Cal. Supreme Court Addresses CPC Requirement for PC 654 Claims

People v. Shelton, no. S124503 (Cal. Supreme Court, Jan. 5, 2006, argued Nov. 9, 2005)

The question addressed is whether a defendant required to obtain a certificate of probable cause in order to claim on appeal that the manner of calculating the maximum sentence he agreed to in a plea agreement violated Penal Code section 654.

I'll post later on the holding.

This is a follow-up of People v. Hester, no. S077187 (2000).

Update. Here's the holding:

inclusion of a sentence lid implies a mutual understanding and agreement that the trial court has authority to impose the specified maximum sentence and preserves only the defendant’s right to urge that the trial court should or must exercise its discretion in favor of a shorter term. Accordingly, a challenge to the trial court’s authority to impose the lid sentence is a challenge to the validity of the plea requiring a certificate of probable cause.

Justice Werdeger dissented, expressly a different view of a "lid":

In exchange for his agreement to plead no contest to  two of the five felony counts charged, defendant was promised a sentence  maximum, or “lid,” of three years and eight months.  As memorialized by the trial  court, the plea agreement expressly reserved defendant’s right to “argue for  something less than three years and eight months.”  Nothing in the agreement  limited the grounds upon which defendant could argue for a lesser prison sentence,  nor did the agreement include any determination that imposition of the lid  sentence (or any longer sentence) was authorized under Penal Code section 654  (section 654).  For this reason, defendant’s appeal based on section 654 is not an  attack on the validity of the plea; he therefore was not required to obtain a  certificate of probable cause to pursue it.