Background
Jose Bustamant Cardenas arranged to sell a cell phone for $500 to a buyer he met online. When they met at a community center in Long Beach on the evening of April 15, 2022, the buyer — 15-year-old Joshua Simmons — grabbed the phone and ran. Cardenas pulled out a semiautomatic handgun he routinely carried for protection and opened fire, emptying the entire magazine. Simmons was struck six times, including shots to his back. As he collapsed, he threw the phone back toward Cardenas and said, “I’m sorry.” Simmons died at the scene. Cardenas retrieved his phone, fled, then called 911 and cooperated with police.
At trial, Cardenas testified he believed Simmons was armed because Simmons kept reaching for his waistband. The jury acquitted Cardenas of murder but convicted him of voluntary manslaughter and found he personally used a firearm. The conviction for the lesser offense suggests the jury found Cardenas’s fear at least partially credible.
After the guilt phase, Cardenas exercised his right under Penal Code section 1170(b)(2) — a provision enacted in 2022 — to have a jury decide whether aggravating circumstances justified a harsher sentence. Three aggravating factors were submitted to the jury: that the crime involved great violence and cruelty, that Cardenas used a weapon, and that the victim was particularly vulnerable. The trial court instructed the jury on these factors but refused defense counsel’s request to argue the aggravating factors to the jurors. The jury found all three factors true, and the court imposed the upper term of 10 years for the firearm enhancement based on the victim’s vulnerability.
The Court’s Holding
The Second District Court of Appeal held that the trial court committed reversible error by denying defense counsel the opportunity to present closing argument on the aggravating sentencing factors. Under both the Sixth Amendment right to counsel and California Penal Code section 1093(e), a defendant who exercises the right to a jury trial on aggravating circumstances must be allowed to argue those factors to the jury. A court may impose reasonable limits on the scope or duration of argument, but it cannot eliminate argument entirely on an issue the jury must decide.
The court declined to decide whether this error was “structural” — a category of constitutional violation so fundamental that reversal is automatic — because even under the less defendant-friendly Chapman standard, which asks whether the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, the prosecution failed to show the error did not matter. The jury’s own manslaughter verdict indicated it found Cardenas’s testimony about fearing the victim at least partially credible, which meant jurors may have been receptive to defense arguments that the 15-year-old victim was not “particularly vulnerable” from Cardenas’s perspective. The court vacated the upper-term firearm enhancement and sent the case back for either a new proceeding on the aggravating factors or a reduced sentence.
Key Takeaways
- When a defendant exercises the right to a jury trial on aggravating sentencing factors under Penal Code section 1170(b)(2), the court must allow defense counsel to argue those factors to the jury. Instructing the jury without any argument from either side is reversible error.
- This is a matter of first impression. The 2022 reforms that created the right to a jury trial on aggravating factors are relatively new, and this decision establishes that the full bundle of trial rights — including closing argument — attaches to these proceedings.
- The court applied the Chapman harmless-error standard (harmless beyond a reasonable doubt) rather than treating the denial as automatic structural error. However, the prosecution still lost on this standard because the jury’s own verdict suggested it might have been persuaded by defense arguments on the aggravating factors.
- A single valid aggravating factor is sufficient for an upper-term sentence, but when the error taints findings on all submitted factors, a court cannot simply rely on a subset of factors to uphold the sentence.
Why It Matters
This decision fills an important gap in California’s relatively new sentencing framework. Since 2022, defendants have had the right to have a jury — not just a judge — decide whether aggravating circumstances justify a longer prison sentence. But until now, no court had addressed what procedural protections accompany that jury trial. This ruling makes clear that the right to a jury trial on sentencing factors is not just a right to have jurors check boxes on a verdict form. It includes the right to have your lawyer explain to the jury why those boxes should not be checked.
For criminal defense attorneys, this case provides authority to demand full participation in the aggravating-factor phase of trial, including the right to closing argument. For trial judges navigating these still-new proceedings, the message is that the aggravating-factor phase must be treated as a genuine adversarial proceeding, not a formality. And for prosecutors, the case is a reminder that failing to allow defense argument creates a reversible-error risk even when the evidence of aggravation appears strong — because an appellate court will look at whether argument could have changed the outcome, and a jury that already showed sympathy for the defendant may well have been open to persuasion.