Opinion ID: 2582281
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Epps

Text: Shortly after the high court filed its decision in Apprendi, supra, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435, this court had an opportunity to consider the implications of that decision. In Epps, supra, 25 Cal.4th 19, 104 Cal.Rptr.2d 572, 18 P.3d 2, an information charged the defendant with various criminal offenses and alleged a prior serious felony conviction for sentence enhancement purposes and the Three Strikes law. The trial court bifurcated the trial of the prior conviction allegations from the trial of the substantive offenses. After the jury found the defendant guilty on all counts, the trial court dismissed the jury over the defendant's objection and held a bench trial on the prior conviction allegations, finding those allegations true. ( Id. at p. 22, 104 Cal.Rptr.2d 572, 18 P.3d 2.) The defendant appealed, arguing that section 1025 entitled him to a jury trial on the prior conviction allegations. The Court of Appeal agreed with the defendant and reversed the judgment and remanded. We granted the Attorney General's petition for review to consider whether the 1997 amendment to section 1025, which prescribed that the question of whether the defendant is the person who has suffered the prior conviction shall be tried by the court without a jury[,] in effect eliminated the right to a jury trial of prior conviction allegations, and if not, whether the erroneous denial of a jury trial in this context is subject to harmless error analysis on appeal. ( Epps, supra, 25 Cal.4th 19, 21, 104 Cal.Rptr.2d 572, 18 P.3d 2.) Relying upon our decisions in Wiley, supra, 9 Cal.4th 580, 38 Cal.Rptr.2d 347, 889 P.2d 541, and Kelii, supra, 21 Cal.4th 452, 87 Cal.Rptr.2d 674, 981 P.2d 518, we held in Epps, supra, 25 Cal.4th 19, 21, 104 Cal.Rptr.2d 572, 18 P.3d 2 that the amendment did not completely eliminate the right to a jury trial, but it considerably narrowed the issues that the jury must decide to the question of authenticity, accuracy, or sufficiency of prior conviction records ( id. at p. 27, 104 Cal.Rptr.2d 572, 18 P.3d 2), and that the denial of this very limited right to a jury trial is subject to harmless error analysis. ( Id. at p. 21, 104 Cal.Rptr.2d 572, 18 P.3d 2.) In responding to an argument raised by an amicus curiae in Epps that  Apprendi gives defendants a right to have a jury decide whether a prior conviction is a serious felony for purposes of the [T]hree [S]trikes law, we observed:  Apprendi ... reaffirms that defendants have no right to a jury trial of `the fact of a prior conviction,' [citation], and here, at least, only the bare fact of the prior conviction was at issue.... We do not now decide how Apprendi would apply were we faced with a situation like that at issue in Kelii, where some fact needed to be proved regarding the circumstances of the prior conviction  such as whether a prior burglary was residential  in order to establish that the conviction is a serious felony. ( Epps, supra, 25 Cal.4th at p. 28, 104 Cal.Rptr.2d 572, 18 P.3d 2.)