injury in fact 
constituted great bodily injury.  We disapprove of People v. 
Villareal (1985) 173 Cal.App.3d 1136 and People v. Moore (1992) 
10 Cal.App.4th 1868 to the extent they conclude that a serious 
bodily injury always constitutes a great bodily injury. 
This case comes to us on review of the denial of Cabrera’s 
petition for a writ of habeas corpus, in which he argued that he 
was provided ineffective assistance of appellate counsel.  The 
Court of Appeal did not reach a conclusion as to whether 
counsel’s performance was deficient, instead holding that 
Cabrera “failed to show prejudice in the form of a reasonable 
probability of a different outcome had appellate counsel raised 
In re CABRERA  
Opinion of the Court by Liu, J. 
 
21 
an Apprendi issue.”  Because our opinion today bears directly on 
that holding, we remand this case for reconsideration of 
Cabrera’s ineffective assistance claim. 
CONCLUSION 
The sentencing court’s finding of great bodily injury 
violated Cabrera’s Sixth Amendment jury trial rights under 
Apprendi.  We reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeal and 
remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. 
 
LIU, J. 
We Concur: 
GUERRERO, C. J. 
CORRIGAN, J. 
KRUGER, J. 
GROBAN, J. 
JENKINS, J. 
CANTIL-SAKAUYE, J.* 
 
*  
Retired Chief Justice of California, assigned by the Chief 
Justice pursuant to article VI, section 6 of the California 
Constitution. 
 
 
See next page for addresses and telephone numbers for counsel who 
argued in Supreme Court. 
 
Name of Opinion  In re Cabrera 
__________________________________________________________  
 
Procedural Posture (see XX below) 
Original Appeal  
Original Proceeding 
Review Granted (published) 
Review Granted (unpublished) XX NP opn. filed 8/25/21 – 3d Dist. 
Rehearing Granted 
__________________________________________________________  
 
Opinion No. S271178 
Date Filed:  March 2, 2023 
__________________________________________________________  
 
Court:  Superior  
County:  Siskiyou 
Judge:  Robert F. Kaster 
__________________________________________________________   
 
Counsel: 
 
Andrew J. Marx, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for 
Petitioner Miguel Angel Cabrera. 
 
Xavier Becerra and Rob Bonta, Attorneys General, Lance E. Winters, 
Chief Assistant Attorney General, Michael P. Farrell, Assistant 
Attorney General, Darren K. Indermill, Michael A. Canzoneri, Eric L. 
Christoffersen and Rachelle A. Newcomb, Deputy Attorneys General, 
for Respondent the People.
 
 
Counsel who argued in Supreme Court (not intended for 
publication with opinion): 
 
Andrew J. Marx 
Law Office of Andrew J. Marx 
P.O. Box 1225 
Mt. Shasta, CA 96067 
(530) 925-1291 
 
Eric L. Christoffersen 
Deputy Attorney General 
1300 I Street 
Sacramento, CA 95814 
(916) 210-7686