A defendant with two or more ** "Strike" priors (a third striker) faces a minimum of 25-years-to-life in prison.  After serving the 25-years on a 25-to-life sentence, he is then eligible for, but not guaranteed, parole. Whether and when an eligible life prisoner is paroled is up to the Board of Parole Hearings (BPH). The BPH is made up of members (mostly x-law enforcement staff) appointed by the Governor and they tend to be very conservative about paroling eligible life inmates. Since no 3-Strike life inmates has become eligible for parole and none will until 2019, no one knows how the BPH will deal with 3-Strike inmates.

In the mean time, it MAY be possible to eliminate a previous “Strikes,” and possibly get a sentence reduced.

There are a few ways to potentially eliminate previous “Strikes” which have been utilized by the sentencing court.  Among those which have been successful are:  ineffective assistance of trial counsel (IAC) , inadequate proof of priors, a trial judge determining facts of the prior offense, when those facts must be determined by a jury, breach of a previous plea bargain, assigning multiple “Strikes” for an offense which involved a single course of action, a conviction from a different jurisdiction which does not qualify under California law as a “Strike.”  Each case must be individually evaluated, based on its own unique facts.  If you have been sentenced illegally, a court always maintains jurisdiction to correct that illegal sentence.

** STRIKES: (aka Violent felonies) include murder, mayhem, rape, sodomy, lewd and lascivious act, robbery, kidnapping, carjacking, and first-degree burglary. Violent felonies also include any felony punishable by a life sentence or the death penalty. And any felony where the defendant inflicts great bodily injury or uses a firearm is a violent felony.