25 years too long for failure to register

As first noted by Appellate Law & Practice here, a California intermediate appellate court in People v. Carmony, No. C038802 (Cal. App. 3d Dist. Mar. 25, 2005) (available here) has found unconstitutional a three-strikes sentence of 25-years-to-life for the “technical violation” of a sex offender failing to update his registration within 5 days of his birthday.  The Carmony court called the defendant’s failure to re-register “completely harmless and no worse than a breach of an overtime parking ordinance,” and it concluded that this application of three strikes to the sex offender registration law violates the federal Eighth Amendment prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishments,” as well as California’s constitutional prohibition on “cruel or unusual punishment.”

The extended Carmony opinion provides a useful primer on both California’s three-strikes law and modern Eighth Amendment analysis.  It also brings to mind this recent post about the development of state constitutional law, and post here and here about sex offender sentencing.  Of course, this is the type of non-violent case that, I believe, would no longer have been subject to California’s three-strikes law if last year’s amendment to the law had been approved by votes in Proposition 66 (see discussion here and here).