Even if you don't watch Perry Mason re-runs, you've probably heard of the legal notion that you shouldn't be repeatedly punished for committing one crime.
I'm not sure if Amir A. Ahmed of Riverside County knew of the notion.
But this month the California Supreme Court ruled that it doesn't apply to him.
In August 2006, Ahmed shot his girlfriend once in the stomach with a .38-caliber handgun, a jury convicted him and Superior Court Judge Sharon J. Waters rendered five separate punishments.
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Here's the prison punishment breakdown: four years for assault, three
years for using a gun, four years for inflicting great bodily harm on
his victim and two, one year sentences for two prior prison stints. That
totals 13 years in the slammer for Ahmed.
A California Court of Appeal
panel had previously ruled that Ahmed couldn't be punished for both use
of a firearm as well as a great bodily harm enhancement. That panel
reduced his prison term to 10 years, a move that didn't impress the
state Attorney General's office, which successfully appealed.
The supreme court says that the state legislature sanctioned multiple punishment enhancements in cases such as Ahmed's.
“Sometimes separate enhancements focus on different aspects of the criminal act,” wrote Justice Ming W. Chin
in his 14-page opinion for a majority of his colleagues. “Here, for
example, the personal use of a firearm and the infliction of great
bodily injury arose from the same criminal act — shooting the victim.
The personal use of a firearm was an aspect of that act that, the
legislature has determined, warrants additional punishment; similarly,
the infliction of great bodily injury is a different aspect of a
criminal act that, the legislature has determined, also warrants
additional punishment.”
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.