## Facts

- James Corey McGee faced a California sentence enhancement under the state’s serious-felony/recidivist scheme based on two prior Nevada robbery convictions.
- The Nevada conviction records did not facially establish that the offenses matched California’s definition of a qualifying “serious felony.”
- The trial judge reviewed materials within the Nevada “record of conviction” (including formal court documents associated with the pleas/charges) to determine whether the Nevada robberies met California’s serious-felony criteria.
- Over McGee’s objection, the judge (not a jury) made the qualifying-prior determination and imposed an enhanced sentence.
- McGee argued that, under the Sixth Amendment as interpreted in Apprendi, any fact increasing the maximum punishment—including whether the priors qualified under California law—had to be found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.

## Issues

1. Whether the federal Constitution requires a jury, rather than a judge, to determine from the record of a prior conviction whether an out-of-state prior qualifies as a “serious felony” for a California recidivist sentence enhancement.
2. Whether a judge’s record-based determination about the “nature” of a prior conviction falls within Apprendi’s prior-conviction exception.

## Decision

- The California Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeal and upheld the enhanced sentence.
- The court held there is no federal constitutional right to a jury determination of whether a prior conviction qualifies as a serious felony when the determination is made by examining the prior record of conviction.
- The court concluded that this limited judicial determination fits within Apprendi’s prior-conviction exception and does not violate the Sixth Amendment.

## Legal Principles

- Apprendi’s jury-trial requirement does not extend to determinations falling within the “fact of a prior conviction” exception.
- A sentencing court may examine and interpret documents comprising the record of a prior criminal proceeding to decide whether the prior qualifies for a recidivist enhancement.
- The permissible inquiry is confined to record-of-conviction materials and does not authorize a broad re-litigation of disputed historical facts about the prior offense.
- Classifying out-of-state priors for enhancement purposes may be treated as a judicial task where the classification is derived from the prior record and the prior conviction was itself obtained through proceedings satisfying jury-trial and proof-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt protections.

## Conclusion

The court held that a judge may determine, based on the record of a prior conviction, whether an out-of-state conviction qualifies as a California “serious felony” for recidivist enhancement purposes, and that this record-based classification does not require a jury finding under the Sixth Amendment.


People v. McGee, 38 Cal. 4th 682 (Cal. 2006)