Single Criminal Act, Single Strike: Extending Vargas to Multi‑Victim Offenses under California’s Three Strikes Law
Commentary on People v. Shaw, Supreme Court of California (Dec. 15, 2025)

Introduction

In People v. Shaw, the California Supreme Court resolved a recurring and consequential question in Three Strikes sentencing: when a defendant’s single criminal act results in multiple serious or violent felony convictions because it harms more than one victim, may those convictions be counted as multiple “strikes” to justify a life term under California’s Three Strikes law?

The Court’s answer is categorical: no. Where two prior serious or violent felony convictions arise from a single criminal act, they together count as only one strike for purposes of imposing a third-strike sentence—even if that single act results in harm to multiple victims. In doing so, the Court extends and clarifies its earlier decision in People v. Vargas (2014) 59 Cal.4th 635, and expressly disapproves People v. Rusconi (2015) 236 Cal.App.4th 273, which had held the opposite for multi‑victim vehicular manslaughter.

The decision is significant both doctrinally and practically. It confirms that the Three Strikes law is fundamentally a recidivism statute, focused on the number of distinct criminal opportunities the defendant had to reform (“swings of the bat”), not simply on the number of victims harmed in a single incident. It also narrows the group of defendants who can be sentenced to an indeterminate life term based on a single prior episode of serious criminality.

Summary of the Opinion

Defendant Troy Lee Shaw was convicted in 2020 of driving under the influence of a drug and several drug possession offenses. For sentencing, he admitted two prior convictions for gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, arising from a 2002 collision in which, while driving under the influence, he ran a red light and struck a car, killing both occupants: a young mother and her 23‑month‑old son. Each death produced a separate homicide conviction.

These two homicide convictions were treated as two prior strikes, making Shaw eligible for a third-strike sentence of 25 years to life based on his new felony DUI. Shaw moved under Penal Code section 1385 (a so‑called Romero motion) to dismiss one of the prior strikes, arguing under Vargas that both priors arose from a single act and could not both be counted as strikes. The trial court denied the motion and imposed the life term. The Court of Appeal affirmed, following Rusconi, which had distinguished Vargas on the ground that Vargas involved a single victim, and had held that when a single act kills multiple victims, each resulting conviction may be a separate strike.

The California Supreme Court reversed. Relying on and extending Vargas, the Court held:

Where two prior strike convictions are based on the same criminal act, the trial court is required—not merely permitted—to dismiss at least one of them under Romero, because treating them as separate strikes places the defendant outside the “spirit” of the Three Strikes law.
This rule applies whether the single act harms one victim or multiple victims.
The presence of multiple victims, and the fact that multiple convictions and multiple punishments are otherwise authorized for multivictim violence, does not change the recidivist focus of Three Strikes or justify treating one act as multiple “swings of the bat.”
People v. Rusconi is expressly disapproved.

The case is remanded for resentencing consistent with this rule—i.e., treating Shaw as having only one prior strike from the 2002 incident, which makes him a second‑strike offender subject to a doubled term rather than a third-strike life term.

Detailed Analysis

I. Legal and Factual Background

A. The Underlying Facts and 2020 Convictions

In December 2020, officers found Shaw unconscious behind the wheel of a car stopped in the middle of the road with the engine running. He showed signs of drug intoxication; subsequent testing confirmed methamphetamine and amphetamine in his blood, and officers found methamphetamine, paraphernalia, and marijuana in his car.

A jury convicted him of:

Felony driving under the influence of a drug (Veh. Code, § 23152, subd. (f));
Possession of a controlled substance (Health & Saf. Code, § 11377, subd. (a));
Possession of drug paraphernalia (Health & Saf. Code, § 11364, subd. (a));
Possession of more than 28.5 grams of marijuana (Health & Saf. Code, § 11357, subd. (b)(2)).

B. The 2002 Prior Offenses

In 2002, while driving under the influence, Shaw ran a red light and crashed into another vehicle containing a young mother and her 23‑month‑old son, killing both. He was convicted of two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated. Each count was a “strike” offense (homicide-related).

Under the Three Strikes law (Penal Code §§ 667, subds. (b)-(i), 1170.12), these two prior serious/violent felonies were treated as two strikes. Because Shaw’s new offense was a qualifying current felony, the presence of two prior strikes made him eligible for a third-strike term of 25 years to life. (See § 667, subd. (e)(2)(A), (C)(iv)(IV).)

C. The Romero Motion and Lower Court Rulings

Shaw moved to dismiss one of the prior strikes under Penal Code section 1385, invoking People v. Superior Court (Romero) (1996) 13 Cal.4th 497. He argued that under Vargas, two prior convictions arising from the same criminal act cannot both count as strikes, and therefore the trial court was required to strike one.

The trial court denied the motion and sentenced Shaw as a third‑strike offender:

25 years to life for the DUI offense, and
concurrent six‑month sentences for the three drug-related misdemeanors.

The Court of Appeal affirmed in an unpublished opinion, adopting the reasoning of Rusconi. It held that Vargas was limited to single‑victim offenses. Because Shaw’s 2002 act killed two victims, the court reasoned, each resulting homicide conviction could be treated as a separate strike. It emphasized the greater culpability of “perpetrators of multivictim violence” and suggested that the Three Strikes enactors could not have intended to treat them like single‑victim offenders.

The Supreme Court granted review and reversed.

II. Precedents and Doctrinal Context

A. The Three Strikes Framework

The Three Strikes law, enacted in 1994 by both the Legislature and the voters, is codified primarily at Penal Code sections 667, subdivisions (b)-(i) and 1170.12. It is an alternative sentencing scheme that prescribes increased penalties for defendants previously convicted of certain “serious” or “violent” felonies (so‑called “strikes”).

Key features relevant here:

Second strike (one prior): When a defendant has one prior strike, the sentence for a new felony is generally doubled from the term otherwise provided. (See Assem. Bill No. 971 (1993–1994 Reg. Sess.); Stats. 1994, ch. 12.)
Third strike (two or more priors): When a defendant has two or more prior strikes and the current offense qualifies, the law prescribes an indeterminate life term, with a minimum of 25 years before parole eligibility. (§ 667, subd. (e)(2)(A)). After Proposition 36 (2012), third-strike sentences are somewhat narrowed, but the basic distinction between “second strike” and “third strike” sentencing remains.

The Court in People v. Conley (2016) 63 Cal.4th 646 summarized this framework and the post–Proposition 36 landscape, underscoring that the third-strike life term is reserved for specific categories of current offenses and/or especially serious priors.

The Shaw Court builds on this background and the Court’s prior attempts to define how multiple convictions from related events count as strikes.

B. Fuhrman: No “Brought and Tried Separately” Requirement

In People v. Fuhrman (1997) 16 Cal.4th 930, the defendant had multiple prior convictions arising from a series of closely connected incidents—driving a stolen car, colliding with another vehicle, brandishing a gun at the collision victim, and then forcing a truck driver at gunpoint to drive him away.

Fuhrman argued that multiple convictions from a single prior proceeding could not count as multiple strikes unless they were “brought and tried separately,” as some other enhancement statutes require. The Supreme Court rejected this argument:

The Three Strikes statute defines a prior strike as “a prior conviction of a serious or violent felony,” without any requirement that convictions be brought and tried separately.
By contrast, other statutes (like certain prior serious felony enhancements) do specify that priors must be brought and tried separately; the absence of such language in Three Strikes was deliberate.

Accordingly, the Court held that multiple qualifying convictions from one prior case can count as multiple strikes, even if not brought and tried separately. However, Fuhrman explicitly left open a critical question later addressed in Benson and Vargas: what about offenses so closely connected that they constitute a single “act” or an “indivisible course of conduct,” especially when Penal Code section 654 bars multiple punishment?

C. Benson: Multiple Strikes Despite a Penal Code Section 654 Stay

People v. Benson (1998) 18 Cal.4th 24 confronted the interaction between Three Strikes and Penal Code section 654. Benson had two prior convictions from a single event: residential burglary and assault with intent to commit murder. During the burglary of his neighbor’s apartment, he stabbed her. The court in that earlier proceeding stayed the assault sentence under Penal Code section 654, which bars multiple punishment for a single act or indivisible course of conduct.

Benson argued that because he was not separately punished for the assault (due to § 654), the assault could not be counted as a separate strike. The Court, however, focused on the language of the Three Strikes statute:

Section 1170.12 refers to “a prior conviction of a felony” and explicitly states that a “stay of execution of sentence” does not affect whether a prior conviction counts as a prior felony.
Thus, even convictions from a single case and an indivisible course of conduct can be separate strikes, despite a § 654 stay.

Benson therefore held that multiple convictions from the same event can be separate strikes, but the Court included a pivotal footnote 8 preserving a narrow escape valve through trial court discretion under § 1385:

Because the proper exercise of a trial court’s discretion under section 1385 necessarily relates to the circumstances of a particular defendant’s current and past criminal conduct, we need not and do not determine whether there are some circumstances in which two prior felony convictions are so closely connected — for example, when multiple convictions arise out of a single act by the defendant as distinguished from multiple acts committed in an indivisible course of conduct — that a trial court would abuse its discretion under section 1385 if it failed to strike one of the priors. (Benson, at p. 36, fn. 8, italics added.)

This footnote expressly anticipated a scenario like Vargas—and, ultimately, Shaw.

D. Vargas: Mandatory Dismissal When Two Priors Arise from a Single Act

In People v. Vargas (2014) 59 Cal.4th 635, the Court directly addressed the question left open in Benson. The defendant had two prior strike convictions—robbery and carjacking—both based on the single act of forcibly taking the same car from the same victim.

The issue: when two prior strike convictions are based on the same act, must the trial court dismiss one under Romero, or does it merely have discretion to do so?

Key doctrinal steps in Vargas:

Recidivist purpose of Three Strikes. The Court emphasized that the Three Strikes law is designed to address recidivism—that is, repeated criminal conduct after opportunities to reform—not to magnify punishment merely because a single incident yields multiple convictions.
Romero, Williams, and Carmony standards.
- Romero (1996) 13 Cal.4th 497 held that trial courts may, in the interests of justice, dismiss a prior strike allegation under Penal Code section 1385.
- People v. Williams (1998) 17 Cal.4th 148 set forth the standard: courts must consider the nature of the current offense, the prior strikes, and the defendant’s background, character, and prospects in deciding whether the defendant falls outside the spirit of the Three Strikes scheme.
- People v. Carmony (2004) 33 Cal.4th 367 held that denial of a Romero motion is abused only in extraordinary circumstances where no reasonable person could disagree that the defendant falls outside the scheme’s spirit.
The “three swings of the bat” metaphor. Turning to ballot materials for Proposition 184 (the Three Strikes initiative), the Court emphasized the voters’ baseball metaphor: one serious/violent felony = first strike; a second serious/violent felony = second strike; a third = third strike. The “voting public would reasonably have understood” that a person gets three chances, and “no one can be called for two strikes on just one swing.” (Vargas, at p. 646.)
Application: Because the defendant’s two prior strikes were based on a single criminal act against a single victim, counting both as strikes would contradict the voters’ understanding of the law’s operation. Under Carmony, this was one of the “extraordinary” cases in which no reasonable person could say the defendant fell within the Three Strikes scheme’s spirit. Therefore, the trial court was required to dismiss one of the strikes under § 1385.

The core holding of Vargas is thus: Two prior strike convictions based on the same act cannot both be counted as strikes for third-strike sentencing; at least one must be dismissed under Romero.

E. Multiple‑Victim Doctrine: McFarland, Neal, Oates, and Wilkoff

The Attorney General in Shaw relied on a separate line of cases addressing how courts treat violence against multiple victims.

People v. McFarland (1989) 47 Cal.3d 798. A defendant may be convicted of multiple counts for multiple victims of a single criminal act when the statute prohibits an “act of violence against the person.” Each victim can support a separate conviction and separate punishment.
Neal v. State (1960) 55 Cal.2d 11. Multiple punishment is permitted where a single act of violence is committed with the intent to harm more than one person, or by a means likely to cause harm to several persons.
People v. Oates (2004) 32 Cal.4th 1048. Reinforces that multi‑victim crimes can result in multiple punishments and enhancements even for a single act, reflecting heightened culpability.
Wilkoff v. Superior Court (1985) 38 Cal.3d 345. Discusses vehicular manslaughter: the actus reus is homicide (unlawful killing). When a defendant kills multiple persons in one driving incident, he has committed the prohibited “act” several times—each death is a separate homicide count.

These cases collectively stand for the proposition that, for crimes of violence, a single physical event that injures or kills multiple people can yield multiple convictions and multiple punishments, because the law values each victim separately.

In Shaw, the Attorney General argued that the Three Strikes enactors, aware of these doctrines, must have intended that a single act harming multiple victims could yield multiple strikes as well, thereby justifying multiple “strikes” for a single multi‑victim incident.

F. Rusconi: The Now‑Disapproved Precedent

People v. Rusconi (2015) 236 Cal.App.4th 273 was a Court of Appeal decision that had taken precisely that view. There, as in Shaw, the defendant had two prior vehicular manslaughter convictions arising from a single drunk‑driving collision that killed two victims.

Rusconi held:

Vargas was limited to single‑victim offenses; its reasoning did not extend to multi‑victim incidents.
The Three Strikes law’s purpose of imposing “severe punishment” on repeat violent offenders, combined with the long‑standing doctrine that multiple victims justify multiple punishments, meant that offenders who kill or injure multiple victims in a single act could be treated more harshly than single‑victim offenders.

The Shaw Court explicitly rejects this reading of Vargas and disapproves Rusconi.

III. The Court’s Legal Reasoning in People v. Shaw

A. Framing the Question

The Court identifies the precise question as an extension of Vargas:

May a single act that harms two victims be treated as two strikes for purposes of Three Strikes sentencing?

The Court answers: “Again, the answer is no.” (Maj. opn., p. 1.) “Again” signals the continuity with Vargas.

B. Reading Vargas: The Centrality of “Same Act,” Not “Single Victim”

The majority carefully analyzes its own language in Vargas and emphasizes that the number of victims was never the operative factor.

Although Vargas mentioned at the outset that the two prior convictions arose from “a single act against a single victim,” the Court repeatedly framed the issue as: “whether the trial court should have dismissed one of defendant’s two prior felony convictions, alleged as strikes under the Three Strikes law, where both convictions were based on the same act.” (Maj. opn., pp. 11–12, italics in original.)
The decisive factor was that the defendant had “committed but one prior qualifying act” and thus had only “two swings of the bat,” not three. (Id. at p. 11, quoting Vargas, 59 Cal.4th at p. 647.)

Thus, the Court reads Vargas as establishing a general principle: when two prior strikes are based on the same act, a court must dismiss one for third-strike purposes. Nothing in Vargas suggests that this rule evaporates when that single act has multiple victims.

C. Rejecting the Attorney General’s Multi‑Victim Argument

The Attorney General argued that perpetrators of multi‑victim violence are more culpable and should be punished more harshly, and that voters and legislators were aware of the multi‑victim doctrine permitting multiple convictions and punishments for a single violent act harming multiple people.

The majority responds in two main steps.

1. Multi‑Victim Punishment vs. Recidivist Sentencing

The Court acknowledges the multi‑victim doctrine but characterizes the Attorney General’s reliance on it as fundamentally misplaced because it conflates two distinct questions:

How severely should the legal system punish a single incident based on the number of victims?
How should prior incidents affect the enhanced punishment for a new offense under a recidivist statute?

The Court emphasizes:

It is true that an act that harms multiple people is more serious than an act that does not and may be punished accordingly. But the purpose of Three Strikes sentencing is not (and, for double jeopardy reasons, cannot be) to impose additional punishment for prior criminal acts that have already been punished. The purpose is instead to fix the appropriate punishment for the defendant’s current offense — an offense the law considers “to be an aggravated offense because a repetitive one.” (Maj. opn., p. 13, quoting Ewing v. California (2003) 538 U.S. 11, 25–26.)

Thus, the fact that Shaw’s 2002 collision killed two people is undoubtedly relevant to his punishment for that 2002 crime (multiple counts, longer sentence), but it is not what justifies a third‑strike life term in 2020. Three Strikes is about how many prior opportunities to reform Shaw had before committing the 2020 offense.

2. The Logical Gap: One Incident vs. Multiple “Swings of the Bat”

The majority drives home that the Attorney General’s position fails to connect the existence of multiple victims in a single event to the recidivist rationale:

Shaw’s 2002 event, though gravely serious and involving two deaths, was still a single act of intoxicated driving.
Punishing him now as a third‑strike offender for his 2020 DUI, while punishing another defendant with exactly the same 2020 conduct and an identical single‑incident prior but with only one victim as a second‑striker, would not reflect a difference in recidivism. Both offenders had only one prior criminal episode before the current offense; both had only two “swings of the bat.”

The Court reinforces this by citing People v. Nguyen (2009) 46 Cal.4th 1007, which explains that recidivist enhancements are justified because a defendant’s current criminal conduct is more serious once he has previously offended and failed to reform—not because of how many victims were involved in one prior incident.

D. Distinguishing Benson and Rejecting the Attorney General’s Analogy

The Attorney General invoked Benson’s rationale that the electorate and Legislature could rationally conclude that someone who commits “additional violence in the course of a prior serious felony” (e.g., pistol‑whipping or shooting a victim during a robbery) should be treated more harshly upon reoffense than someone who committed only the initial felony.

The majority responds that Benson is categorically different:

Benson “involved multiple criminal acts (albeit committed in a single course of conduct) and not, as here, multiple criminal convictions stemming from the commission of a single act.” (Maj. opn., p. 15, quoting Vargas, 59 Cal.4th at p. 648.)
In Benson, a burglary plus a separate assault represent two distinct acts within one episode; this can be plausibly viewed as two “swings of the bat” for recidivist purposes.
By contrast, Shaw’s case—like Vargas—involves one act giving rise to multiple convictions (two homicides), and treating that as multiple strikes would contradict the “three swings” structure understood by voters.

E. Clarifying Wilkoff and the Meaning of “Act”

In a footnote, the Attorney General suggested that for vehicular manslaughter, the number of “acts” might be determined by the number of deaths, citing Wilkoff’s statement that when a defendant commits several homicides in a single driving incident, he has committed the prohibited act (homicide) several times.

The majority sharply limits this argument:

Wilkoff uses “act” as a shorthand for the legal concept of actus reus, not “act” in the ordinary, physical sense.
Its point is only that where a crime is defined in terms of causing injury or death to another, harm to multiple victims may yield multiple counts—even if the harm stems from a “single criminal act” in the physical sense. (Maj. opn., p. 16 & fn. 1.)

For Three Strikes purposes, the relevant concept is the , not how many times the legal element of “causing death” is satisfied.

F. Application to Shaw and the Resulting Rule

Applying these principles, the Court concludes:

Shaw’s two prior vehicular manslaughter convictions arose from a single criminal act—one episode of intoxicated driving that caused a collision.
Under Vargas, where “two of a defendant’s prior strikes are the result of the same act,” the trial court is required to dismiss at least one of them under Romero. (Maj. opn., p. 16.)
This is true even though the act harmed multiple victims and even though multiple convictions and punishments were properly imposed back in 2002 for those deaths. Those multiple punishments reflect the gravity of that single incident, not multiple chances to reform.

The Court then states the rule explicitly:

“In sum, the rule we established in Vargas, that a trial court is required to dismiss a strike when two of a defendant’s prior strikes are the result of the same act, applies in cases in which the defendant’s single act harmed multiple victims. We disapprove People v. Rusconi, supra, 236 Cal.App.4th 273, which reached a contrary conclusion.” (Maj. opn., p. 17.)

The Court reverses the Court of Appeal and remands for resentencing, effectively converting Shaw from a third‑strike to a second‑strike offender.

IV. The Concurring Opinion: Questioning Benson and Fuhrman

Justice Groban, joined by Justices Liu and Evans, concurs in the result but uses the occasion to question the logic of some earlier decisions—particularly Benson and Fuhrman—in light of the Three Strikes law’s recidivist purpose.

A. Re‑Emphasis on Recidivism and “Chances to Reform”

The concurrence highlights that both the U.S. Supreme Court and the California Supreme Court have long explained that the Three Strikes law is aimed at recidivism, not simply at punishing any aggregation of serious conduct. The concurrence quotes Vargas’s articulation:

“The typical third strike situation … involves a criminal offender who commits a qualifying felony after having been afforded two previous chances to reform his or her antisocial behavior.” (Conc. opn., p. 1, italics added.)

In other words, what matters for Three Strikes is how many times a defendant has offended, been punished, and then reoffended—not how finely one can slice a single criminal episode into multiple acts or victims.

B. Skepticism about Benson and Fuhrman

Justice Groban questions whether it is consistent with this recidivist rationale to treat rapid, closely‑linked acts in a single episode as separate strikes:

Benson scenario: A defendant breaks into a home (burglary) and then immediately assaults the homeowner. Under Benson, these are two separate strikes. But from a recidivism perspective, the defendant has had only one real opportunity to reform, not two.
Fuhrman scenario: A defendant brandishes a gun at one victim and then, moments later, uses that same gun to commandeer a truck from a second victim. Under Fuhrman, these can be two strikes. Yet again, this is one continuous episode, one “swing,” one opportunity to reform—not two.

To illustrate the arbitrariness the concurrence sees, Justice Groban offers examples:

Fire a single shotgun blast injuring two victims: one act, one strike.
Fire two shotgun blasts in rapid succession injuring the same two victims: under current precedent, potentially two acts and therefore two strikes.

Similarly, he asks us to imagine if Shaw had struck one vehicle, killing one person, and then immediately careened into another car, killing another person. Would that be one act or two? The current doctrine offers no clear or principled line, yet the difference could mean “a difference of literally decades in a defendant’s prison sentence.” (Conc. opn., p. 3.)

C. The “One Swing, One Strike” Principle

Justice Groban suggests a more coherent interpretation: the Three Strikes law should be applied so that a defendant receives one strike for each distinct criminal episode that actually afforded a chance to reform. He endorses Vargas’s statement that a person should not be “called for two strikes on just one swing.”

From this perspective, not only Vargas and Shaw, but also cases like Benson and Fuhrman, might be wrongly decided or at least in tension with the law’s fundamental purpose.

D. Looking Ahead

The concurrence concludes that today’s decision does not require revisiting Benson and Fuhrman, but hints that a “future case” may provide the opportunity to realign those precedents with the “three swings” understanding of the statute.

V. Clarifying Key Legal Concepts

A. “Strike,” “Serious or Violent Felony,” and “Prior Conviction”

A “strike” is a prior conviction for a felony that is defined as “serious” (Pen. Code, § 1192.7, subd. (c)) or “violent” (§ 667.5, subd. (c)). Examples include many homicides, serious assaults, certain robberies, burglaries, and sex offenses.
A “prior conviction” is treated formally: if a defendant has previously been convicted of a qualifying felony in California (or an equivalent out‑of‑state offense), that conviction is a strike, regardless of whether its sentence was stayed, suspended, or served concurrently. (See Benson, 18 Cal.4th at p. 31.)

B. “Act” vs. “Course of Conduct” vs. “Actus Reus”

A single physical act is one discrete physical behavior—e.g., a single pull of the trigger, a single collision caused by intoxicated driving.
An “indivisible course of conduct” is a continuous series of acts with one objective, so closely related in time and purpose that Penal Code § 654 may bar multiple punishment—even if there are multiple acts. (Benson falls here: burglary plus assault during the same invasion.)
“Actus reus” is the legal element of a crime (e.g., “causing death”). In crimes like vehicular manslaughter, one physical act (a collision) can satisfy the actus reus multiple times (for multiple deaths), supporting multiple counts. Wilkoff uses “act” in this technical sense, but Shaw clarifies that for Three Strikes, the relevant concept is the physical act or incident, not the number of times the legal element occurs.

C. Penal Code Section 654

Penal Code section 654, subdivision (a) provides that an act or omission punishable in different ways by different provisions of law may only be punished under one provision, not more than one. Courts have interpreted this to bar multiple punishments for a single physical act or indivisible course of conduct, although multiple convictions may still be entered.

Crucially, as Benson holds, a section 654 stay of sentence does not affect whether that conviction is a “prior” for Three Strikes purposes.

D. Romero Motions and the “Spirit” of the Three Strikes Law

A Romero motion refers to a defendant’s request that the court dismiss a strike allegation under Penal Code section 1385 “in furtherance of justice.”
Under Williams (1998), courts deciding whether to dismiss a strike must consider the nature and circumstances of the current felony and prior strikes, and the defendant’s background, character, and prospects, to determine whether the defendant should be deemed to fall outside the spirit of the Three Strikes regime.
Under Carmony (2004), a refusal to dismiss a strike is an abuse of discretion only in “extraordinary” cases where no reasonable person could disagree that the defendant falls outside that spirit.
Vargas and now Shaw identify such an “extraordinary” category: when two prior strikes arise from the same act. In that situation, the court is not merely permitted but effectively obliged to dismiss at least one strike to avoid violating the Three Strikes scheme’s structure.

E. The “Spirit” of the Three Strikes Law and the “Three Swings” Metaphor

The Court repeatedly returns to the baseball metaphor used in the ballot arguments for Proposition 184:

First serious/violent felony = Strike One;
Second felony with a prior serious/violent felony = Strike Two;
Third felony with two prior serious/violent felonies = Strike Three → 25‑to‑life.

Voters, the Court reasons, would understand that:

A defendant should get three chances (three separate criminal episodes), and
“No one can be called for two strikes on just one swing.”

This metaphor is not mere rhetoric; it is a tool for interpreting the statute’s “spirit” and the scope of judicial discretion under § 1385.

VI. Practical and Doctrinal Impact

A. Immediate Impact on Shaw

On remand, the trial court must resentence Shaw as a second-strike offender:

His 2002 convictions count as only one prior strike for Three Strikes purposes.
He is still subject to a doubled sentence for the 2020 felony DUI, “itself a serious penalty,” but not to a third-strike life term. (Maj. opn., p. 16.)

B. Impact on Other Defendants: Multi‑Victim Single‑Incident Priors

The decision has potentially broad consequences for defendants whose prior criminal history consists of one serious incident with multiple victims that yielded multiple serious/violent felony convictions—examples include:

Drunk driving collisions causing multiple deaths or serious injuries;
Shootings or explosions injuring or killing multiple victims via one act;
Single arson incidents affecting multiple occupants; and
Other violent acts where one discrete conduct event harms several people simultaneously.

For such defendants:

If they later commit a new qualifying felony, their prior convictions from that single act together count as only one strike for purposes of imposing a third-strike life term.
They may still face multiple counts and substantial punishment for the original incident and a doubled sentence for current offenses as second‑strikers, but cannot be bootstrapped into a 25‑to‑life term solely because of multiple victims from one act.

C. Disapproval of Rusconi and Possible Resentencing

By formally disapproving Rusconi, the Court signals that prior sentencing decisions relying on its reasoning are legally mistaken. Defendants sentenced as third‑strike offenders under Rusconi-type scenarios (single act, multiple victims, two prior strikes) gain a strong basis to seek relief—potentially through:

Direct appeal if their cases are not yet final;
Petitions for writ of habeas corpus alleging unlawful third-strike sentencing; or
Statutory resentencing mechanisms, depending on intervening reforms and the procedural posture of their cases.

D. Guidance for Trial Courts and Practitioners

Shaw provides clear guidance:

When assessing a Romero motion in a third-strike case, courts must determine whether two alleged prior strikes arise from the same act. If so, the court is required to dismiss at least one strike.
The determination of “same act” focuses on the underlying physical conduct, not on the number of victims or the number of statutory violations charged.
Prosecutors must recognize that alleging multiple strike priors from a single act will not support a third-strike life term, though it may still be relevant to ordinary sentencing within non‑Three Strikes ranges.

We can anticipate more litigation over the boundaries of what counts as “one act” versus multiple acts within a continuous incident—an issue the concurrence highlights as especially murky.

E. Reaffirming the Recidivist Focus and Limiting Overreach

Doctrinally, Shaw reinforces a critical limit on the sometimes expansive application of Three Strikes:

The law is not a blunt instrument to maximize punishment whenever possible; it has a structured, tiered penalty design tied to recidivism.
Courts must honor the “three swings of the bat” concept and avoid interpretive moves that effectively treat a single swing as two or more strikes.
This limit operates not by rewriting the statutory definition of a “prior conviction,” but through the mandatory exercise of judicial discretion under § 1385 in “extraordinary” cases like Vargas and Shaw.

VII. Unresolved Questions and Future Directions

A. What Counts as One “Act”?

Even after Shaw, significant gray areas remain:

When does a continuous episode contain multiple acts rather than a single act? Examples:
- A car hits one pedestrian, then a second a second later—one act of reckless driving or two?
- A shooter fires several shots in rapid succession—multiple acts or a single act of shooting?
How courts draw these lines will be critical, since multiple acts may still support multiple strikes under Benson and Fuhrman, whereas a single act is covered by Vargas and Shaw.

The concurrence openly questions whether the current doctrine, which makes decades of sentencing hinge on fine-grained parsing of seconds and steps in a single event, is tenable.

B. Potential Reconsideration of Benson and Fuhrman

Justice Groban’s concurrence invites a future case to reconsider whether treating closely connected acts in a single incident as separate strikes truly comports with the “three swings” principle. That reconsideration could:

Further limit the circumstances in which multiple strikes can arise from a single criminal episode;
Align the law more closely with voters’ apparent understanding and the recidivist rationale; and
Harmonize the case law, which currently splits single‑act/single‑victim, single‑act/multi‑victim, multi‑act/single‑episode scenarios in arguably arbitrary ways.

C. Interaction with Other Reforms and Constitutional Doctrines

Although not directly addressed in Shaw, the decision intersects with:

Ongoing legislative and voter‑driven reforms to California’s Three Strikes scheme, including Prop. 36 (2012) and later resentencing provisions; and
Constitutional limits (Eighth Amendment proportionality, double jeopardy) that the Court alludes to in explaining why Three Strikes cannot simply be a device to re‑punish prior acts.

Conclusion

People v. Shaw crystallizes and extends an important limiting principle within California’s Three Strikes jurisprudence: a single criminal act, even if it results in multiple serious or violent felony convictions because it harms more than one victim, counts as only one strike for purposes of imposing a third-strike life sentence.

By holding that trial courts are required to dismiss one of two strike priors arising from a single act—even in multi‑victim cases—and by disapproving Rusconi, the Court reaffirms the Three Strikes law’s core identity as a recidivist statute keyed to the number of genuine opportunities a defendant has had to reform, not merely to the number of victims or counts in a single incident. The decision also highlights growing internal tension within the case law, as the concurrence questions whether earlier cases like Benson and Fuhrman are consistent with that recidivist focus.

Going forward, Shaw will shape sentencing, charging, and appellate practice across California. It offers a clearer, more principled boundary: no matter how grievous a single criminal act may be—and no matter how many lives it takes—it represents only one swing of the bat for Three Strikes purposes. For a defendant to be “out” with a third-strike life term, the law demands three distinct swings.

Single Criminal Act, Single Strike: Extending Vargas to Multi‑Victim Offenses under California’s Three Strikes Law Commentary on People v. Shaw, Supreme Court of California (Dec. 15, 2025)