People v. Eppinger

In People v. Eppinger (1895) 109 Cal. 294, the defendant was charged with uttering a fictitious document, and with having suffered a prior conviction. The jury returned a general verdict of guilty. However, the jury made no explicit finding, under section 1158, as to the truth of the alleged prior conviction. Subsequently, the defendant was sentenced to a term of 14 years imprisonment. Under the then existing statutes, a true finding on the prior conviction mandated a 14-year sentence, while a not true finding gave sentencing discretion to the court within a range of one year up to 14 years. The court was compelled to reverse the sentence, because it could not be determined whether the judge had accepted the general verdict as including a true finding on the prior conviction, thus warranting the mandatory 14-year sentence, or had instead concluded the prior conviction was not true and therefore sentenced within its discretion. The matter was remanded, with the trial court being ordered to exercise its discretion as to the defendant's sentence. (Ibid.)