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http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/articles/1301311.html Monday, December 20, 2004
Jerry DeWayne Williams had no idea July 30, 1994, that when he took a slice of pizza from four children on the Redondo Beach pier, he would become the poster boy for California's three-strikes law. For years, proponents and opponents of California's tough sentencing law for habitual criminals have used his name as an example of why many believe the 25-to-life rule works, and why many believe it's too harsh. The so-called "pizza theft" case began on the International Boardwalk more than 10 years ago at a table outside Adam's Pizza. The Daily Breeze ran a not-so-serious headline Aug. 2, 1994 -- "A bite out of crime: Alleged pizza thief behind bars" -- and lead on the story: "Some might say it was just another slice of life in Redondo Beach." But the case was just the opposite, and triggered a nationwide debate on the fledgling "three strikes, you're out" law, passed at a time when crime rates had peaked. Police said a robbery occurred as the Adkins and Callahan children of El Segundo spent the evening on the pier. Their parents wanted seafood for dinner, but Terry, 14, Michael, 12, and their cousins Amy, 10, and Kevin, 7, wanted pizza. They plunked down $15.75 for an extra-large New York-style pepperoni pie and sat eating it at an outdoor table. Police said two "substantial, intimidating" men approached, said they wanted pizza, grabbed slices and walked away laughing. Williams, his shirtless upper body covered with tattoos, was one of them. The pizza restaurant manager called police. Sgt. Peter Grimm, then an officer, was first to arrive. He was met by one of the children. "He was upset and he was crying, visibly shaken up," Grimm said. "He was afraid of this person." Grimm found the 6-foot-4, 220-pound Williams at the Fun Factory Arcade. The other man was gone. Williams went to jail and soon became famous. Williams' rap sheet was long. He had been discharged three months earlier from prison and had prior felony convictions for robbery, attempted robbery, joyriding and drug possession. The three-strikes law, just passed by voters, was in its infancy and detectives at first were unsure if Williams' crime qualified. Prosecutors said yes and charged him with robbery and felony petty theft, which under the law could send him to prison for 25 years to life. On Jan. 20, 1995, Torrance jurors found Williams guilty of felony petty theft, but deadlocked on whether he committed robbery. Either way, the three-strikes law meant Williams was headed for 25 years to life. Although his attorney argued the sentence was cruel and unusual for pilfering a $2 slice of pizza, prosecutors argued that Williams' criminal history was exactly what voters were talking about when they approved the three-strikes law. Judge Donald Pitts imposed the sentence. Williams became the "poster boy" for a national controversy on three-strikes laws. Late-night comedians made jokes. In 1996, the state Supreme Court decided that judges were not required to follow 25-to-life sentencing mandates if they believed the sentence was too harsh. "Two more years," Williams shouted to his family in the courtroom when Pitts reduced his sentence to six years on Jan. 28, 1997. He has since been released and reportedly lives in Corcoran. Williams' name bubbled to the surface again during the campaign for Proposition 66 on the November ballot. Supporters of the measure to soften the three-strikes law often cited the Williams case in arguing that petty crimes should not result in prison sentences of 25 years to life. "We still hear people comment on that case and the comment always has to do with 'This is what's wrong with the law,' " said Redondo Beach police Detective Mark Sturgeon, who investigated the case. But Sturgeon and other Redondo Beach police officers take the other side. They believe the case was much more than the laughable theft of a slice of pizza -- it was a robbery. "They make it sound like some guy sees a piece of pizza on a counter and does a grab and run -- an otherwise insignificant petty theft as opposed to this big hulking guy walking up to a table of four children." "People forget he was a parolee and he was a hardened criminal," Grimm said. "It's not like some guy who committed his third mistake. He had a very violent past. He knew what he was doing and he was going to take what he wanted."
http://www.presstelegram.com/Stories/0,1413,204~21479~2498243,00.html Long Beach Press Telegram False advertising
Thursday, October 28, 2004 - Whether we've agreed or disagreed with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's positions on certain issues since he's been governor, we haven't caught him in a flat-out misrepresentation of the facts. That is, until his anti-Proposition 66 commercials recently started to air. In the advertisements, Schwarzenegger repeats the same extreme exaggerations that a Superior Court judge called "patently false," before blocking opponents of the measure from using it in their ballot arguments. Schwarzenegger appears in the brief television advertisement walking past a gallery of ominous looking black-and- white mug shots (presumably of criminals), telling voters that Proposition 66 would result in "26,000 dangerous criminals being released from prison," including rapists, murderers and child molesters. The claim is pure fiction. Proposition 66 would amend California's three-strikes law so that only violent, serious crimes would be considered as third-strike cases, which bring sentences of 25 years to life. The proposition would not automatically release a single prisoner. Current prisoners whose third strike was for a nonviolent, nonserious offense would be granted a resentencing hearing before a judge. Prosecutors would have the option of refiling charges that could bring a longer sentence. In no case would this amount to an automatic release. Nor does the proposition contain any provisions to grant early release hearings to any second-strike prisoner. As for the 26,000 number: In July, while ruling on a challenge to the ballot argument, the Superior Court judge called it a "mathematical impossibility." According to the nonpartisan state legislative analyst's office, about 4,200 nonviolent, nonserious third- strikers would be eligible for resentencing hearings. In the end, ballot opponents were permitted to use the disingenuous "The California District Attorneys Association estimates Proposition 66 will release as many as 26,000 convicted felons from California prisons." Yet the association has never backed up its extraordinary claims. As we noted in our editorial endorsing Proposition 66, California is the only state with three-strikes laws on the books that counts nonviolent, nonserious offenses as third strikes. And there is no evidence that the tougher law had any effect on crime rates. New York, which does not have any kind of three-strikes law, saw a greater drop in crime during the 1990s than California did. California, however, is now spending hundreds of millions of dollars to lock up nonviolent offenders for life. That money would be much better spent on law enforcement and crime prevention programs. Schwarzenegger has every right to disagree, of course. But he doesn't have the right to misrepresent the facts to voters. In the anti-Proposition 66 ads, unfortunately, that's exactly what he's doing.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/11109020p-12025471c.html The buzz: Guards union may lose taste for 'three-strikes'
fight
The state's correctional officers' union may be throwing in the towel on Proposition 66, conceding victory for the measure to weaken the "three strikes" sentencing law. With about two weeks left before the Nov. 2 election, the measure is enjoying support from two-thirds of likely voters, and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association has been unwilling to put up the kind of money opponents need to run a television advertising campaign. Nor has it been able to find any other deep pockets to finance the opposition, including those belonging to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Supporters have prepared television ads that trash the embattled union and have a commitment from wealthy financier George Soros to bankroll the media campaign if the guards start to put in big money, according to sources in the Proposition 66 campaign. The powerful union, which has been the subject this year of legislative probes and searing political attacks for the influence it wields in prisons and at the Capitol, is leery of the additional pummeling it would take if it fully engages Proposition 66 supporters. But it is also frustrated that no one else has stepped up. Schwarzenegger is scheduled to campaign against the measure next week and included his opposition in a mailer he sent to 5 million voters. But there is no plan for a paid media campaign, said Schwarzenegger spokesman Rob Stutzman. The governor's efforts - and considerable campaign war chest - have been focused on defeating two gambling measures, Propositions 68 and 70. A spokesman for the guards, Lance Corcoran, said it's frustrating to see Schwarzenegger campaigning against Propositions 68 and 70 when polls show both measures all but dead. Mounting an opposition against Proposition 66, he said, "is going to take more than lip service. ... This is about more than the CCPOA. This is about crime and justice in California. We can't be the only ones to protect public safety." Stutzman said Schwarzenegger is "very concerned" about the measure passing, but added, "There has not been a larger effort against 66 than what the governor has done." Money talks: Independent expenditure committees - interest groups that support candidates with unlimited spending without (allegedly) coordinating with them - have begun to crank up. JOBSPAC (auto dealers, utilities and oil companies, among others) spent big money last week to oppose two Democratic Assembly candidates, Mike Gordon in a Los Angeles beach district and Lori Saldana in San Diego. Opportunity PAC (organized labor) is spending to support Democrats Ira Ruskin in a south Bay Area district and Patti Davis in San Diego. ... Outgoing state Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, D-San Francisco, donated $100,000 from his campaign fund to support Proposition 72, the health care measure he wrote. ... Democratic state Controller Steve Westly wrote a $250,000 personal check in support of Proposition 62, the open primary measure many think would benefit him in a future gubernatorial run. ... Schwarzenegger took a pair of big checks last week - $500,000 from Stockton developer Alex Spanos and $500,000 from a mortgage company, Ameriquest Capital. McIver speechless: Election Day is weeks away, yet Barbara McIver already
feels burned by balloting. More than 200 Sutter County voters have cast
absentee ballots in the 2nd District Assembly race without receiving the
250-word statement that candidate McIver paid county officials hundreds
of dollars to distribute. Sutter County officials mistakenly printed and
mailed 40,000 sample ballots that lacked McIver's candidate statement,
then compounded the problem by distributing 5,000 absentee ballots before
their initial error could be corrected. Joan Bechtel, Sutter's registrar
of voters, said a vendor had committed - but ultimately failed - to distribute
supplemental materials containing McIver's statement on Oct. 8, the same
day that the county was sending out its first batch of 5,000 absentee ballots.
All absentee ballots returned to Sutter County by Wednesday - 226 in all
- were filed by voters who had not read McIver's pitch about why they should
choose the Tehama County supervisor over incumbent Doug La Malfa, R-Biggs.
Bechtel said she feels badly but can do little except refund McIver's $500
filing fee. The county spent $12,000 for the additional mailing including
McIver's statement.
About the writer:
http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/11054262p-11971146c.html Voters get 2nd chance at 'three-strikes' law
Ten years after they overwhelmingly passed the toughest-in-the-nation sentencing law for repeat offenders, California voters will be asked Nov. 2 if they'd like to change their minds. At stake would be the 25-to-life sentences handed down to more than 4,000 inmates for relatively minor felony convictions under the 1994 "three-strikes-and-you're-out" law. If Proposition 66 passes, those inmates would qualify for resentencing hearings - and probable freedom. Backers of the initiative say the change is long overdue to correct a sentencing structure that is seriously out of whack. "It's just plain ridiculous, too costly and unjust to lock people up 25 years to life for writing bad checks, making false applications on real estate loans, or stealing golf clubs, shoplifting, or just using drugs," said Joe Klaas, grandfather of Polly Klaas, the Petaluma girl whose 1993 murder widely was seen as catalyzing the "three-strikes" law. Proposition 66 opponents, however, say the real story behind the inmates with weaker third felonies is their collective history of serious and violent crimes - documented by rap sheets that include at least two prior convictions on heavy charges. "The short answer against Proposition 66 is that dangerous and violent people will be released from prison who shouldn't be," state Attorney General Bill Lockyer said. "I share the view that as a general matter, putting somebody in prison for life for stealing videotapes sounds like a really bad idea. But there also might have been a very long string of crimes that preceded that conviction, and that pattern justifies a long sentence." Klaas, who long has championed reform of the sentencing measure, is fronting a movement that includes strong support from the state's public defenders and the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as religious, labor and civil-rights groups. Their campaign is being financed mostly by a Sacramento car-insurance executive, Jerry Keenan, whose son figures to get out of prison early if the initiative passes. As of late September, the Proposition 66 campaign had raised $1.9 million. Keenan had contributed $1.4 million of that amount, according to the secretary of state's office. Billionaire financier George Soros contributed $150,000, and his two partners in a national campaign to reduce drug-sentencing laws and other criminal penalties, University of Phoenix founder John Sperling and insurance executive Peter Lewis, also gave $150,000 each. All 58 county district attorneys in the state oppose Proposition 66, and their advocacy group, the California District Attorneys Association, is leading the fight. Big-name backers of the No on 66 effort include Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lockyer and Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown. Taxpayer associations, law-enforcement organizations and victims' rights groups also oppose Proposition 66.As of the Sept. 30 filing deadline, the opposition had raised $186,455. Most of that - $149,000 - came from the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. "We believe Proposition 66 is a lie," said CCPOA Vice President Lance Corcoran. "It's going to put violent criminals back on the street immediately." Yes on 66 campaign manager Steve Hopcraft said the union's contributions reflect the CCPOA's "narrow self-interest." "It's jobs and overtime," Hopcraft said. Launched in the early 1990s in response to increased violent crime, "three-strikes" laws took root in more than 20 states where voters and legislatures sought to fashion sentencing mechanisms that would lock down career criminals for good. California's twist on "three-strikes" allowed the big sentences to kick in on any third felony conviction, even petty theft with a prior offense. Following the slaying of Polly Klaas by a career criminal, the Legislature passed the tough "three-strikes" law in March 1994, and 72 percent of the voters approved it that November. Since the law went into effect, 7,458 inmates had been imprisoned on 25-to-life, "three-strikes" terms as of June 30 this year. According to the Department of Corrections, 3,192 of the three-strikers picked up the life sentence for violent, sex and other crimes against people. An additional 2,323 were for property crimes, 1,283 were for drugs and 660 were for other offenses. About 4,100 of those inmates would qualify for resentencing under Proposition 66, and all future "third-strike" convictions could result only from serious or violent offenses. Burglary no longer would qualify as a prior "strike" under the law, unless the home was occupied at the time of the break-in. Five other crimes also would be stricken as strikes - attempted burglary, conspiracy to commit assault, nonresidential arson resulting in no serious injuries, criminal threats and interfering with a witness. Gang activity and crimes that unintentionally result in injuries would be eliminated as strike enhancers. The law also would require separate trials for each strike count. At the same time it seeks to release some "three-strikes" felons, Proposition 66 also proposes to double prison terms on first-time child molesters and give prosecutors the authority to seek life terms on sex offenders whose victims are under the age of 10. The two sides have sparred over whether the initiative would apply to the 43,000 prisoners serving "two-strike" sentences that doubled their terms. Opponents say it is written in a way that will allow defense lawyers to petition for their clients' freedom. Proponents disagree, and they cite a legislative counsel opinion that concludes the "two-strikers" will be excluded. The Legislative Analyst's Office predicts Proposition 66 would save the state "several tens of millions" of dollars a year at first. A decade from now, the savings will reach "several hundreds of millions," according to the LAO. But the legislative analysts also say parole costs will be boosted and at least half of the released offenders can be expected to commit crimes and wind up back behind bars. Local jails and courts can expect to spend up to $10 million a year to handle the resentencings and court cases, according to the LAO. McGeorge Law School professor Michael Vitiello, an opponent of the "three-strikes" law, said there is no substantial evidence it has worked to deter crime. California crime went down 40 percent between 1994 and 2002, but initiative backers such as Vitiello say crime decreased everywhere during that period, and even more so in some states that don't have "three-strikes" laws. They say the money spent on "three-strikes" incarceration could be spent better elsewhere. "Systemwide, we're making really bad choices about our allocation of resources," Vitiello said. "We could be using the money to develop a more intensive, better parole system, alternatives to incarceration, or we could use more resources to incarcerate younger, more dangerous felons. We should be figuring out how to get the best bang for our sentencing buck." Jennifer E. Walsh, a criminal-justice professor at California State University, Los Angeles, and a supporter of the "three-strikes" law, said prosecutors have begun to use the law in a more discriminating way. Judges, since being empowered by the state Supreme Court to review prosecutors' filing decisions, have helped weed out 25 to 45 percent of potential "three-strike" cases and cut down costs, according to Walsh's surveys. "When they're using discretion," Walsh said, "they are using it on lesser offenders who don't have a violent record, who don't have a history of violence or weapons use, or maybe they're getting older." Proposition 66 at a Glance What it would do: Redefine the serious or violent felonies requiring
increased sentences under the "three-strikes" law and increase punishment
for sex crimes against children.
- Bee Capitol Bureau
The Bee's Andy Furillo can be reached at (916) 321-1141 or afurillo@sacbee.com . Tuesday: Emergency rooms
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-strikes27sep27,1,7920741.story?coll=la-home-local CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS Initiative Fight Puts Focus on Felons
September 27, 2004 Half a dozen tombstone-shaped placards stood on easels at the front of a South Los Angeles meeting hall this month, each bearing the photo of a convict incarcerated under the state's 1994 three-strikes law. Filling the row of folding chairs and standing in the aisles were community activists, relatives of convicted felons and a few repeat offenders who had served their time. They were all here to make their case for Proposition 66, which would greatly reduce the number of felons eligible for sentencing under three strikes. "Buried Alive" read the posters, with the prisoners' time served written like life spans on grave markers. The caption on a grainy photo of one young man read: "Brian Smith received 25 years to life for 'aiding' a shoplifting." The fight over three strikes is a battle of competing horror stories of punishments that don't fit the crime versus the toll exacted by career criminals. In Santa Barbara last week, those opposing changes to California's mandatory sentencing requirements marshaled their own resources, displaying mug shots of third-strikers who would be eligible for reduced sentences. One was of Steve Matthews, a convicted murderer who also raped his mother. He was sentenced as a third-striker when he was caught with two deadly weapons, including a 2-foot-long machete etched with an antigay slur. "Under Proposition 66, Mr. Matthews' sentence would be reduced to a maximum of three years," opponents said in a news release distributed at the event. "Because of time served and 'good time' credits, he would be eligible for release in early 2005." On a stand in front of the massive wooden gates of Santa Barbara's courthouse, Matthews' image stared back at a handful of TV cameras and reporters. The sign on the easel said: "Would be released back into Los Angeles County." The "Three Strikes and You're Out" law was considered unlikely to gain much support when it was proposed more than a decade ago. But in 1994, in the aftermath of the kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas in Petaluma, scores of politicians backed the measure, which then-Gov. Pete Wilson signed into law, and voters ratified it by a ratio of 3 to 1. Under the law, second-strikers those with two serious or violent felonies on their record must serve 80% of their sentence before being considered for parole. A third conviction, or strike, for a less serious felony can trigger a sentence of 25 years to life. Now, many Californians appear inclined to reconsider. A Field Poll taken last month found nearly seven in 10 likely California voters said they would vote to change the law, with the numbers for both Republicans and Democrats well above the threshold for passage. The issue has divided the Klaas family, with Polly's father, Marc Klaas, campaigning against Proposition 66, and her grandfather, Joe Klaas, one of the leaders of the effort to change the law. Marc Klaas has said he believes the law rightfully imprisons people who have committed serious or violent felonies in the past and continue to break the law. Joe Klaas has said he never wanted people to be sent away for 25 years to life for a nonviolent crime, even if they had previous convictions. He called the current law "unjust and wasteful." On both sides are passions and deeply held beliefs. Proponents of the measure, who include prominent civil rights and religious organizations, call some of the punishments meted out under three-strikes sentencing requirements "cruel and unusual." They argue that minorities have been disproportionally affected. And they say the state is spending tens of millions of dollars to incarcerate petty thieves and drug addicts who are no real threat to society. Opponents of the measure, who point out that two of the strikes must have been violent or serious to trigger a term of 25 years to life, say the cost of crime to victims and their families is immeasurable. They say that if voters change the law, some of those released will kill again. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer are among the prominent politicians urging voters to defeat the measure. "The three-strikes law in its current form is an evil that perpetuates the cycle of violence," said Javier Stauring, co-director of the Office of Restorative Justice for the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, speaking at the launch of the pro-Proposition 66 campaign this month at the First African Methodist Episcopal center in South Los Angeles. In addition to requiring all strikes to be for serious or violent felonies, Proposition 66 also would change the definition of those crimes for example, removing arson and burglary from the list and requiring that bodily injury be intentional. "Those felons are going to be moved into your neighborhood," said Kelly Moran, whose group, California Organization of Police and Sheriffs, formed one of two committees opposing Proposition 66. "Proponents want to make you believe they're pot smokers and bread stealers, but the fact is they are convicted felons," Moran said. "The question is whose mother is going to be raped or who's going to get killed over a drug deal because there are going to be people who don't belong back out on the street?" Each side accuses the other of lying and misleading voters. Those backing the initiative repeatedly accuse their opponents of trying to scare voters into keeping the law intact. Asked about Matthews and other felons used as examples by anti-Proposition 66 forces, Steve Hopcraft, campaign consultant for the side favoring the measure, referred to the early-release list as a "boogeyman," saying, "Looks like Halloween came early this year." Beyond rhetoric and sad stories, the two sides disagree on the facts. Proponents of the measure say about 4,000 current prisoners would be eligible for resentencing; opponents cite a California District Attorneys Assn. study that put the number at 26,000. They also disagree about the law's effectiveness. Santa Barbara County Dist. Atty. Tom Sneddon said he and other district attorneys throughout the state have no doubt that the law has helped reduce crime, and noted that courts have given prosecutors discretion in using strikes against defendants. Proponents of the initiative cited a study released last week by the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute that found California's law to be the only one in the country that allows the third strike to be a minor offense. In California, 42,000 people are serving time under three strikes, nearly as many as in all other states combined. The study, conducted by an advocacy group that says it is committed to "ending society's reliance on incarceration," found that 57% of third-strikers had their 25-years-to-life sentences triggered by a nonviolent offense. The two sides even disagree on the intent of the original law. Initiative proponents say they are "fixing three strikes" to bring it in line with voters' wishes. Those who oppose Proposition 66 say Californians knew how strict the law was, and passed it overwhelmingly for that reason. "These are career criminals, all of them," said Sneddon, referring to 250 people he says could be released early in his county. In a statement put out after the launch of the initiative opponents' campaign, Joe Klaas disagreed. "It is misleading and inaccurate for opponents to say that anyone will be 'released' by Prop. 66," he said. "Prop. 66 allows for new trials, new charges, and releases no one. Prosecutors would be able to retry anyone who seeks to be resentenced under Prop. 66. Prop. 66 opponents continue to make claims that a judge has found to be 'patently false' and 'mathematically impossible.' " Adding to the emotion are the stories of the men behind both the original law and the attempt to get it changed. "Three strikes" was the brainchild of Mike Reynolds, a grief-stricken father whose 18-year-old daughter was shot in the head by career criminals trying to rob her outside a Fresno restaurant. Another anguished parent, a man whose son was sentenced under the three-strikes law, played a key financial role in getting the current initiative on November's ballot. Jerry Keenan's son, Richard, is serving eight years in Folsom prison for crashing his Lexus while intoxicated and killing two passengers in 2004. Richard Keenan was 21 at the time of the accident and driving on a suspended license. Sentenced as a second-striker, Keenan could be eligible for parole as early as the end of this year if the law is changed; otherwise he must serve 85% of his sentence before being considered for parole. Keenan, an insurance company owner, has given $1.7 million to the pro-Proposition 66 campaign, which has nearly $2.3 million. Another large chunk of money came from three out-of-state donors opposed to mandatory sentencing laws, including $150,000 from billionaire financier and frequent Democratic Party donor George Soros. Californians United for Public Safety, an anti-Proposition 66 group whose treasurer is the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn.'s longtime attorney, has reported more than $177,000 in contributions. Most of it about $150,000 came from the powerful state prison guards union. Keenan's role is a sore point for opponents of the measure. Sneddon's criticism of him last week was representative: "The reality is this is about a guy whose son is in prison who has put up millions to get him out." Brian Gurwitz, an assistant district attorney in Orange County who has taken a leave to fight the initiative, said voters are being asked to put their sympathy in the wrong place. "How hard is it not to commit another felony?" he asked. "I don't think it's that hard." But Dorothy Erskine, whose nephew Brian Smith is serving 25 years to life on a third strike for shoplifting, said she sees a different reality. She said her nephew's criminal history was connected to drugs, an addiction that began after his mother died of cancer when he was 17. Erskine said Smith had prior convictions for stealing a car, using force on the driver and burglarizing an unoccupied house. In 1994, he was with two women at a mall in Cerritos when they were all stopped for stealing hundreds of dollars worth of sheets. The women served a few years and have long since been released, she said. Her nephew who is no longer on drugs and has been trained to repair air conditioners is still in prison. "I do feel Brian should have served time for each and every crime he committed," the retired schoolteacher said. "But I believe the time should fit the crime." * Times researcher Maloy Moore contributed to this report.
D.A. against measure to ease '3 strikes'
District Attorney Kamala Harris joined a chorus of prosecutors and law enforcement officials Friday in opposing a November ballot measure that would soften California's "three strikes" law. The measure would require that the third and final strike be a serious, violent felony to make a defendant eligible for the 25-years-to-life sentence envisioned under the legislation. Harris said the current law was "fatally flawed" and disproportionately affected African Americans. But she said she was worried that in classifying crimes, Proposition 66 would require "that the offender intended to cause great bodily injury in order for it to be classified as a serious crime." "I've seen too many crimes, from domestic violence to child abuse, where someone says, 'I didn't intend to cause that injury when I knocked out all that person's teeth,' " Harris said. "But the fact is that is what you did, and there should be some additional penalty and punishment for that." Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his opposition to the measure last week, joining state Attorney General Bill Lockyer and other law enforcement officials. Even though she opposes the measure, Harris said, she doesn't plan "on
being the poster child for the opposition." If the measure fails, she plans
to push for a different three-strikes reform in 2006.
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/07/17/BAGP27NBQ31.DTL
http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/9933359p-10855355c.html Justices set narrow limit on '3-strikes' reversals
SAN FRANCISCO - The California Supreme Court on Thursday extended the power to skirt the state's "three-strikes" law to appellate judges, but only in the most exceptional cases. Trial judges have long had the power to disregard "strikes" when justice demands a shorter sentence than 25 years to life. The new decision clarified that a trial judge's denial of leniency may be reversed by the Court of Appeal if it's "so irrational or arbitrary that no reasonable person could agree with it." Appellate courts had split over whether such power existed and what the standards for exercising it should be. The decision was a loss for the state attorney general's office, whose lawyers had argued that only a trial judge's leniency, not a denial of leniency, should be appealable. But it also was a loss for Shasta County sex offender Keith Carmony, the defendant whose case provided the ruling's framework. His third strike was failing to register as a sex offender within five days of his birthday. He had registered five weeks before his birthday and again a week later, after moving. Few other defendants who have struck out after committing relatively trivial crimes, such as stealing a slice of pizza, were expected to receive relief from the decision. "It will provide very little help in cleaning up ... extreme cases," said Michael Vitiello, a three-strikes expert at McGeorge School of Law. The legal standard set by the ruling is deferential to trial judges, he said, and appellate judges have proved much more willing to reverse trial judges who disregard strikes than those who refuse. The Supreme Court said Superior Court Judge Wilson Curle acted within his discretion in denying Carmony leniency on grounds of his extensive criminal past, substance abuse problems, spotty work history and poor future prospects. Appellate judges had no power to overrule Curle, wrote Janice Rogers Brown, who called Carmony "an exemplar of the revolving door career criminal to whom the three-strikes law is addressed." The decision reversed a ruling by the Court of Appeal in Sacramento, which called Carmony's final strike "technical" and said it fell outside the spirit of the three-strikes law. The case now goes back to that court for a decision on whether Carmony's sentence violated state or federal constitutional prohibitions of extreme punishment or double jeopardy. But two Supreme Court justices predicted the constitutional review was unlikely to help Carmony, given the drift of the U.S. Supreme Court's three-strikes rulings. Justice Carlos Moreno, joined by Justice Ming Chin, said the reasonableness of three-strikes sentences for trivial final crimes would have to be determined chiefly by "the electorate in its capacity to amend the law." He "reluctantly" concurred with the reversal of the Court of Appeal decision. Vitiello, whose research was cited by Moreno, said the initiative process was "the last best chance." James Benson, the proponent of Proposition 66, the three-strikes initiative on the November ballot, said the ruling supported the need for the initiative, but not because of a provision that would reserve three-strikes sentences for violent felonies. If the reform initiative had been in place, said Benson, Carmony would have struck out in 1983 under a provision toughening penalties for child molesters, and not 16 years later, when he failed to register as a sex offender. Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who signed
ballot arguments against Proposition 66, said the court ruling "emphasizes
why the existing three-strikes law works, and that is, judges and prosecutors
have discretion to dismiss strikes in the interests of justice, and appellate
courts have the ability to reverse those decisions when the trial judges
abuse their discretion."
The Bee's Claire Cooper can be reached at (415) 551-7701 or ccooper@sacbee.com .
CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM
What a difference a decade makes. Ten years ago, rightly shocked by the kidnapping and killing of 12-year- old Polly Klaas, 72 percent of California voters passed the harshest mandatory sentencing law in U.S. history -- the "three strikes and you're out" initiative. According to a Field Poll released last month, now that voters have read the fine print and after a decade of experience with the costly and ineffective law, 3 of 4 Californians are ready to vote to amend "three strikes" in November, returning the law to its original intent of applying only to those convicted of violent crimes. What have the voters learned in the last decade that would account for such a turnaround? Overall, that "three strikes" costs too much, does too little and targets the wrong people. Although the proposition was sold to voters in 1994 as only going after the most violent and recalcitrant offenders, nearly two-thirds of people imprisoned under the law committed nonviolent crimes as their third strike. People such as Shane Reams, who was "struck out" for abetting the sale of $20 worth of crack cocaine. Or Duane Silva, who got 26 years to life for swiping his neighbor's VCR. Or Leondro Andrede, who was sentenced to 50 to life for shoplifting $150 worth of Disney videotapes from a Kmart. This is no trivial matter, either from the standpoint of fairness and decency or in terms of cost. Each person sentenced to 25 years to life will serve a minimum of 25 years. At more than $30,000 per year per inmate, that costs taxpayers $750,000 for each life sentence. That's a lot of taxpayers' money to punish a $150 theft. At the end of 2003, more than 42,000 people -- 1 of 4 California prisoners -- are serving time under "three strikes." That's more than the entire prison population of 40 states combined. Voters have also seen "three strikes" applied with particular vigor to people of color. African Americans are 10 times as likely to be imprisoned under "three strikes" as whites, and Latinos are 78 percent more likely to be struck out than whites. Finally, voters have reason to seriously question the crime-control impact promised by proponents of "three strikes" sentencing -- the basis for passing the law in the first place. Research by the Justice Policy Institute has shown that California counties that sent more people to prison under "three strikes" over the last decade actually had less of a drop in violent crime than counties that used "three strikes" more sparingly. New York, a state without a "three strikes" law whose incarceration rate declined from 1994 to 2002, experienced a 20 percent greater drop in violent crime than California, which broke the bank expanding its prison system by more than 34,000 people during that same period. Because it now looks as if "three strikes" will be returned to the voters' original intent and will focus only on those convicted of violent offenses, policy-makers should act to assure that these long overdue reforms are correctly implemented. November's "three strikes" reform initiative will save hundreds of millions of dollars annually -- billions when you count avoided prison-construction costs. The governor and Legislature should spend a third of those savings on effective re-entry programs to help those formerly incarcerated under "three strikes" to come home in a way that minimizes their likelihood of re-offending, reducing family violence and disruption, and maximizing their chances of becoming law-abiding, taxpaying citizens. By using some of the savings from the "three strikes" reform initiative in this way, policy-makers will be creating a fairer and more effective system that holds the real potential to reduce crime in California. That is the kind of win-win situation that victims and policy-makers alike should enthusiastically support. Vincent Schiraldi is executive director of the Justice Policy Institute (www.justicepolicy.org), a criminal justice research organization in Washington. Esta Soler is president of the Family Violence Prevention Fund (www.fvpf.org), an organization based in San Francisco that works to end violence against women and children around the world. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/07/06/EDG3K7ELAL1.DTL
California's cruel punishment Sunday, June 13, 2004
TEN YEARS after they approved it, Californians will finally have a chance to reform the state's harsh, and expensive, "three strikes" law through an initiative on this November's ballot. The law, and the cruel life sentences it has meted out to hundreds of prisoners for committing relatively minor crimes, casts a dark shadow over California's justice system. Reform of the law is way overdue. Because the Legislature has been too cowardly to tackle the issue, it has been left to the cumbersome initiative process to deal with this emotional issue. A Field Poll this week showed that 76 percent of Californians are ready to change the law. That's a remarkable turnaround from public sentiment in earlier years. Although 23 states have some type of "three strikes" law, California's is by far the most punitive. Under California's law, the sentence for committing any second felony -- violent or nonviolent -- is automatically doubled. A third-strike sentence of 25 years to life can be imposed -- and has been -- for nonviolent felonies such as stealing videotapes or golf clubs. More than 42,000 people are serving these enhanced sentences. That's 1 in 4 California inmates. The three strikes law, approved in the wake of the brutal murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, was supposed to target violent and serious offenders. In the official 1994 state ballot, voters were promised that the law would keep "career criminals, who rape women, molest children and commit murder behind bars where they belong.'' Yet 67 percent of the 7,372 serving 25-year-to-life terms under the law have committed nonviolent third-strike offenses. Right now, 357 people are serving life sentences for petty theft as their third strike. Another 171 are serving life sentences in which receiving stolen property was the third strike. Nearly 700 are in jail for life after conviction of drug possession as a third strike. To be sure, some of these inmates earned these harsh sentences with earlier convictions of violent felonies. But in other cases, these earlier strikes are nonviolent offenses that hardly should earn someone a lifetime in jail. Under the initiative on the November ballot, the third strike would have to be a serious or violent felony. In a ruling last year, the Supreme Court narrowly upheld the constitutionality of the law. In a 5-4 opinion written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the court found that the two 25-year-to-life sentences imposed on Leandro Andrade -- for stealing $150 worth of videotapes from a Kmart in San Bernardino County -- did not violate the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. O'Connor argued that for Andrade to prevail, he would have to show that his sentencing by California courts was "an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law," as determined by the Supreme Court. She conceded, however, that "our precedents in this area have not been a model of clarity." In effect, she argued that California courts could not be found to have "unreasonably applied" federal law, because the law itself was not clear. Justice David Souter wrote the dissent. He said Andrade's sentence was a violation of the Eighth Amendment because his two life sentences were "clearly disproportionate to the offense" he committed. There is also no convincing evidence that the three strikes law has had any impact on reducing crime. Consider just one statistic: between 1993 and 2002 Los Angeles County "struck out" defendants nine times more than San Francisco, for example. If the law had been effective, crime should have dropped more in Los Angeles than in San Francisco. But crime declined by 23 percent in San Francisco. The law's astronomical costs, along with the state's budget crisis, should be enough to propel Californians to change the law. The Justice Policy Institute, a research and advocacy group in Washington says the state will pay $8 billion in extra incarceration costs just to house the current second-and- third-strike population. Of that, $5 billion will be spent on nonviolent offenders. In short, California can't afford the law in its current form, on law enforcement, moral or financial grounds. Reform it in November. Page E - 4
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/06/10/BAGJO73NNF1.DTL FIELD POLL
Sacramento -- A public opinion poll to be released today shows a huge margin of public support for a ballot initiative on November's ballot that would soften California's "three-strikes" sentencing law. The Field Poll finds that 76 percent of voters statewide would vote in favor of a measure requiring that the third and final of all three "strikes" must be a serious, violent felony to make a defendant eligible for the 25-to- life sentences envisioned under the legislation. As the law stands, only two of the three strikes must be a violent or serious felony for a recidivist offender to be considered eligible for three- strikes sentencing. According to the poll, only 14 percent of voters are opposed to amending the 1994 law, with 10 percent undecided. "The original three strikes was passed because of this furor over Polly Klaas, and that whole reaction to repeat offenders doing a heinous crime," said Mark DiCamillo, the director of the poll, referring to the kidnap and murder of the Petaluma 12-year-old by a parolee, Richard Allen Davis. "The public was very emotional at the time and really wanted to get tough on crime, and this came through," he said. "But this time around, it appears that voters believe the revision is reasonable. I don't know what the campaigns are going to be, but it has a very good chance of passage." The poll also found support, albeit by smaller margins, for two other measures that will also appear on the November ballot: one that would impose a monthly telephone surcharge of up to 50 cents to pay for emergency rooms and trauma care and another that would reinstate the open primary system in California. The backers of the three-strikes measure, Citizens Against Violent Crime, say the state has wasted $6 billion in the last 10 years incarcerating minor offenders under the sentencing structure by counting nonviolent offenses toward the three strikes. The ballot measure, they argue, would save California $750 million per year by requiring only violent offenses to be considered for the strikes and by allowing judges to resentence convicts under the more lenient laws if their cases merit it. The measure is opposed, however, by powerful political groups, including the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, dozens of district attorneys, sheriffs, lawmakers and victims' rights groups. "Basically, it would render (the current law) useless and guts it in California, and would release violent felons back into California," said Nina Salarno Ashford, a family law attorney who is executive director of Californians United for Public Safety, the organized opponent of the measure. The measure even appears to have pitted family members against one another. Joe Klaas, the grandfather of Polly, is a proponent of the ballot measure; Marc Klaas, Polly's father, is a registered opponent of it. Asked about that, a campaign consultant for the group supporting the ballot measure, Robert Kaplan, said: "Not every father and son agree on every issue." On the other measures, the Field Poll found that voters support by 51 percent to 38 percent the initiative to impose the telephone surcharge that would generate as much as $550 million per year for emergency medical services, with 11 percent undecided. Though it has a healthy margin of support, the measure faces an uphill battle in that it will impose another tax on voters -- always a difficult proposition at the ballot box -- and probably will face a strong opposition campaign. On the open primary proposition, voters support the measure by 50 percent to 37 percent, with 13 percent undecided. Voters approved open primaries in California on the March 1996 ballot by 60 percent to 40 percent, but it was only used for one election cycle before a judge found it unconstitutional. Proponents of the new measure believe the new version will pass legal muster. E-mail Christian Berthelsen at cberthelsen@sfchronicle.com
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http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0608/p08s03-comv.html from the June 08, 2004 edition Adjusting 'Three Strikes' Law Voters in California will have the opportunity this fall to recalibrate
their tough sentencing statute for repeat offenders, known as the "three
strikes" law. They should take it.
Hundreds of repeat offenders in the state are serving life sentences for minor third crimes, such as shoplifting. Last year, the US Supreme Court ruled on two showcase examples: a previously convicted man sentenced to 50 years for stealing videos, and another repeat offender sentenced to 25 years to life for stealing golf clubs. The court held that the sentences did not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, given the history of the felons' previous crimes. But it defers to the states on the issue of sentencing standards. The ballot initiative would require that a person be convicted of a serious or violent felony to qualify for a third-strike sentence of 25 years to life. Opponents say the initiative could free more than 20,000 three-strikes prisoners, many of whom are dangerous and deserve to be locked up. Critics of the measure are concerned that California's crime rate, which has been halved in the 10 years since the law took effect, would go up. But a reversal of the crime rate is not a foregone conclusion. In 24 states that don't have a three-strikes law, crime has actually dropped further than in California. The initiative's retroactive impact needs a closer examination, but the principle that the punishment should fit the crime seems reason enough to support this change.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-strikes31may31,1,4512858.story?coll=la-home-headlines THE STATE
May 31, 2004 SACRAMENTO An insurance company owner has spent $1.56 million to foster a ballot initiative that would change California's three-strikes sentencing law and could free his son from Folsom prison, where he is serving eight years for crashing his Lexus while intoxicated and killing two passengers. Jerry Keenan, who owns a Sacramento insurance brokerage, spent the money to gather signatures to place the measure on the November ballot, campaign finance reports show. Proponents and opponents alike expect it to qualify in coming days. The initiative would broadly overhaul the three-strikes law. One provision in particular would benefit Keenan's son, prosecutors and other legal experts say. Keenan's attorney, Steven Sanders of Sacramento, helped write that provision, said the initiative's official proponent, Jim Benson. Parents of the two 19-year-olds who died in Richard W. Keenan's car in 1999 said the young man's father is trying to use his wealth to help his son avoid responsibility. Jerry Keenan and his wife, Cynthia, will "go to the ends of the Earth for this kid," said Cece Stone, whose only child, Marsha Runyon, died of internal injuries. Sherry Souza, the mother of Thaddeus Czuprynski, who also died in the crash, said Jerry Keenan is "a man with a lot of money trying to get his kid out of prison." Keenan declined to comment. Many initiatives in California have been "immensely personal" for their backers, said Elizabeth Garrett, a law professor and a director of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at USC. A father whose daughter was murdered in Fresno, for example, pushed for passage of the 1994 three-strikes initiative. Proponents say the new measure would have broad benefits: It would save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by reserving lengthy sentences for serious and violent felons, instead of requiring long prison terms for some people who commit relatively minor crimes. "The idea of jailing someone in a maximum-security prison for the rest of their life because they stole a loaf of bread or a few videotapes is mindless vengeance," Citizens Against Violent Crime, an Orange County group promoting the initiative, says on its website. Sacramento County Dist. Atty. Jan Scully, whose office prosecuted Richard Keenan, denounced the proposed initiative, saying: "He should have to pay for his crimes like everyone else. Let's not forget that he killed two people." The measure is opposed by an array of law enforcement groups, from county prosecutors and sheriffs to the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. and various crime victims groups. They are concerned that its various provisions could result in the release of thousands of inmates who could pose a danger to society. Richard Keenan pleaded guilty in 2000 to two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter for the deaths of Runyon and Czuprynski, and a separate count of causing great bodily injury to a third passenger. He had been drinking beer and smoking marijuana on the night of the crash when he and four friends, including Runyon and Czuprynski, got into his gold Lexus coupe outside Sacramento, according to court records. Keenan, 21 at the time, was behind the wheel though his license had been suspended that year after a California Highway Patrol officer stopped him for not wearing a seat belt and found a baggie of marijuana in his car. Keenan headed for a winding, back road where he could drive at high speeds, court records say. As he raced reaching 95 mph he lost control, and the car flipped four times. Czuprynski died instantly. Runyon died a few days later. Benson said in an interview that he was only vaguely aware that one of Keenan's relatives had been in prison. But he said he could not blame a father for trying to help a son. "If I was in his shoes, I might do the same thing," Benson said. In interviews and on his website, Benson focuses on the overhaul of the three-strikes law offered by the proposed initiative, not the issue that prosecutors say would affect Richard Keenan. Approved by voters in 1994, the "Three Strikes and You're Out" law imposes 25 years to life on repeat felons. It says that people convicted of two or more serious or violent felonies face 25 years to life if they are convicted a third time of any felony. In some cases, that felony might be a relatively minor offense, such as shoplifting, if the person has a previous shoplifting conviction. The proposed initiative would amend the law so that repeat offenders would face 25 years to life only if, on their third convictions, they committed "serious" or "violent" felonies. And it would redefine the violent felony offense of inflicting "great bodily injury." The initiative also would permit courts to retroactively reduce penalties imposed on people imprisoned for such crimes. If voters approved the measure, Keenan's sentence could be shortened and a violent felony a "strike" would be expunged from his record. If he were to commit another serious crime, he would not face the sort of stiff sentence imposed on repeat offenders, noted Wayne Strumpfer of the California District Attorneys Assn. Under current law, people can be convicted of inflicting great bodily injury whether or not they intended to do so. In Keenan's case, the prosecutor merely needed to show that he caused great bodily injury while driving under the influence of marijuana and alcohol. Current law requires Keenan to serve at least 85% of his term. If the proposed initiative were to pass and Keenan's great bodily injury conviction were erased, he could be freed after serving half his sentence, as early as the end of this year. Sacramento County Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian Myers, who prosecuted Keenan, said that Keenan's lawyers repeatedly sought to have the great bodily injury charge dismissed "and I just refused because I understood the ramifications." Earlier this year, Keenan's lawyer, Sanders, went to court to challenge the length of Keenan's sentence by attacking the great bodily injury charge. Sacramento Superior Court Judge Kenneth L. Hake rejected the move, noting that Keenan agreed to the sentence as part of his plea bargain in 2000. Sanders did not return calls from The Times. In Benson's view, Jerry Keenan's motives are straightforward: "He is a businessman. He doesn't want to see his taxes go up to pay for things that are frivolous," Benson said, referring to long sentences for minor criminals. Meanwhile, at the Souzas' home in the Sierra foothills, the parents of the two dead teens talked about how their lives have been unalterably upended. Stone has been unable to work steadily for five years, since she made the wrenching decision to turn off life support for her child and devote time to court proceedings. Now, Stone and the Souzas intend to spend time speaking out against the initiative. "We can't get on with our lives," Stone said.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/9207792p-10133052c.html Courts face slew of 'three-strikes' cases
SAN FRANCISCO - The highest courts in California are gearing up for a wave of cases testing the outer limits of the state's "three-strikes" law. "Tons of cases" are working their way through the courts, testing the validity of "three-strikes" sentences for crimes such as possession of a piece of cotton with heroin residue or a quantity of cocaine that would fit under a fingernail, said defense expert Erwin Chemerinsky. The California Supreme Court on Thursday heard the case of a Shasta County man who received a potential life sentence for the third-strike crime of failing to register as a sex offender within the time period prescribed by law. Like all other sex offenders, Keith Carmony was required to register annually within five days of his birthday. In 1999, Carmony registered five weeks before his birthday and then again after moving a week later. He failed, however, to register a third time within five days of turning 40. The state 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento ordered resentencing, saying his violation was technical and fell outside the "three-strikes" law's "spirit." In the Supreme Court appeal Thursday, Deputy Attorney General David Eldridge argued the spirit of the law was to apply and uphold its severe sentences - 25 years to life for three-time felons who have committed two prior serious or violent felonies. The decision, due by early August, is likely to coincide with the campaign over a proposed major revision of the "three-strikes" law. Expected to qualify for the November ballot is an initiative that would eliminate "three-strike" sentences for trivial crimes while toughening penalties for child molesters. About the same time, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could weigh back in with a new ruling. That court, the highest federal court in the Western states, has been divided on "three-strikes" cases but generally receptive to defendants. In April, it reversed the "three-strikes" sentence of a three-time shoplifter. Now another panel is considering a 225-years-to-life term for breaking into storage lockers - 25 years to life for each of nine break-ins. James Skinner's prior "strikes" were two unarmed burglaries 14 years earlier, for which he was sentenced to a rehabilitation program. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court, reversing the 9th Circuit, upheld a sentence of 50 years to life for shoplifting nine videos. The high court's decision left little room for federal courts to overturn "three-strikes" sentences. But federal judges still may act, the Supreme Court said, in the "exceedingly rare" case of gross disproportionality between crime and sentence, which would violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment." The 9th Circuit's April decision in favor of shoplifter Isaac Ramirez was based on that exception. The main issue before the state court in the Carmony case seems to be not a constitutional one but rather a question of squaring the "three-strikes" law with another state law that allows sentencing judges in any case to disregard a defendant's prior crimes if justice would be furthered by doing so. Under earlier state Supreme Court decisions, trial judges can exercise leniency by disregarding a defendant's prior strikes, but Courts of Appeal can overrule trial judges and often do. Charles Hobson, a "three-strikes" expert with the prosecution-oriented Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, defended the Court of Appeal decision in the Carmony case as evidence the state system is working to weed out extreme sentences. But Thursday, Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown suggested trial
and appellate judges may have less freedom to be lenient than to be tough.
The Bee's Claire Cooper can be reached at (415) 551-7701 or ccooper@sacbee.com
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http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/9184142p-10109664c.html Editorial: Modify 'three strikes'
Finally, Californians get a small dose of sanity on the "three strikes" law. Attorney General Bill Lockyer chose the right course Monday in the case of Isaac Ramirez, a three-time shoplifter. Lockyer decided not to fight a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that upheld a federal district court ruling in 2002. Those two courts said sentencing a guy to 25 years to life in state prison for taking a $199 VCR from Sears in 1996 and for taking merchandise from a Lucky's grocery store and a K-Mart department store in 1991 violates the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment." Lockyer believes it is not in the "interest of justice" to enforce a 25-years-to-life sentence in this case. Ramirez is not among those who have been in and out of prison with multiple violent felony convictions that include beating, clubbing, stabbing, strangling, shooting, sexually assaulting, attempting to kill or actually killing other human beings. As Lockyer noted, Ramirez was convicted of three crimes during his life. His first two strikes in 1991 were described by the sentencing court as "confrontation petty theft and not really robbery, notwithstanding the convictions" for second-degree robbery. Ramirez was sentenced to the equivalent of two counts of misdemeanor petty theft with time served in county jail. In sentencing, his crimes were not treated as felonies deserving prison time. Ramirez served a single sentence of six months and 20 days in county jail. Ramirez's third strike was for a misdemeanor petty theft. But because he was charged under the three strikes law, he received a 25-years-to-life sentence. He served nearly 5 1/2 years in state prison until the federal court ordered him released in 2002. He has been crime-free since. Lockyer believes Ramirez has "paid his debt to society and now has a chance to become a productive, law-abiding citizen." Unfortunately, the Ramirez case is not all that rare. A November 2003 report of the California Department of Corrections on the three-strikes law found that only 35 percent of second-and third-strikers were serving time for crimes against persons, and 65 percent for nonviolent property or drug crimes. California needs to modify its three-strikes law, the harshest in the nation. It is putting too many nonviolent offenders away for 25 years to life, crowding prisons at an average annual cost of $30,929 per inmate, while having little impact in reducing violent crime. The 25-years-to-life punishment should be reserved for habitual violent criminals.
CRIME
May 2, 2004 There is a broadening consensus that includes prominent law enforcement officials that California's three-strikes law desperately needs to be fixed. Intended to put repeat violent offenders behind bars for 25 years to life, the law has also swelled the prison population by incarcerating nonviolent criminals for decades. More than 350 men and women have been sent to prison for 25 years to life for such crimes as shoplifting a pair of sneakers or a bottle of Tylenol, or lying on a driver's license application. More than 670 others have received the same harsh sentence for possession of a small amount of drugs. All told, nearly 57% of California's roughly 7,000 prisoners sentenced under the law committed a nonviolent third-strike crime. Now a ballot initiative to reform the law has surfaced. Among other things, it would require a third strike to be a "serious" or violent crime and eliminate several crimes that now count as strikes. It already has gathered nearly twice as many signatures as needed and will almost surely qualify for the November ballot. The injustice of the current three-strikes law is so glaring, its application so arbitrary, that I will happily vote for the proposition despite my concern that the measure would face a bitter, uphill and potentially fatal battle because of its flaws. Defeat could doom real, sustainable and achievable reform of the law's mandatory sentencing guidelines and derail a growing recognition that rehabilitation and reentry programs must play a far bigger role in the state's criminal justice system than they do today. Although justice demands that reform be applied retroactively, critics will point out that by making the initiative retroactive, its authors also created its central weakness. As many as 33,000 of the state's 160,000 prisoners could be eligible for resentencing or release over the next several years if the measure passed. The vast majority would have received little or no rehabilitative services while in prison and, as things now stand, would receive little or no guidance on reentering society and finding a job. They would join the roughly 100 convicts paroled daily in Los Angeles County more than any other county in America. It's easy to imagine the kind of television ads the initiative's opponents would run. Contra Costa Deputy Dist. Atty. L. Douglas Pipes has given a hint of their tone. In an in-house analysis of the planned proposition, he wrote: "The passage of this initiative would constitute the most serious and damaging rollback of California's efforts to punish and incarcerate serious and violent felons in more than 30 years . Defeat of this initiative, therefore, should be the single highest priority of law enforcement." Reform advocates can counter such an offensive by developing and lobbying for legislation that would provide reentry services for the men and women released under the initiative. It would be an extremely difficult task in light of next year's estimated budget deficit of $14 billion. But the legislation could be sold for what it is: smart, effective, long-term crime prevention, as well as a sound financial investment. The Department of Corrections has already developed successful reentry programs for drug offenders and the mentally ill. And empirical data, though largely ignored, indicate that long-term drug treatment in therapeutic communities based on the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous works when combined with community support and rehabilitative services. The Corrections Department knows this to be true for the incarcerated as well. Currently, nearly 10,000 of the state's 160,000 prisoners receive drug treatment. In 1999, the figure was about 400. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and politicians will feel intense pressure from some of the most powerful political players in the state to oppose the proposition, and do nothing. They include the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., the National Rifle Assn., district attorney associations, police unions and the multitude of special interests with a stake in continued growth of the state's criminal justice industry. Beating back that kind of highly organized, well-financed opposition will be a formidable task for reform's supporters. The best solution to the initiative's problems might be to withdraw it, then rewrite it for placement on the November 2006 ballot. The added time might spur a needed discussion of how to reform an a dysfunctional criminal-justice system. What might a rewritten reform initiative look like? First, it would include a mandate fully funding the reentry of nonviolent second- and third-strike prisoners into society. This is precisely what the authors of Proposition 36, which substituted drug treatment for jail, included in their successful 2000 initiative. The money earmarked to pay for the drug treatment under the proposition cannot be cut or transferred. Second, Schwarzenegger should be drawn into the three-strikes reform process or, better yet, lead it. The governor has already demonstrated his skills as a negotiator in getting workers' compensation reform enacted and is hugely popular with swing voters, whose support will be needed. As important, he's displayed a willingness to take a second look at the state's status quo of "lock 'em up and throw away the key" by pardoning clearly rehabilitated prisoners whom former Gov. Gray Davis let rot in prison. Schwarzenegger has also signaled his openness to new ways of dealing with the state's special-interest-laden criminal justice industry, an industry he's not indebted to. For example, he's demanded that the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. renegotiate the five-year, 37% pay raise given to prison guards by Davis when the state's deficit was skyrocketing. That Schwarzenegger seems willing to take on the prison guards union is significant, given that under the two previous governors the union virtually ran the prison system. Moreover, Schwarzenegger's 2005 budget proposal cuts $400 million out of the bloated and hitherto sacrosanct $5.7-billion annual prison budget. And the governor has named the rehabilitation-minded warden of San Quentin, Jeanne Woodford, to head the state's scandal-plagued corrections system. Third, prominent law enforcement officials such as L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, Sheriff Lee Baca and corrections officials like Woodford should be invited to participate in rewriting a three-strikes reform initiative, along with politicians from both parties. With their imprimatur on the proposition, its chances of passage would soar. It has taken decades for California to come to the point where the annual cost of its prison system rivals or exceeds that of its once-vaunted system of higher education. And it's taken decades of shortsighted ideological posturing on the part of conservatives and political cowardice on the part of liberals to get California's prison system to the point where we're imprisoning three men in a 6-by-8-foot room designed to house one. Reform of the three-strikes law should be only the beginning of overhauling an unjust and corrupt system.
Metropolitan News-Enterprise http://www.metnews.com/articles/2004/conf042904.htm Thursday, April 29, 2004
Clemency Urged for Woman Who Faced Life Term in $30 Theft
By KENNETH OFGANG, Staff Writer/Appellate Courts
A Vista womanwho once faced life imprisonment for stealing a $30 toolbox, had her third-strike sentence overturned on appeal, and was released following a plea bargain only to be ordered to return to prison for 65 days because of a ruling that her term had been miscalculatedshould be granted clemency, the state high court said yesterday. California Supreme Court justices voted 5-1 to recommend that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger commute Pamela C. Martinezs sentence to time served. Martinez, who earlier won a delay in her March 30 return date, should be granted immediate parole, Chief Justice Ronald M. George said in a letter to the governor. George and Justices Marvin Baxter, Ming Chin, Joyce L. Kennard, and Carlos Moreno voted to recommend cutting the sentence. Justice Janice Rogers Brown voted against, and Justice Kathryn M. Werdegar was absent from the weekly conference and did not vote. The high courts action was a successful culmination of an effort by friends and supporters of Martinez, who won the backing of Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, who pled the defendants case to the governor. Rarely Invoked Provision The Board of Prison Terms recommended the commutation, and Schwarzenegger submitted the matter to the Supreme Court. The governor has the final word on pardons and commutations, but a rarely invoked provision of the state Constitution requires a recommendation from the high court before a thrice-convicted felon receives clemency from the chief executive. Martinez was convicted of recidivist petty theft in 1995 after taking a toolbox from the home of a Rolling Hills resident whom she visited in order to give an estimate for some landscaping work. She later said she was high on valium and alcohol at the time. She was sentenced to 25 years to life as a third-strike offender. But this districts Court of Appeal ruled that she had received ineffective assistance of counsel and sent the case back for retrial. On remand, Martinezwhose priors were both robberieswas sentenced to nine years as a second-strike offender pursuant to a plea bargain. She was initially given a release date early in 2001, but confusion as to the application of the complex rules for determining sentence credit resulted in her spending eight more months behind bars before the Court of Appeal granted a writ of habeas corpus. Martinez was released, but the attorney general asked the state Supreme Court for review, which was granted. Earlier Court Ruling The justices ruled 5-2 for the prosecutionBrown wrote the opinion, Kennard and Werdegar dissentedin In re Martinez (2001) 30 Cal. 4th 29. For purposes of sentencing credit, Brown wrote, Martinez wascontrary to the Court of Appeals viewa sentenced prisoner, rather than a pretrial detainee, during the three years between her original sentencing and the reversal of her conviction. Since sentencing credits are more liberal for detainees than sentenced prisoners, Martinezs term was subject to recalculation, resulting in the determination that she had served 65 days less than required. Her co-workers at a Home Depot store in North San Diego County campaigned on her behalf, and Goldbergwho backs an initiative, now awaiting signature verification, that would relax the Three-Strikes lawtook up the cause. In submitting the clemency petition to the high court, Schwarzenegger said it was pointless to send Martinez back to prison because she has been working and has not been in trouble with the law since her release. Attorney General Bill Lockyer told the Supreme Court he did not oppose clemency. In other action at the conference, the justices: Set oral arguments May 25 in San Francisco on the question of whether San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom had the authority to issue same-sex marriage licenses. The court granted review in two cases, brought by Lockyer and the Alliance Defense Funda conservative group opposing gay marriageto determine whether city officials may take actions prohibited by state law, based on a belief that the law is unconstitutional but in the absence of a court ruling to that effect. The justices earlier this month asked the parties to brief two additional issueswhether the roughly 4,000 marriages performed before the court imposed a halt pending its review should be nullified, and if so, whether the fees of $82 per license paid by the couples must be refunded. The cases are Lockyer v. San Francisco, S122923, and Lewis v. Alfaro, S122865. Agreed to decide whether, under Apprendi v. New Jersey (2000) 530 U.S.
466, a criminal defendant has a federal constitutional right to a jury
trial on factual issues relating to the circumstances and conduct underlying
a prior conviction used to enhance punishment. The First District Court
of Appeals Div. Five answered that question in the affirmative in People
v. McGee, A097749.
Copyright 2004, Metropolitan News Company
COURTS
URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/04/24/BAGM26AC0V1.DTL
A state appellate court has upheld the three-strikes sentence of 27 years to life in prison for a Sacramento man who had AIDS and had lived on the streets for most of the year before he was arrested for failing to register with police as a sex offender, prompting a blistering dissent from one of the justices. Delbert Meeks had "a long and serious criminal history,'' which included convictions for rape and attempted rape, when he violated a law that was intended to let authorities keep track of dangerous sex criminals, said the Court of Appeal in Sacramento in a 2-1 decision April 13. Dissenting Justice Richard Sims was outraged. "What has become of our society?'' he asked in his dissent. "Why has 'compassion' become a dirty word in the law? I think that some years from now, law professors and law students will read this case and will ask, 'What on earth were they thinking?' " Meeks' lawyer, Robert Wayne Gehring, said Friday he planned to appeal. "This offense did not involve any violence, damage or theft of property'' and would not have been charged as a third strike in some counties, such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, he said. Deputy Attorney General Janet Neeley said that Meeks was legally convicted and that Sims' real complaint appeared to be with the scope of the three-strikes law. Meeks' case, and the April 19 case of a shoplifter whose 25-years-to-life sentence was overturned by a federal appeals court, may become part of the debate over an initiative that is expected to be on the November state ballot. It would narrow the 1994 three-strikes law by increasing sentences only for criminals whose latest offense is either serious or violent. The law, the toughest in the nation for repeat felons, classifies a long list of serious or violent crimes as "strikes.'' A criminal with one strike who commits any new felony must be sentenced to twice the usual prison term; someone with two strikes who commits a felony faces a life term, with no parole for at least 25 years. State prison records show that more than half the 7,200 inmates now serving 25 to life under the law were convicted of nonviolent crimes, including burglary, drug offenses and shoplifting, as their third strike. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that a 50-to-life sentence for a Southern California man convicted of two thefts of videotapes, after a long series of nonviolent offenses, did not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Meeks, now 52, was first sentenced to prison for burglary at 18 and had convictions for rape in 1975 and attempted rape in 1982. His last felony conviction before the current case was for a 1991 robbery. Diagnosed HIV-positive in 1996 and with hepatitis C in 1997, he had AIDS when he was arrested in May 2000 for failing to register as a sex offender within five days of changing his address and within five days of his birthday. He had last registered in 1997. Meeks had spent most of the year before his arrest living on the street, moved in with his sister-in-law in Sacramento in February or March 2000, and testified that he knew of the registration requirement but was depressed and thinking of "nothing else except for the disease.'' The appeals court said Meeks had "dedicated himself to a life of crime'' and was being punished for continually flouting the law. His "willingness to ignore his duty to register and thus ignore society's right to maintain some control over sexual offenders'' is at least as serious a crime as the thefts for which the Supreme Court upheld three-strikes sentences last year, the court said. Meeks' sentence "does not shock the conscience or offend fundamental notions of human dignity,'' wrote Justice Harry Hull, joined in the majority by Justice Fred Morrison. Sims, in dissent, called the case "pathetic'' and said neither Meeks' "old and stale'' felony convictions nor his new offense justified a third- strike sentence. "What are we doing sending this dying man to state prison for 27 years to life?'' he asked. E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com
http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/9018644p-9944552c.html Editorial: Three strikes insanity
The federal courts made their decision on constitutional grounds - that the punishment violates the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment." That was the right decision for that individual case. But the decision highlights a larger question for Californians about the state's "three strikes" law, the nation's harshest. Is a 25-years-to-life sentence for nonviolent offenses a good use of taxpayer money? Each year an inmate spends in a state prison costs an average of $30,929. Is it worth that to keep nonviolent criminals off the streets? Does a 25-years-to-life sentence for nonviolent offenses advance public safety? These aren't theoretical questions. The California Department of Corrections says that, as of September 2003, nonviolent offenses had triggered 25-years-to-life sentences for 57 percent of third-strikers serving those terms in California prisons. The U.S. Justice Department's National Institute of Justice has written: "California, which is the only state to aggressively implement a 'three-strikes' law, has shown no superior reductions in crime rates." The Rand Corp. and the Justice Policy Institute also conclude that California's "three-strikes" law has had no significant effect on violent crime trends, in comparison with other states, such as New York, that do not have "three-strikes" laws. The case of Isaac Ramirez brings into focus many of the issues regarding the "three-strikes" laws. In May 1996, Ramirez walked out of a Sears department store with a $199 VCR. He surrendered to authorities without incident. This crime is a petty theft misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of six months in county jail. But Ramirez had two prior convictions for taking merchandise from a Lucky's grocery store and a K-Mart department store in 1991. No weapons were involved. But because the getaway car driven by another person ran over a security guard's foot in one incident, and Ramirez pushed a security guard with his open hand as he ran out of the store in the other incident, prosecutors charged him with second-degree robbery - defined as a "serious felony." For both crimes, he served a single sentence of six months and 20 days in county jail. The questions seem obvious and so do some of the answers. Does it serve
society's interest to have
Does it serve society's interest to have him serve a longer term because he has two prior theft-related offenses? Yes. Does it serve society's interest to give him a 25-years-to-life sentence for his crimes? The answer is not so clear cut, but on balance it seems to be no. Putting away a three-time thief for 25-years-to-life costs at least $773,225. The state has made a commitment to pay this at a time when it is borrowing money to pay for essential services, cutting other services and telling 7,000 students eligible to attend the University of California and California State University that the state can't afford to accommodate them. California needs to recalibrate its priorities. The "three-strikes" law should be reserved for repeat violent criminals. Here's hoping the U.S. Supreme Court allows the 9th Circuit decision to stand, thus forcing the Legislature and governor to set those priorities anew.
URL: http://www.redding.com/top_stories/state/20040420topstate049.shtml Court tosses third-strike sentence for shoplifting David Kravets
April 20, 2004 2:07 a.m.
Ruling 2-1, a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the 25-year term handed to a California man convicted of stealing a $199 VCR violated the Eighth Amendment constitutional ban on cruel-and-unusual punishment. The appellate court said the punishment did not fit the crime even though the Supreme Court last year upheld the same sentences for two California shoplifters. The appeals court said the life sentence was unjust and more severe than a sentence for "murder, manslaughter or rape." The San Francisco-based appeals court said the Supreme Court's precedent did not apply to every third-strike defendant convicted of a felony. The Supreme Court last year upheld California's law allowing petty crimes to be the third strike triggering a 25-to-life term. Two serious or violent felonies are required for the first two strikes. In its rulings, known as the Ewing and Andrade cases, the Supreme Court said California had a right to adopt such a policy for public safety. But the 9th Circuit panel noted Monday that the Supreme Court wrote that the sentence of a career criminal it was upholding was "amply supported by his own long, serious criminal record." The Supreme Court also ruled that there may be rare circumstances in which a long sentence would not fit the crime, legal experts said. In the case of Isaac Ramirez decided Monday, the appeals court said his priors were minimal: two unarmed robbery convictions. The defendants the Supreme Court dealt with last year had lengthy and sometimes violent criminal pasts. "Ramirez's sentence is grossly disproportionate to the crimes he committed in violation of the Eighth Amendment," Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote. She was joined by Judge John Noonan. Wardlaw added that the "gravity of Ramirez's offense raises an inference of gross disproportionally in light of the nature and paucity of his criminal history." Without the three strikes law, Ramirez would have been eligible for up to a year in prison. "I think the significance of this case, that even after Andrade and Ewing, there is still a door open in challenges for extreme cases," said University of Southern California professor Erwin Chemerinsky, who argued the three strikes dispute before the Supreme Court. "I think what the 9th Circuit is saying is the Supreme Court meant it when it said there could be such a rare case." A spokesman for California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who urged the court to uphold the 25-year term, said the office was reviewing the lengthy decision and not prepared to comment. Ramirez's two priors came from Orange County, where he pleaded guilty to unarmed robbery of a Kmart and Lucky's grocery store in 1991. He served six months of a one-year term before his 1996 arrest. In one robbery, the getaway car he was in ran over a security guard's foot and, in the other, Ramirez pushed a guard as he fled. After serving more than five years for the VCR offense, U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts of Los Angeles released him in 2002 under reasoning the appeals court affirmed Monday. Ramirez, who argued his case before the appeals panel, could not be reached for comment. In dissent, Judge Andrew Kleinfeld said he was reluctantly upholding the 25-year prison term because the federal courts "have extremely limited authority over the harshness of state sentences." Any felony, after somebody has been convicted of two serious or violent felonies, counts as a third strike in California. A proposed ballot measure would require third felonies to be serious or violent, and would exclude Ramirez's shoplifting priors. California voters and lawmakers approved the three-strikes law in 1994, largely in response to the kidnapping and killing of schoolgirl Polly Klaas by a paroled repeat criminal. About half the state's have repeat offender laws.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/8946483p-9872691c.html '3 strikes' measure splits Klaas, dad
This Marc and Joe Klaas agree on: Richard Allen Davis must die. Davis, who remains on death row at San Quentin for the murder of 12-year-old Polly, became the poster child for a successful 1994 campaign to pass California's tough "three strikes" law and crack down on serial offenders. But Joe Klaas and his son, Marc, are now deeply divided over the fairness of that "three strikes" law and over a controversial amendment, apparently headed for the November ballot, that would prohibit nonviolent felonies from triggering life prison sentences. Joe is leading the drive to pass the measure, while Marc opposes it. "Have we discussed it? Sure we have, but we get into very heated arguments very quickly, so I avoid the issue with him," said Marc, a 55-year-old Sausalito resident who has made a career of activism on behalf of children since Polly's death in October 1993. For his part, Joe is determined to avoid a public confrontation. "It's up to him what he does," said Joe, 84, a Pebble Beach retiree from a career in the radio industry. "And it's up to me what I do. I'm not going to talk about it. ... I'm not going to get in a fight with my son in the media." Provoking the split is a proposal that would require any offenses triggering "three strikes" sentences to be serious or violent. The amendment would apply retroactively, allowing more than 26,000 offenders to seek resentencing and release. Under current law, offenders who have a record of one serious or violent crime are subject to a doubling of their prison term if convicted of any felony. Offenders with two such prior convictions face terms of 25 years to life. The final strike need not be serious or violent. Supporters say "three strikes" has reduced the crime rate by locking up hard-core criminals for decades to come. But critics claim it has snared some relatively minor crooks in its net, imposing final strikes for such petty crimes as grocery theft. "I'm proud of this state," said Joe Klaas, chairman of Citizens Against Violent Crime, a nonprofit group pushing the ballot measure. "But I'm not proud of 'three strikes.' I don't think that's a California-type law. That's an al-Qaida type of law." Advocates of the ballot measure point to cases like that of Gary Harrold, a Mule Creek inmate who was sentenced to 25 years to life on a third strike consisting of stealing two porterhouse steaks worth $17.43. "Anybody who thinks I'm soft on crime is insane," Joe Klaas said. "What we want is strong, strong sentences - as strong as we can get them - for violence. ... But you don't have to throw 'three strikes' at a shoplifter." Joe Klaas said the millions of tax dollars used to house nonviolent criminals under "three strikes" could better be used to expand roads, improve schools and bolster other public services. Marc Klaas claims his father is being exploited by criminal defense attorneys and by the families of career criminals. "How can it be?" Marc said when asked of the deep divide between father and son. "My father is a lifelong liberal with 84 years of liberal philosophy behind him. Maybe that's the answer." Marc hasn't always been a "three strikes" supporter - in fact, he wrote ballot arguments opposing the proposal in 1994. A decade ago, he believed - like Joe - that "three strikes" would affect
massive numbers of nonviolent offenders. He also feared the measure would
send prison populations skyrocketing,
Marc Klaas now says the sky hasn't fallen. "I used to buy into the idea that people deserved second chances, that there were social reasons for crimes that individuals committed," he said. "I found out very quickly that certain people are hard-wired for crime. When we identify those individuals, we have to take very strong steps to make sure they don't have opportunities to re-victimize." Marc said current law provides prosecutors and judges with discretion in charging strikes against criminals with records of serious or violent crime who commit a minor offense. If criminals get locked away for decades for stealing a pizza, they undoubtedly deserve it based on their prior record, he said. "If this guy has been committing violent crimes his entire life, and has no business being on the street, then that pizza is exactly what's necessary to get him off the streets to protect society," Marc said. Joe Klaas counters that "three strikes" has not been applied uniformly from county to county, resulting in unequal justice. A study by the Justice Policy Institute, a nonprofit research group dedicated to ending society's reliance on incarceration, found that 42,445 California prisoners had been sentenced under the "three strikes" law and that 64.5 percent of them were serving time for a nonviolent offense. Supporters argue that "three strikes" is working, the state's crime rate has fallen, and its prison population is holding steady at about 160,000 inmates. Prison savings from releasing offenders must be balanced against higher parole caseloads and the costs of prosecuting crimes committed by the inmates in years to come, they say. Marc Klaas claims the ballot measure would weaken "three strikes," but Joe argues the reverse, noting that it contains provisions to toughen penalties for child molesters. For first-time offenders, the measure would allow prison terms of up to 12 years if the molestation victim is under age 14, and terms of up to 25 years to life if the victim is under 10. "We're making it 'one strike and you're out' if you sexually molest a child under 10," Joe Klaas said. Second convictions for such offenses would result in mandatory terms of 25 years to life. Marc Klaas, who founded the nonprofit KlaasKids Foundation to fight child crime and who runs a private firm that assists the Amber Alert law enforcement system, said the anti-molestation provisions are not sufficient reason to vote yes. "There are plenty of laws out there to toughen penalties against child
molesters," Marc said. "(This proposal) is trying to weaken 'three strikes.'
I know they're trying to put felons back on the street. And that's certainly
against everything we believe in the KlaasKids Foundation."
The Bee's Jim Sanders can be reached at (916) 326-5538 or jsanders@sacbee.com
.
SAN FRANCISCO
URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/04/16/BAG3H65R331.DTL
California inmate Ronnie Young finally was rewarded for his act of heroism. But it may have come too late to do him any good. The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Young was entitled to a reduced prison sentence for saving the life of a prison employee in 2001 -- even though he was sentenced under California's "three strikes'' law, which limits the amount of credit served an inmate can receive. The problem is, Young, who received a nine-year sentence in 1996 for a burglary conviction, his second strike, is already out on parole. Margot Bach, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections, said it was an "open question'' whether the decision would help Young. Young's attorney couldn't be reached for comment. Young's act of heroism took place in January 2001. He was on a break from a work assignment at the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo when he spotted his supervisor, a civilian employee named Bud Stocking, choking on a piece of food. Another inmate refused to help, but Young stepped in and performed the Heimlich maneuver, dislodging the food. Young argued that he should get a break on his term under a state law that allows an inmate's sentence to be reduced by up to 12 months for performing a heroic, life-saving act. But the prison officials said their hands were tied because Young had already been awarded the maximum amount of credit allowed under the three strikes law. Young turned to the courts for help, but both the trial judge and the state appeals court ruled against him. Finally Thursday, he found what he was looking for with the state Supreme Court. In a unanimous decision, the justices said that there was a difference between an inmate's being rewarded for saving a life and a prisoner's earning credit for following regulations and going through rehabilitation programs. E-mail Harriet Chiang at hchiang@sfchronicle.com
http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/8902225p-9828661c.html Vote on 'three strikes' likely
A campaign to amend California's "three-strikes" law to prohibit nonviolent felonies from triggering lifetime prison sentences appears headed for the ballot. Citizens Against Violent Crime, the group spearheading the drive, submitted to elections officials Wednesday nearly 700,000 petition signatures, far more than the 373,816 needed to qualify for the November ballot. The effort is led by Joe Klaas, grandfather of Polly Klaas, a 12-year-old Sonoma County girl kidnapped from her bedroom during a slumber party and killed by parolee Richard Allen Davis in October 1993. Klaas said the new measure would improve the "three-strikes" law by toughening penalties for child molesters while eliminating the possibility that criminals will spend the rest of their lives in prison for crimes as minor as stealing pizza. "We'll make sure violent criminals pay for their crimes," Klaas said. "But we'll quit paying to give life sentences - including geriatric care - to petty criminals and shoplifters. We're just not going to do that anymore." Convicts sentenced to prison terms of 25 years or more for relatively minor crimes include Gary Albert Ewing, who stole $1,197 worth of golf clubs, and Leandro Andrade, a repeat burglar who stole $153 worth of videotapes. The ballot proposal is fiercely opposed by various law enforcement groups, tough-on-crime organizations and by Klaas' son, Marc, the father of Polly, whose death helped spur public support for creation of the "three-strikes" law in 1994. "I think the 'three-strikes' law seems to be working quite well, thank you," said Marc Klaas, founder of the KlaasKids Foundation, dedicated to fighting crimes against children. "You don't make society safer by putting creeps back on the street." California's 'three-strikes' law imposes longer prison sentences on offenders who have prior convictions for serious or violent crimes. Prison terms are doubled for anyone who commits a felony offense and has one prior conviction for a serious or violent crime. Mandatory prison terms of 25 years to life are imposed for a third strike - a conviction of someone with two or more serious or violent crimes on his or her record. Under current law, the final strike - the offense that triggers the enhanced sentence - must be a felony but need not be a violent one. The proposed ballot measure would amend the law by: * Allowing only violent or serious crimes to trigger the stiffer prison sentences. * Removing some crimes from the list of those deemed serious or violent, including attempted burglary, some arson offenses, and conspiracy to commit assault. * Permitting no more than one strike to be assessed per conviction. For example, robbing a store and assaulting a clerk could not be counted as two strikes. * Making the amendments retroactive to March 1994, which could lead to the resentencing of more than 26,000 offenders. Joe Klaas hailed the ballot measure as the "strongest law to protect children ever put forth" because it would enhance penalties for child molesters. Opponents counter that the crackdown on molesters is designed to deflect attention from the weakening of the "three-strikes" law. "How dumb do you think voters are?" said Mike Reynolds, who led the drive to pass a "three-strikes" law after the killing of his daughter, Kimber, by a parolee in 1992. The proposed ballot measure would mandate prison sentences of six, eight or 12 years for first offenses involving sexual assault of a minor under 14. Judges would have discretion to sentence first-time offenders to prison terms of 25 years to life if the victim is under age 10. Second convictions for such offenses would be punishable by terms of 25 years to life. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office said the initiative could lower the state's prison operating costs by several hundred million dollars a year. Other criminal justice costs probably would rise, however, ranging from
court costs for resentencings to subsequent parole supervision services.
The Bee's Jim Sanders can be reached at (916) 326-5538 or jsanders@sacbee.com .
http://www.thekcrachannel.com/news/3005372/detail.html TheKCRAChannel.com
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- The group Citizens Against Violent Crime says it has collected enough signatures for a proposal to toughen penalties against convicted child molesters. Group spokesman Joe Klaas, the grandfather of Polly Klaas, who was kidnapped at knifepoint from her bedroom on Oct. 1, 1993, introduced the proposal Wednesday in Sacramento. The measure to change the "three strikes" law would implement tougher penalties for sexual predators, but end life imprisonment sentences for what some say are petty crimes. "This kind of stuff just can't go on. It's not California justice. I was born here. I'm proud of this state, and I don't think the people of California want to put people away 50 years to life like the guy got for stealing videotapes," said Klaas. "No it wouldn't make sense to modify it today because our financial (situation). Then when finances get good, are we going to bring it back to what it was? No, we're not. We're still going to be soft on crime," said Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy, R-Monrovia. The group says it has collected almost 700,000 signatures in support
of the proposal. They want the issue on the November ballot.
When California got tough on crime Cruel Justice Three Strikes and the Politics of Crime in America's Golden
State Joe Domanick University of California Press: 320 pp., $24.95
April 11, 2004 The publication of "Cruel Justice" coincides with the 10-year anniversary of a major change in California penal law known popularly as "three strikes and you're out." The value of this law is as hotly debated today as it was a decade ago. Proponents of the three-strikes law argue that it has been responsible for a major decline in crime rates since the mid-1990s. Critics of the law find few statistics to back this claim. Further, they argue that three strikes produces manifest examples of injustice by forcing relatively minor offenders to serve sentences of 25 years to life, adding substantial costs to the state prison system. Although the three-strikes law was not the only contributor, the California correctional population has grown tremendously since the law was enacted. In part to stem the seemingly uncontrollable growth in fiscal outlays for prisons, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has just appointed former Gov. George Deukmejian to head a special panel to review the penal system. When Deukmejian presided over California state government, there were about 30,000 inmates; today that number is closer to 160,000. Since the 1980s, the state has built 21 prisons but not opened a single new University of California campus. State expenditures for corrections exceed $5 billion, which is greater than state spending for all public four-year colleges. Some would argue that we built a first-class prison system at the cost of having a third-rate educational system. In "Cruel Justice," Joe Domanick recounts a fascinating story about how Californians embraced the harshest criminal sentencing system of any state and describes the personalities and groups that contributed to this result. He has not tried to write an analytic study indeed, the book is somewhat thin on some crucial facts about crime trends and sentencing patterns. The book focuses on the moral crusade led by Mike Reynolds, a small businessman from Fresno, whose daughter was killed during a street crime. We also learn of the family tragedy experienced by Marc and Joe Klaas when Polly, their young daughter and granddaughter, respectively, was brutally murdered. Though Reynolds quickly led a campaign to enact three strikes, the Klaas family came to question whether they were being exploited by more conservative political groups to garner support for a law only marginally related to the killing of their child. Domanick does a good job detailing the roles of special interest groups such as the National Rifle Assn., the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. and the Republican Party (especially the unsuccessful Senate candidate, Michael Huffington) in pushing for the new "get tough" law. He also provides an excellent profile of USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, who argued against three-strikes sentencing before the U.S. Supreme Court. However, Domanick does a less than satisfactory job in talking about other key opponents of the law, whom he summarily labels Bay Area liberals. Nor does he provide many details on the motivations and decisions of leaders of the state Democratic Party to ultimately embrace that law as if it were their own. "Cruel Justice" is most compelling when it tells the stories of the criminals who are swept up in the law's overreach. Domanick helps us understand the human toll on individuals (and their families) of long prison terms. He selects two people whose lives have not been exemplary but who were drawn to tragic situations by their addictions to drugs and alcohol. The fair-minded reader should develop some compassion for the suffering of these people, who will spend most of their lives in prison because of the three-strikes law. Domanick offers a general theory of the motivations of the law's supporters, painting a portrait of rural and small-town Californians enraged by a decline in civility supposedly brought about by the migration of people of color to California. He avoids an accusation of racism by pointing to their hostile attitudes toward poor whites as well, cast as a modern-day version of the Okies. These angry middle-class white men embrace a hard-edged approach to law enforcement and punishment. Though this analysis might somewhat fit the attitudes of some Californians, it fails to explain why three strikes and other draconian sentencing bills are usually supported by the vast majority of Californians. How can it be that the Golden State, one of the staunchest supporters of the Democratic party, would cling to the right wing of criminal justice philosophies? "Cruel Justice" provides a snapshot of the rise of "get tough" crime policies that started with the passage of the determinate sentencing law during Gov. Jerry Brown's administration and advanced through thousands of bills that enhance penalties. Only a few years ago, with the overwhelming passage of Proposition 21 the nation's toughest sentencing bill for juvenile offenders the electorate showed that its appetite for harsh penalties was not sated. Besides harsher laws, the state has enacted parole policies that have produced a high rate of recidivism: The majority of prisoners are re-incarcerated within a few months of their release, often for violations of the terms of their parole, not for new crimes. Prison costs have skyrocketed, and the new governor is seeking creative ways to reduce the inmate population. The changes in the law do not tell the entire story of punishment in California. Recent revelations of horrid conditions for young people housed in a Youth Authority facility and the ongoing scandals of abusive practices in state prisons suggest that there are other meanings for the term "cruel justice." The state spends a healthy share of taxpayer funds defending itself against civil rights actions brought by federal agencies or through the judiciary. Several legislative studies and the work of the Little Hoover Commission have indicated how dysfunctional the penal system has become. The new governor will need to be a real superhero to tackle a corrections system that is so out of balance. Unfortunately, "Cruel Justice" offers few compelling suggestions for reform. Domanick expresses some hope that new state drug policies will go the way of local drug courts and the enactment of Proposition 36 (which mandates treatment rather than prison for minor drug offenders). But these measures by themselves will not have a major effect on reducing the state prison population. Domanick correctly labels three strikes as a ticking time bomb, in the sense that ever more offenders become eligible for its lengthy sentences. Although we can find a little solace in the fact that some district attorneys are using the law more sparingly, this situation could change with each electoral cycle, or with the next media-hyped crime. Ultimately, Californians must face up to the harm done to all of us by three strikes and amend the law to focus primarily on repeat violent offenders. "In our zeal to punish offenders, we should be careful not to punish ourselves," my mentor Milton Rector, former president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, used to say. This sage advice should guide California penal policy and practice today.
Three strikes and counting
URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/03/28/RVGBF5MRTE1.DTL
Cruel Justice Three Strikes and the Politics of Crime in America's Golden State By Joe Domanick UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS; 320 PAGES; $24.95
"Our Zola," the always-controversial writer Mike Davis declares the
author of "Cruel Justice," in a blurb across the book's cover. It's a bit
much, this claim, like the description of Norman Lear in the early 1970s
as the "Zola of the small screen" socking it to Middle America with one
controversial show after another. No one else is ever going to be Emile
Zola, master of the social shocker from the days when the popular novel
was the equivalent of movies and television, and the shock of "J'Accuse"
(against French anti- Semitism) could make a large and presumably refined
part of society instantly ashamed of itself.
Blame it, first of all, on radio rage. We're in 1992, an 18-year-old local girl has been murdered in Fresno, and a run-of-the-mill local talk show host is fantasizing a giant ratings jump. Overnight, an understandably aggrieved father has been turned into a personal crusader for cleaning the streets of social scum. Soon, San Joaquin Valley conservatives' favorite legislator has a carefully crafted bill in Sacramento. "Three strikes and you're out!" had carried the vote as a slogan in Washington state already, but only as a measure to keep known violent criminals behind bars. This was something different: a sweeping statute equating house break-ins and convenience store rip-offs with rape and incest, i.e., legislation better suited to the days of Jean Valjean's imprisonment for stealing a loaf of bread. Without Dan Lungren in the attorney general's office, the story might have gone another way or disappeared entirely. Domanick makes a good case (it will not convince disbelievers) that nostalgia for a whiter, as well as safer, California of the 1950s actually powered the evolving bill through the Legislature: one more setup for the culture wars. But this was not the 1950s, in ways that seem downright perverse. Decades of challenges to segregation and discrimination practices had brought a degree of needed professionalization to law enforcement. They brought something else, too: By the 1990s, assorted police and prison agencies' pet lobbying groups had cash and political clout unimaginable two generations earlier. Contrary to Domanick's suggestion, however, minority communities were themselves often eager for their own reasons to get tough, including the law- enforcement jobs at multiple levels formerly closed to them. Like a defense bill that funds production in 30 states, three strikes thereby gained an almost unbeatable constituency. It offered both revenge and well-paying employment without end. As usual, fear mongering blotted out contrary evidence of every kind. How popular was large-scale imprisonment? A lot of Californians really are convinced that, as Domanick quotes UCLA Professor James Q. Wilson as saying, rehabilitation is a myth. Criminals are criminals, surely a self- fulfilling prophecy when rehabilitation has been abandoned in practice and the barbarous conditions of incarceration recall images from the chain-gang films of the 1930s. History has a way of catching up, of course. The brain-numbing statistics of casual drug users and small-time sellers sent up for long stretches, the near-constant growth and overcrowding of facilities, all hit the pocketbook, if not the heart. But some of the most damning testimony inevitably falls to murder victims' parents, who, like their counterparts courageously protesting death sentences for the child's killers, explain how they were manipulated by the politicos. They plead, better than any lawyer, for a public shift of consciousness. Actually changing the law, however, requires a two-thirds vote in the Legislature, a near-impossible hurdle. So, no matter that prison populations have jumped 30 percent just since the mid-1990s. No matter that the U.S. incarceration rates stand at a thousand times that of other presumably civilized countries. No matter that the Golden State heads the list in sheer numbers incarcerated. The 800-pound gorilla happens to be us, or just enough of us. It seems in no danger of edging backward, let alone going away. Who would a new Republican governor "gravely concerned" about prison conditions name as head of a commission to overhaul the system if not ex-Gov. George Deukmejian? Who better than former top law-enforcement officials to report to today's governor on the "code of silence" against misdeeds among their own erstwhile employees, those prison guards with the only secure union jobs in the nation? This would all be comical if not so terribly tragic and foolish. Forget Victor Hugo and Emile Zola. Where's Mark Twain when we need him? Paul Buhle teaches at Brown University's American civilization department.
State says free woman owes more prison time By Greg Moran
March 20, 2004
JOHN GASTALDO / Union-Tribune
Step by step, over the past 2½ years Pamela Martinez has painstakingly
assembled the elements of a solid, happy life in Vista.
But now Martinez faces the very real prospect of losing most of what she has built up since being released in 2001. All over 65 days that California says she still owes the state prison system. Barring one last twist in a case that has been full of them over the past four years, Martinez is supposed to report to authorities by March 30 to begin serving the time. Her last chance is a bid for clemency that landed on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk Wednesday. Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, has championed the clemency petition, saying locking Martinez up again makes no sense. "How it makes the state safer for her to go back to prison for 65 days is beyond me," she said. Martinez, a former paramedic, faces losing her job at Home Depot in Escondido, her apartment and the life she has carefully constructed. She is not going quietly. A rally for her is scheduled for Wednesday in front of the governor's Los Angeles office. Co-workers at Home Depot circulated a petition on her behalf. Supporters threw a party for her at a North County restaurant last weekend. Buoyed by the support, the 51-year-old Martinez is still anxious and worried. "It's very frustrating because I've tried so hard," she said. "I'm proud of my accomplishments. And now, to think I'll have to start at square one again." Martinez's predicament centers on the often complex array of sentencing rules woven through the state penal code. The issue in successive appeals has been the time credits Martinez should be given toward an early release from prison, and how those credits should be calculated. Her case began Feb. 11, 1995, when she went to a house in Rolling Hills outside of Los Angeles to give an estimate for landscape work. She now acknowledges she was under the influence of Valium and alcohol. She got into a fight with the homeowner, who told police when they arrived that Martinez had stolen a toolbox from him. She was charged with residential burglary and petty theft. Because she had prior robbery convictions from 1978 and 1987, she was charged under the state's three-strikes law and faced a sentence of 25 years to life. Convicted by a jury of the theft charge in December 1995, Martinez was handed the life sentence in July 1996. While in prison, Martinez says, she realized how badly amiss her life had gone. She was one of the first women hired as a member of a professional ski patrol in Colorado in the 1970s, but the lifestyle led to a period of drug abuse, drug addiction and trouble with the law. In prison, she said, "it just hit me like a hammer. This was not what I grew up believing I would become: a drug addict sentenced to life in prison." She resolved to get sober and straight. She started working in the law library and reading about legal issues. Meanwhile, she appealed her conviction, contending her attorney was inadequate. In July 1999, an appellate court agreed and reversed the conviction. When the case was sent back to the lower court, Martinez wary of another trial and the potential of another life sentence agreed to a plea bargain. In exchange for a guilty plea, the judge dropped one of the strikes and sentenced her to nine years as a second-striker. This is when the problems began. Inmates earn credits several different ways. The rules take into account criminal history, good behavior, the type of offense and whether the credits were earned for time spent in custody before a sentence or after. The judge calculated her credits and sentenced her to a term that made her eligible for release in May 2001. But prison officials challenged the computation and the judge resentenced her. She was not eligible for release until February 2002. Martinez appealed again, and when the appellate court agreed to hear her case, she was released from prison in October 2001. Two months later, the appeals court ruled in her favor, saying prison officials miscalculated the credits she had earned toward release. The decision established a rule for calculating some sentencing credits. Previously, courts had said inmates who have their case sent back to the trial court for resentencing (because of some calculation error) are not eligible for a high rate of time credits. Martinez's court drew a new distinction. Inmates like her, whose original conviction was reversed meaning that legally it never happened should get the higher rate of credits, the court concluded. Victory in hand, Martinez thought she was home free. She stayed sober, began working, and kept in regular contact with a parole officer even though, technically, she was not on parole and not required to do so. She also hooked up with the network of advocates opposed to the three-strikes law. She spoke at law schools and community forums, and spoke to schoolchildren about the evils of drugs and alcohol. Early last year, friends invited her to move in with them in Escondido, and she settled down. But state lawyers were troubled by the implications of the court's ruling. The appellate justices had ordered that the decision be published meaning it could be cited as a precedent so they appealed to the state Supreme Court. The court's new rule could affect scores, if not hundreds, of prisoners, state lawyers worried. A spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer said the case was appealed to resolve confusion over the sentencing scheme. "The effort was made in order to lay down some clear rules in sentencing," spokesman Nathan Barakin said. In April, in a 5-2 decision, the state's high court agreed with prosecutors. They ruled Martinez had been released too early. That meant, after another round of calculations, Martinez owed the state some time 65 days. On Feb. 27 Martinez appeared in Superior Court in Los Angeles. She hoped prosecutors would agree that she could do the time either on a work crew or home detention. But for someone with strikes on their record, state prison is the sole option. "I've given a lot to the community," said Martinez. "I'm not just trying
to get out of the 65 days. That's not it. The significant issue is I have
worked hard to rebuild my life. I've made a new life. I'm like the poster
child for rehabilitation."
Greg Moran: (619) 542-4586; greg.moran@uniontrib.com Find this article at:
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
It's the 10th anniversary of 'three strikes' law By: SCOTT MARSHALL - Staff Writer NORTH COUNTY ---- The shocking deaths of a 12-year-old girl and an 18-year-old woman in California at the hands of repeat criminals gave life a decade ago to a landmark state law that today continues to receive praise and criticism. Proponents describe the measure, California's "three-strikes" law, as a highly effective crime-fighting tool responsible for preventing two million crimes and producing $28 billion in savings from tangible and intangible costs of crimes. Detractors say the law is Draconian and a failure, costing the state an estimated $8.1 billion in added prison and jail expenses without producing its intended results. Truly assessing the effect of California's "three-strikes" law remains difficult 10 years after it was signed into law on March 7, 1994, some legal experts said. Quick passage "It's hard to draw any conclusions other than mixed conclusions about its effectiveness," said Jack Riley, director of the public safety and justice section of the RAND Corp., a nonprofit organization that conducts research and analysis on a variety of issues. "I would be suspicious of people saying it has no effect, and I would be suspicious of those who say it is driving the decline of crime in California." The law, which requires longer prison sentences for repeat criminals, first was introduced in March 1993 in the state Assembly. It was in response to the 1992 slaying of Kimber Reynolds, 18, outside a popular restaurant in Fresno by repeat offenders on parole at the time. The Assembly Public Safety Committee defeated the "three-strikes" bill within weeks of its introduction, prompting a push to put the measure before state voters as an initiative. Second chance Another slaying months later ---- while proponents were circulating the initiative ---- gave the original bill a second chance in the state Assembly. It was the October 1993 kidnapping and murder of Polly Klaas, 12, in Petaluma at the hands of Richard Allen Davis, who had a lengthy criminal history. The murder fueled support for the bill, which was reintroduced in the Assembly in January 1994. Within three months, it had become law. Meanwhile, Reynolds' father, Mike Reynolds, continued to spearhead efforts to have an identical law go before voters as an initiative, which passed with 72 percent of the vote in the November 1994 election. The only difference between the Assembly bill signed into law and the voter-approved initiative was that the initiative required a vote of the people or two-thirds vote of the Assembly and state Senate to alter the law, according to an analysis from an organization that has questioned the effectiveness of "three strikes." The law mandates a sentence of 25 years to life in prison for defendants with two prior serious, violent felony convictions if they receive a third felony conviction, regardless of its severity. Judges also are required to double the prison terms that second-time felons receive if the first conviction was a serious, violent felony. As well, the law mandates that defendants serve more of their sentences before being eligible for parole. Forecasts varied However, a June 1996 California Supreme Court ruling gave judges the discretion to set aside prior "strike" convictions. "In a sense, 'three strikes' is really a kind of continuation on a theme we've had in the criminal justice system historically," said David Steinberg, an associate professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego. "As criminals develop a longer record of crime, we sentence them to longer sentences because we are more and more skeptical of their rehabilitation. ... What's behind the 'three-strikes' law is both a pessimistic and realistic understanding that there are people in our society that we are just not able to rehabilitate." When it became law, "three strikes" brought with it divergent predictions. Some warned of overcrowded prisons from an anticipated explosion in the inmate population, while others spoke of hopes for lower crime rates and safer communities. Does it work? Over the years, many studies have been conducted to assess the law's effectiveness, with conflicting results. Most recently, the Justice Policy Institute and former state Assemblyman Bill Jones, who authored the law, released conflicting assessments to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the measure. The Republican nominee seeking to unseat incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer in November, Jones provided a report this week through his campaign spokeswoman that said the number of crimes in the state dropped from more than 1 million in 1994 to 667,213 in 2002. The figures in Jones' report showed that in the nine years since 1994, two million fewer violent crimes were committed than in the nine years before 1994. However, after declining in the first five years of the law, the number of crimes has risen every year since 1999. Other factors Using U.S. Department of Justice estimates of the costs associated with different crimes, Jones' report estimates that the reduction in crime attributed to the "three-strikes" law has produced $28 billion in savings. Jerry Wallingford, a criminal defense and appellate attorney in Rancho Penasquitos, said other factors have a greater influence on the occurrence of crimes than sentencing laws. "The crime rate really reacts more to the economy than it does to the law," Wallingford said. "The people who commit crimes aren't looking at the penal code and saying, 'What am I going to get by doing this,' but they are more likely to commit crimes without a job." The report from the Justice Policy Institute ---- a nonprofit organization that describes itself as "dedicated to ending society's reliance on incarceration and promoting effective and just solutions to social problems" ---- stated that using the "three-strikes" law has not produced larger drops in the crime rate in California's largest counties. San Diego busy Statistics in the institute's report reflect large percentage decreases in the rates of crime across categories in all of the state's 12 largest counties. However, the counties that applied "three strikes" more often, including San Diego and Riverside counties, did not experience a greater drop in crime than other counties that used the law less frequently, including San Francisco County, the report stated. The six counties that used the law the most slightly trailed the six counties that used the law the least, in terms of the percentage that the crime rate declined, the report said. San Diego County, which used the law more than any other county, experienced a 67.39 percent drop in its homicide rate from 1993 to 2002 ---- the largest decline of the 12 largest counties in that time period. But San Diego slightly trailed eight other counties in the percentage decline in the overall violent crime rate and property crime rate. Applying the law Riverside County, which used the law the third-most out of the state's 12 largest counties, saw a 44.54 percent decline in its homicide rate, trailing nine other counties. Six counties saw a greater decline in the violent crime rate than Riverside did, and three counties experienced a larger drop in the property crime rate, the institute's report stated. Reynolds, who pushed for the "three-strikes" law after his daughter's death, said studies often are shaped to arrive at a result consistent with the opinions of whoever is doing it. "You can do studies until your eyeballs fall out, but you walk into a prison and the guys know what 'three strikes' is, and it has changed their behavior," Reynolds said. The prison population is one area where the doomsday predictions that opponents raised when "three strikes" became law have not come to fruition, Reynolds said. The report issued by Jones and the Justice Policy Institute report cited initial predictions from researchers and analysts that "three strikes" would cause the prison population to grow to nearly 250,000 inmates, and cost taxpayers billions. Jones' report said the prison population has hovered around 160,000 for the last four years, an increase of 25.5 percent from when "three strikes" took effect. In the 10 years before "three strikes," the prison population grew 400 percent, the report stated. The institute's report stated that California "luckily" did not see the predictions come true because judges and prosecutors have used their discretion to dismiss prior "strike" convictions and have not fully implemented the law as expected. Although the growth in the inmate population did not reach the levels that were predicted, state prison statistics show that the number of inmates in every prison in California far exceeds the capacity for which each prison was designed. "They are horribly overcrowded," Wallingford said. Still, a survivor More inmates also are serving longer sentences, the institute's report stated. The number of "third-strike" inmates rose from 254 in 1994 to 7,234 in September 2003, the report stated. That figure had inched up to 7,335 by Dec. 31, 2003, state prison statistics say. Regardless of its effects, the law has survived many legal challenges in its 10 years, legal experts said. "The attacks on 'three strikes' have not been very successful," said Wallingford. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected arguments that the California law violated the constitution's protection against cruel and unusual punishment in the case of a man with a lengthy criminal history who was sentenced to 25 years to life after stealing $1,200 worth of golf clubs while on parole from a nine-year prison term. Wallingford said the most successful ruling for the criminal defense in "three strikes" cases came in 1996, when the state Supreme Court ruled that judges have the discretion to decide whether to set aside a prior strike conviction, sparing defendants the more severe sentences the law requires as a result. Contact staff writer Scott Marshall at (760) 631-6623 or smarshall@nctimes.com .
Three-Strikes Law Has Little Effect, Study Says
March 5, 2004 A decade after it was enacted, California's three-strikes sentencing law has had little impact on violent crime while costing taxpayers $8 billion to imprison tens of thousands of felons, most of them for nonviolent offenses, according to a study released today. The report by the Washington, D.C.-based Justice Policy Institute also found that blacks have been imprisoned under the three-strikes law at 10 times the rate of whites, while the rate for Hispanics has been almost 80% greater than for whites. Three-strikes inmates in California now number more than 42,000 one-fourth of the state's prison population, according to the study. Supporters of the sentencing measure, widely viewed as the toughest of its kind in the U.S., quickly dismissed the study, saying putting repeat criminals in jail has saved $28 billion in costs associated with their crimes. The law doubles the sentence for an ex-felon convicted of a second felony. Someone with two prior convictions for violent or serious crimes, if convicted of a third felony of any type, can be sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. The three-strikes law "has been the most effective criminal justice initiative in the history of California," said former Secretary of State Bill Jones, the law's coauthor. A frequent critic of California's three-strikes law also challenged the new report's conclusion on costs. "I don't think it has cost us $8 billion or anything close to that yet," said UC Berkeley law professor Frank Zimring. But Zimring said backers of the law have greatly exaggerated its deterrent effect. "It has had a very small impact on crime," Zimring said. And third-strike penalties, he said, "are sort of grossly disproportionate to the crime." The new report offered a number of provocative findings that include the following: Nearly 65% of those convicted of second or third strikes were serving time in prison for nonviolent crimes. They included 672 third-strikers serving 25 years to life in prison for drug possession a number that was greater than the number of third-strikers in prison for second-degree murder, assault with a deadly weapon and rape combined. While only two ex-felons were serving 25 years to life for petty theft a decade ago, that number soared to 354 by last September. The six largest California counties using three strikes most frequently had lower decreases in crime rates than the six that used the law less often. Similarly, states that did not have three-strikes laws had lower average rates of violent crime and larger average drops in violent crime than the states with the tough sentencing law. For example, New York, which does not have a three-strikes law, had much larger drops in total crime and violent crime than California. "What our studies show is that California's three-strikes law costs too much, does too little and targets the wrong people. And particularly in these times of fiscal crisis in the state, California cannot afford to do that," said Vincent Schiraldi, coauthor of the study and executive director of the Justice Policy Institute, a left-leaning research and public policy organization. Prosecutors in California's 58 counties have discretion in how and when to apply the three-strikes law. In Los Angeles County, Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, a Republican, has declined to prosecute most nonviolent offenses and lesser drug charges as third strikes. That policy is in sharp contrast to that of Cooley's predecessor, who sought a life sentence in 1995 for an ex-convict accused of stealing a slice of pizza. Los Angeles County generates about 40% of all three-strikes cases in the state, and Cooley's policies are similar to those followed in San Francisco and Alameda counties. Statewide, since a peak in 1996, the number of life sentences for third strikes has dropped significantly. Authorities attribute that decline to greater selectivity by prosecutors and a general drop in crime and to many repeat offenders' being already behind bars on third-strike convictions. The Justice Policy Institute report acknowledged that the cost of three strikes had been nowhere near as high as some originally predicted. And that point was underscored by former Secretary of State Jones. "Ten years ago, there were predictions that the prison population would double because of three strikes and that we would need to build 20 new prisons," Jones said. "Well, that didn't happen with the population . We haven't had to build one new prison since three strikes became law." Most significant, Jones said, the decline in crime over the past decade has saved taxpayers billions of dollars in arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning criminals. "They say three strikes has cost money," Jones said. "But we have calculated that it saved the state more than $28 billion through savings in insurance and the costs of catching and re-catching the same people." Replicating research done for a 1996 study commissioned by the U.S. Justice Department's National Institute of Justice, the Justice Policy Institute estimated that, as of last September, the three-strike prisoners added to the state's penal system since March 1994 had or would cost California an additional $8.1 billion to incarcerate. And more than half that amount about $4.7 billion is directly attributable to longer prison terms for those convicted of nonviolent crimes, the report states. The researchers conclude that state officials should reexamine both the costs and criminal justice consequences of the law so they can decide whether it should be amended or abolished. Given the variety of other factors, including the economy, that have contributed to the past decade's decline in crime, Jack Riley, director of Rand's Public Safety and Justice Program, agreed that a new look at the state's three-strikes law was warranted. "If there was ever a place where three strikes was going to work, it was California because the California version of the law was broad in terms of the felonies it covers and deep because it has the potential to cover an awful lot of people," Riley said. "But I don't think you can call three strikes a clear home run in terms of cost-effectiveness," Riley said. "It may have had an effect on the margins of the crime rate. But given that it is not a clear home run, you have to ask whether there are better ways to spend those public resources."
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20040304-2056-ca-threestrikes.html 'Three-strikes' law's effectiveness debated after 10 years By Don Thompson
SACRAMENTO As California's "three strikes" law turns 10 years old Sunday, a study by a prison reform group Friday says the law aimed at career criminals has been ineffective and unfairly targets minorities. Supporters counter that the law has helped reduce California's crime rate, and is aimed at repeat offenders regardless of their race. The reality, as usual, is somewhere in between, said Frank Zimring, a University of California, Berkeley, law professor who has studied California prisons for 20 years. It's nowhere near as effective a deterrent as proponents had hoped, nor has it overloaded the nation's largest prison system as opponents had feared. The law requiring 25 years to life in prison for third-time offenders became effective about the same time crime rates began declining, triggering a debate over how much credit should go to three-strikes instead of an aging population, an economic boom and other factors. The law also doubles felony sentences for second-strikers, those with a previous serious or violent felony conviction. Second- and third-strikers must serve 80 percent of their sentences, compared to 50 percent for other offenders. Zimring calls it "feel-good legislation," the effects of which have been "hugely overblown" largely because it's often been ignored by prosecutors and judges. Studies, including his own, show second strikes seem to have virtually no deterrent effect, while third strikes deter perhaps one-fiftieth of the crimes that proponents had predicted, Zimring said. "It's draconian punishment for the unlucky few," Zimring said but the unlucky ones are too few to have greatly influenced either the crime rate or the prison population. Friday's study by the San Francisco and Washington, D.C.-based Justice Policy Institute says counties that used the law less frequently in fact saw a larger crime rate decline than counties that used the tool more. The same held true for some non-strike states like New York. Many of those sent away under the three strikes law were convicted of nonviolent crimes, including petty offenses, the study found. And blacks were 12 times more likely to "strike out" than whites, while Latinos were 45 percent more likely to be sentenced to 25-to-life. The disparity isn't because prosecutors are racist, said Zimring, but because the law includes crimes such as robbery for which blacks are disproportionately convicted. Fewer than 10 percent of nonviolent, non-serious offenders pick up their third strike, said California District Attorneys Association Executive Director Dave LaBahn, because prosecutors or judges often drop the offense to a misdemeanor or don't count the offense as a strike. LaBahn argued prosecutors should have the discretion to seek a third strike even for something like a petty offense, if they believe they are corraling a dangerous criminal. The institute's researchers blame the law for helping drive up California's prison population during the 1990s even as the crime rate was declining. Proponents counter that the state's prisons population has stabilized even as the general population has soared. Twenty-five states and the federal law include variations on three strikes, but California's is "the nation's most costly and punitive," said institute Executive Director Vincent Schiraldi, a co-author of the "Still Striking Out" report and several previous analyses. He urged the state to repeal it. But putting career criminals in prison and keeping them there is the point of the law, LaBahn said, and even the prospect serves as a deterrent that has helped trim California's crime rate below some non-strike states. "Defendants cared a lot if the crime of which they were convicted was a strike it made a lot of difference," said LaBahn, drawing on his experience as a prosecutor in Orange and Humboldt counties. "We think it's an extremely valuable tool. We don't think it targets minorities it targets recidivists." Mike Reynolds, the Fresno man who authored the three-strikes initiative after his daughter was murdered by two repeat felons, says the law has made "a decade of difference," though he acknowledged it's tough to say how much it has contributed to the state's lower crime rate. Including some serious but nonviolent offenses has helped roll back crimes like residential burglaries, for instance, to 1955 levels, Reynolds said, "making virtually every square inch of California safer." Joe Klaas, grandfather of Polly Klaas, whose 1993 kidnap and murder helped spur the three-strikes law, was a proponent 10 years ago until he read the law. "I was horrified," Klaas said. "Put away shoplifters to keep people from murdering people? It's just crazy." Klaas now chairs Citizens Against Violent Crime, which is trying to qualify a November ballot initiative that would remove nonviolent offenses while adding stiffer penalties for child molesters to the law. A similar bill was introduced last year by Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, who says three-strikes is "out of step with justice" particularly for minorities and nonviolent offenders. If either passes, predicted Reynolds, "you're going to be looking at
a wholesale bloodbath" as violent as well as nonviolent offenders are returned
earlier to the streets.
On the Net: Read the Justice Policy Institute's report: www.justicepolicy.org Three Strikes and You're out: www.threestrikes.org Citizens Against Violent Crime: www.amend3strikes.com Read Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg's AB2152 and AB112: www.assembly.ca.gov
26 to life for taking an exam
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/12/30/BAG3H40CA31.DTL
A federal appeals court upheld a prison sentence of 26 years to life Monday for a Southern California man whose third strike consisted of trying to take the written portion of a driver's license test for his illiterate cousin. Santos Reyes was convicted of perjury for filling out an application, under penalty of perjury, in his cousin's name. Reyes was caught using a crib sheet on the test in September 1997 at a Department of Motor Vehicles office in San Bernardino, was stopped by an officer as he left the building and admitted the deception, saying his cousin had previously failed the written exam, prosecutors said. Reyes testified later that he wanted the cousin to have a license so they could both work as roofers. Because of a juvenile burglary conviction in 1981 and an adult robbery conviction in 1987, Reyes faced a mandatory sentence of up to life in prison under California's three-strikes law. Reyes, a married man whose children were 1 and 3 years old at the time of his sentencing in 1998, challenged his sentence in federal court, contending it violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The local prosecutor, Reyes said, had offered him a four-year sentence if he pleaded guilty. He rejected the deal and went to trial, believing he would be acquitted because he had not understood what perjury meant when he tried to take the exam. In a 2-1 ruling, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said Reyes' claim of cruel and unusual punishment had been foreclosed by the U. S. Supreme Court in March. The high court in March, in another San Bernardino County case, upheld a sentence of 50 years to life for a man with two third- strike convictions for shoplifting videotapes. Judge Harry Pregerson dissented from the appeals court ruling, saying Reyes had been punished unconstitutionally for going to trial rather than accepting the four-year plea agreement. "I believe that punishing a person for exercising his or her constitutional rights clearly violates due process," Pregerson said. E-mail the writer at begelko@sfchronicle.com .
http://timesargus.nybor.com/Story/74382.html 'Three strikes' is out
By Fox Butterfield THE NEW YORK TIMES OLYMPIA, Wash. - After two decades of passing ever-tougher sentencing laws and prompting a prison building boom, state legislatures facing budget crises are beginning to rethink their costly approaches to crime. In the past year, about 25 states have passed laws eliminating some of the lengthy mandatory minimum sentences so popular in the 1980s and 1990s, restoring early release and offering treatment instead of incarceration for some drug offenders. In the process, politicians across the political spectrum say they are discovering a new motto. Instead of being tough on crime, it is more effective to be smart on crime. In Washington - the first state in the country to pass a stringent "three strikes" law by popular initiative a decade ago - a bipartisan group of legislators this year passed several laws reversing some of their more punitive statutes. One law shortened sentences for drug offenders and set up money for drug treatment. Another increased the time inmates convicted of drug and property crimes could earn to get out of prison early. Another eliminated supervision for low-risk inmates on parole. Taken together, these laws "represent a real turning point," said Joseph Lehman, the secretary of the Washington Department of Corrections, who was a major supporter of the legislative changes. "You have to look at the people who are behind these laws," Lehman said. "They are not all advocates of a liberal philosophy." A major backer who helped persuade the Legislature to pass the new drug policy was Norm Maleng, a conservative Republican who has been the King County prosecutor in Seattle since 1979 and was a sponsor of a 1980s law that doubled sentences for drug convictions. "It was a little like Nixon going to China when Norm went down to the Legislature to persuade them to support this," said his chief of staff, Dan Satterberg. The new laws will save Washington a projected $45 million a year. But equally important, Satterberg said, the new drug policy "is a recognition that you can't incarcerate your way out of this problem." "There has to be treatment as well as incarceration," he said. Still, Dave Reichert, the Republican sheriff of King County, along with other sheriffs in the state, opposed the law allowing offenders to earn more time for good behavior because, he said, he was afraid some of those paroled were violent criminals. "I'm worried that this is a first step in a long road that could take us decades to recover from," he said. In Kansas, faced with the need to build $15 million worth of prisons, the Legislature this year passed a law mandating treatment instead of incarceration for first time drug offenders who did not commit a crime involving violence. The law is expected to divert 1,400 offenders a year, a significant proportion of Kansas' 9,000 inmates. "I think we are realizing that there is a smarter way to deal with criminals, rather than just being tough on them and putting them away for the rest of their lives," said John Vratil, a Republican who is chairman of the state Senate Judiciary Committee. "Even those people who favor being tough on crime don't want to find the money to build more prisons and go back on their pledge of no new taxes," Vratil said. "So they are choosing between the lesser of two evils." Will this new approach last when the economy recovers? Vratil said he thinks it will. "What started out as an effort to save money has evolved into an appreciation for good public policy, and this has enabled legislators who were initially reluctant about it to support it," he said. In Alabama, a severe fiscal crisis is forcing some of these changes, Davis acknowledged. "We've cut spending on prisons so far that our prison system now looks like a Third World country," she said. Some prisons are so crowded they are operating at almost double their capacity. One new law this year raised the monetary threshold for prosecuting property crimes to $500 from $250, to try to keep the flow of new inmates down. Under another new law, some offenders will be kept in work release programs or sent to drug treatment. Alabama had been one of the few states not to have such alternatives to prison. Michigan has dropped its lengthy mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders, among the toughest in the nation. Iowa, Missouri and Wisconsin have taken steps to ease their "truth in sentencing" laws, which require inmates to serve most of their sentences before being eligible for release. Colorado has sought to reduce the large number of former inmates who are sent back to prison for parole violations, like failing a urine test or not showing up for an appointment with a parole officer. A new Colorado law limits the amount of time nonviolent offenders can be sent back to prison to 180 days. Missouri has passed a law allowing inmates convicted of property crimes to apply for release after only four months, instead of having to serve one-third of their sentence, usually four to seven years. These changes reflect an important national trend, said Daniel Wilhelm, director of the State Sentencing and Corrections Program at the Vera Institute of Justice in New York City. "People thought parole was dead, the idea of early release from prison," Wilhelm said, because in the 1980s and 1990s many states outlawed parole as part of the get-tough-on-crime movement. "But parole is alive and well," he said, because of the twin pressures of budget deficits and the continued growth in the nation's prison population, even as the crime rate has fallen or leveled off over the past decade. There are now 2.1 million Americans in jail or prison, quadruple the number in 1980. The New York Legislature quietly took two steps this year to save money, with the support of Gov. George E. Pataki, that are tantamount to making parole easier, Wilhelm said. The first law enables inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes to earn a certificate for good behavior, which makes them eligible for a program called presumptive release, under which they can be paroled without going before the parole board. An estimated 1,185 inmates a year will be released early this way, saving the state $21 million, said Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a prison research and advocacy group. Under the other new law, offenders convicted of some of the most serious drug crimes will for the first time be able to earn time of up to one-third off their sentences by avoiding discipline problems and by staying in education or other programs. This means that an inmate serving a sentence of 15 years to life for the possession of a small amount of drugs, under the Rockefeller-era drug laws, could now get out in 10 years, Gangi said. Sheldon Silver, the speaker of the New York State Assembly, described the two laws as significant steps, but said they still fell far short of repealing the drug laws. Alabama now has a sentencing commission that has made reform recommendations, which the Legislature has begun to enact this year. "I've been in the attorney general's office 30 years," said Rosa Davis, the chief assistant attorney general in Alabama, "and we've been the lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key office. We're now learning the difference between being tough on crime and smart on crime." Here in Washington, the budget crisis has also made the changes possible, said David Boerner, a former prosecutor who is now chairman of the Washington Sentencing Guidelines Commission. "The fiscal crisis has brought together the folks who think sentences are too long with the folks who are perfectly happy with the sentences but think prison is costing too much," said Boerner, who is also a professor at Seattle University School of Law. The new Washington drug law will lower sentences for drug offenses and allow judges to send offenders to treatment instead of prison, with the opportunity to have the charges against them dropped if they successfully complete the program. Money for treatment will come from money saved by the reduction in the number of drug offenders in prison. One of the most sweeping changes in the nation was Michigan's repeal of its mandatory minimum drug sentences. The reform is projected to save the state $41 million this year, according to a report by Families Against Mandatory Minimums, an advocacy group. Under the new law, not only were drug penalties drastically reduced, but inmates already in prison became eligible for earlier release. Karen Shook, for instance, a 44-year-old single mother of three, was serving a 20- to 40-year sentence for conspiracy to sell 2.5 ounces of cocaine. It was her first arrest, and Shook said she thought her sentence was particularly harsh because she was only an intermediary. "I got longer than most people get for violent crimes," Shook said. But under the revised law, Shook became eligible for parole in April, after she had served 10 years, and she has now returned to her home near Lansing. "In the end, the impossible happened," Shook said. "I had appeal after appeal turned down by the courts, and then it was the Legislature that wrote the law the other way and got me out." _NYT-11-09-03 1954EST
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-chem10mar10,1,7264465.story COMMENTARY 3 Strikes: Cruel, Unusual and Unfair
March 10, 2003 The U.S. Supreme Court's decisions upholding life imprisonment for shoplifters make reform of California's three-strikes law through the Legislature or the initiative process imperative. Today, 344 people are serving life sentences in California's prisons for shoplifting a small amount of merchandise. More than 650 individuals are serving life sentences for possessing small quantities of drugs. Such sentences make no rational sense and are inhumane. Unfortunately, the high court's decisions mean that the only hope is for the Legislature to modify the three-strikes law to limit its application to those who commit serious or violent felonies. If the Legislature lacks the moral courage to make this simple change -- and so far its members have been unwilling to do so -- then there must be a voter initiative to revise the law. The Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, upheld the indeterminate life sentence with no possibility of parole for 50 years that Leandro Andrade received for stealing $153 worth of children's videotapes from Kmart. An Army veteran and a father of three, Andrade never had committed a violent offense. He was 37 years old in 1996 when he was sentenced; his earliest possible parole date is 2046, when he will be 87 years old. The other case the U.S. Supreme Court heard involved Gary Ewing, who received an indeterminate life sentence with no possibility of parole for 25 years for stealing three golf clubs. For at least a century, the high court has held that grossly disproportionate sentences constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the 8th Amendment. If any sentence is grossly disproportionate, surely it is life imprisonment for shoplifting. As Justice David Souter observed in his dissenting opinion, "If Andrade's sentence is not grossly disproportionate, the principle has no meaning." In no other state could Andrade and Ewing have received these sentences. Every other state with a three-strikes law requires that the third strike be a serious or violent offense. At the time Andrade and Ewing were convicted, the maximum penalty for rape was eight years in prison, for manslaughter, 11 years, and for second-degree murder, 15 years. Yet the U.S. Supreme Court says it is permissible to put shoplifters in prison for life. Apart from it being cruel and unusual punishment, such a sentence for shoplifting makes no sense financially. It costs as much as $30,000 to imprison a person for a year. California is spending a large amount of money to incarcerate petty offenders -- funds that could be better spent educating children or sheltering the homeless. And many studies by social scientists have shown that the three-strikes law has no appreciable effect in decreasing crime. The goal, though, is not to eliminate the three-strikes law. No one denies that repeat violent offenders should be imprisoned for long periods. Rather, the law must be changed so that it is not used to put people in prison for life for such offenses as shoplifting or possessing a small amount of drugs for personal use. Last year, Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg introduced a bill to modify the three-strikes law so that it could be used only for serious or violent offenders. Astoundingly, the day the legislation was introduced, Gov. Gray Davis announced that he would veto it. The bill did not pass. Opinion polls show that the majority of Californians favor changing the law to require that the third strike be a serious or violent felony. But elected officials don't want to appear soft on crime, even when the crime is shoplifting. No politician wants to be vulnerable to a story of a shoplifter who was released and then committed a much worse crime. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear that there will be no relief from inhumane sentences in the courts, legislators must show courage and change the law. Otherwise, there must be an initiative in 2004 to revise the three-strikes law. Efforts are already underway to place an initiative on the ballot, but reform through the initiative process will be difficult. Initiatives succeed best when they are well financed, and there is no wealthy constituency for reforming the three-strikes law. I represented Leandro Andrade in the federal appeals court and the U.S. Supreme Court. Like so many people sentenced under the three-strikes law, he had committed a series of property crimes because of drug addiction. Andrade already has served seven years in prison for stealing merchandise worth $153. He has 43 years left on his sentence and no hope from any court in the country. In a nation that prides itself on basic human decency, and with a Constitution
that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, this just can't be right.
http://www.latimes.com/la-le-stephens15mar15,1,6096819.story
March 15, 2003 Erwin Chemerinsky's critique of California's three-strikes law is well taken ("3 Strikes: Cruel, Unusual and Unfair," Commentary, March 10). It touches on an even wider issue: the Legislature's usurping the duty of judges to judge. A few years ago I was foreman of a jury that sent a 19-year-old boy to prison for life, guilty of first-degree murder. He hadn't even been present at the shooting. He didn't know it had happened until his friend ran back to the car. But the Legislature has decreed that an accessory before the fact is as guilty as the triggerman. The man who did the shooting had told our defendant to stop the car. He was going to "jack," meaning rob, a shop around the corner. Our defendant, obviously dominated by his older friend, didn't try to stop him. That made him an accessory. The Legislature has decreed that life imprisonment is required for a person guilty of first-degree murder. So a young man who probably should have spent 30 days in the county jail for extremely poor judgment is instead a lifer. Under the law as defined in our instructions, we had no choice but to find him guilty. The judge should have had the prerogative of pronouncing a reasonable sentence. But he had no choice either. That sort of thing must be happening almost daily under "three strikes" and other laws that essentially remove judging from the judges. Reason and fairness suggest that these superbly trained men and women should be given back the right to do what they're paid to do: judge each case according to its merits. Harrison Stephens Claremont * Should we really differentiate between petty theft and any other crime? A person who commits a crime, any crime, is a criminal. Not only are the laws that are to be followed spelled out clearly for these people, they get two additional "freebies," if you will, on top of that. How many chances should a criminal get before he is not allowed to harm the community anymore? Anthony C. Wilson Redondo Beach * Chemerinsky is again whining about the unfairness of California's three-strikes law. The law professor obviously feels that a criminal with two major crime convictions and just one minor one should get only a slap on the wrist for the last one and then get released in a relatively short period so he can continue preying on society. Wake up and smell the felonies, professor! California's three-strikes law is a way of leveling the playing field. That third strike is not only for the first two but for all the others we don't know about. Jack Berkus Playa del Rey * Professor Chemerinsky makes a good case that the three-strikes law is cruel, unusual and unfair. It seems clear that the law will never change without an initiative being passed. The unknown factor is how many second-strike felons leave the state to avoid the third strike. My guess is that it is in the hundreds if not thousands, especially after the recent Supreme Court ruling. Career criminals should take notice. Meanwhile, the public is saddled with paying millions to incarcerate many who should probably not be in jail on a long-term basis. Bob Kerber Oceanside |
