Supreme Court Decides Long Prison Terms Legal
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 6, 2003; Page A01
The Supreme Court upheld California’s authority to implement the nation’s toughest “three strikes and you’re out” law yesterday, ruling that a shoplifter’s sentence of decades in prison does not necessarily violate the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
In ruling 5 to 4 that Gary Ewing’s sentence of 25 years to life for stealing three golf clubs was a defensible exercise of California’s right to fight crime, the court instructed opponents of the increasingly controversial law to seek change in the state legislature, not through the courts.
“To be sure, Ewing’s sentence is a long one,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote. “But it reflects a rational legislative judgment, entitled to deference, that offenders who have committed serious or violent felonies and who continue to commit felonies must be incapacitated.”
The court’s ruling also seems to close the door on future court challenges to lengthy sentences in the 25 other states that have “three-strikes provisions,” legal analysts said.
“The fact that these sentences don’t violate the [Constitution] makes it harder to imagine any case in which the court is going to find a sentence grossly disproportionate” to the crime, said Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at the University of Southern California who helped oppose the California law in the Supreme Court.
The votes in favor came from O’Connor, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.
Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer dissented.
Breyer read his opinion from the bench, in a gesture dissenting justices usually reserve for cases in which they disagree especially strongly with the majority. In his opinion, which the three other dissenters co-signed, he said criminals guilty of murder and other violent offenses in California have served much shorter prison sentences than Ewing will under the “three-strikes” law, and that Ewing’s sentence was two to three times longer than other states would have imposed in similar circumstances.
“The case before us is . . . one in which a court can say with reasonable confidence that the punishment is grossly disproportionate to the crime,” Breyer wrote.
California’s “three-strikes” law was passed in 1994 by both the state legislature and a popular referendum after 12-year-old Polly Klaas was murdered by a violent felon who was out on parole. The law called for sentences of 25 years to life for third felony convictions; it is considered the toughest of its kind because the third felony does not have to be violent and can even be a misdemeanor that the prosecutor chooses to charge as a felony.
The case triggered a strong voter reaction not only in California, but also across the country, where “three-strikes” laws effected what O’Connor yesterday called “a sea change” in criminal justice.
Statistics in California show that taking career criminals off the streets has reduced crime; at the same time, concern is mounting in the state about the numbers of minor offenders being swept up by the law. Currently, 344 people are serving 25 years to life for petty theft after prior felony convictions; about 650 are serving similar sentences for possession of small amounts of drugs.
Under its precedents, the court’s task yesterday was to compare Ewing’s sentence with those it had previously evaluated to see if they qualified as so “grossly disproportionate” as to violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
In two rulings involving nonviolent repeat offenders, the court had upheld a sentence of life with parole after 10 to12 years for a $120 fraud charge, and struck down a life sentence without parole for writing a bad check for $100. It had also upheld a life without parole sentence for a first offender convicted of possessing 672 grams of cocaine.
O’Connor, writing for herself, Rehnquist and Kennedy only, ruled that Ewing’s sentence was not grossly disproportionate in light of his “long history of felony recidivism,” which included three burglaries and a robbery.
Scalia wrote separately to note that the Eighth Amendment is meant to ban only certain methods of punishment. He said there is no objective way to measure the proportionality of prison sentences, so the sentence should be affirmed simply in deference to the California legislature.
Scalia wrote separately to note that the Eighth Amendment is meant to ban only certain methods of punishment. He said there is no objective way to measure the proportionality of prison sentences, so the sentence should be affirmed simply in deference to the California legislature.
That very lack of a clear principle in its past cases was the basis for the court’s decision yesterday to uphold a second California prisoner’s 50 years-to-life “three-strikes” sentence in a companion case to Ewing’s.
Leandro Andrade, a heroin addict with a long criminal record, was sentenced to 25 years to life on each of two counts of shoplifting videotapes to finance his habit. Already 37 at the time of his conviction, Andrade will be jailed until he is at least 87.
Leandro Andrade, a heroin addict with a long criminal record, was sentenced to 25 years to life on each of two counts of shoplifting videotapes to finance his habit. Already 37 at the time of his conviction, Andrade will be jailed until he is at least 87.
But in a 5 to 4 ruling also written by O’Connor, the Supreme Court ruled that the state courts had not been wrong to reach a different conclusion, since they had made a reasonable effort to parse Supreme Court decisions “that, in determining whether a particular sentence of a term of years can violate the Eighth Amendment . . . have not established a clear or consistent path for courts to follow.”
And O’Connor noted that “Andrade retains the possibility of parole.”
The cases are Ewing v. California, No. 01-6978 and Lockyer v. Andrade, No. 01-1127.