What is the test for determining whether a defendant has at least one qualifying strike under the Three Strikes Act?

The purpose of the Three Strikes law is "to ensure longer prison sentences and greater punishment for those who commit a felony and have been previously convicted of one or more serious or violent felony offenses." ( 667, subd. (b).) The Three Strikes law "establishes a sentencing requirement to be applied in every case where the defendant has at least one qualifying strike," unless the trial court determines the defendant falls outside the scheme's spirit. (People v. Strong (2001) 87 Cal.App.4th 328, 337-338.) "[E]xtraordinary must the circumstance be by which a career criminal can be deemed to fall outside the spirit of the very scheme within which he squarely falls once he commits a strike as part of a long and continuous criminal record, the continuation of

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which the law was meant to attack." (Id. at p. 338.) Thus, the Three Strikes law "not only establishes a sentencing norm, it carefully circumscribes the trial court's power to depart from this norm." (People v. Carmony (2004) 33 Cal.4th 367, 378.)

"The trial court is not required to state reasons for declining to exercise its discretion under section 1385." (People v. Gillispie (1997) 60 Cal.App.4th 429, 433.) The trial court "is presumed to have considered all of the relevant factors in the absence of an affirmative record to the contrary." (People v. Myers (1999) 69 Cal.App.4th 305, 310.)