Arguing
THE THIRD STRIKE
PROSECUTORS DEFEND THEIR GET-TOUGH STRATEGY.
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ArguingTHE THIRD STRIKEPROSECUTORS DEFEND THEIR GET-TOUGH STRATEGY. |
| Since the three strikes law was enacted five years ago (Pen C �667(b)-(i)), state prisons have become the long-term home of defendants convicted for stealing things like shampoo, cigarettes, or vitamins. Such cases are often used to prove that the three strikes law isn't having the intended effect. Instead of locking up just dangerous criminals, critics say, the law is warehousing minor offenders at taxpayers' expense. Last year the California Department of Corrections reported that more than half of the sentences under the law were for nonviolent offenses. The law's critics are making some headway. The state Senate is currently considering a bill that would ask the legislative analyst to study three strikes to determine whether or not it needs fixing. A similar proposal is also being weighed by the state Assembly. And in September a coalition of anti-three strikes organizations announced it was filing an initiative to reform the law. |
| Three strikes was enacted by both initiative vote and legislative action in the wake of the much-publicized kidnapping and murder of twelve-year-old Polly Klaas by paroled convict Richard Allen Davis. Designed to lock away dangerous, repeat criminals, the law says that if two serious or violent felony priors are alleged and proved, a third felony conviction, even if not violent, mandates an indeterminate life sentence for the defendant with a minimum of 25 years. |
| For prosecutors three strikes is a powerflul weapon. But even for them it hasn't always been universally popular. The law's first draft rigidly required all possible strikes to be charged-even nonviolent ones. The sponsors finally gave prosecutors the ability to disregard earlier felonies, but they didn't extend the same power to judges: In 1996 the state Supreme Court ruled that such an arrangement violated the separation of powers doctrine and gave judges the discretion to strike priors at sentencing. People v Superior Court (Romero) 13 C4th 497. With these modifications, three strikes was embraced by perhaps every prosecutor in the state. Even San Mateo District Attorney James Fox, perhaps the only DA to publicly oppose the law at first, has changed his mind. "Now that both prosecutors and judges can strike priors, the law works," he says. |
| Since Romero three strikes cases get two levels of review: one by the prosecutor and one by the judge. If neither the DA's office nor the judge see fit to strike a prior, say the law's supporters, the defendant |
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