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Name: Nunes v. Ramirez-Palmer
Case #: 06-16100
Court: US Court of Appeals
District 9 Cir
Opinion Date: 04/27/2007
Summary

A petitioner was not entitled to relief where his three strikes sentence was not objectively unreasonable. Affirming the district court’s denial of a habeas corpus petition in a petty theft case, the appellate court here held that the state court’s ruling upholding the petitioner’s Three Strikes sentence against an Eighth Amendment challenge was not an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law because the state court reasonably applied the principle that a sentence cannot be grossly disproportional to the defendant’s circumstances. The court rejected the petitioner’s argument that the state court relied on an unreasonable determination of the facts because it failed to recognize that the majority of his prior convictions that it considered were invalid or were less serious than stated. The court held that it was objectively reasonable for the state court to reject the petitioner’s claim of prosecutorial vindictiveness in the decision to charge him under the Three Strikes statute. It also rejected the petitioner’s claim that the trial court violated his right to due process when it denied his motion to strike his prior convictions at sentencing.