California Supreme Court makes it harder for Three-Strikes Prisoners to get Sentence Reductions
"Judges have broad authority in refusing to lighten the sentences of 'three-strike' inmates, despite recent ballot measures aimed at reducing
the state’s prison population, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday.
In a 4-3 decision,
the court said judges may freely decline to trim sentences for inmates
who qualify for reductions under a 2012 ballot measure intended to
reform the state’s tough three-strikes sentencing law.
Justice Leondra R. Kruger, an appointee of Gov. Jerry Brown, joined the more conservative justices to reach the result.
The
decision aimed to resolve questions posed by two ballot measures in
recent years to reduce the population of the state’s overburdened prison
system."
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Showing posts with label Three Strikes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Three Strikes. Show all posts
Brutal Crimes Don't Justify Bad Laws
"Massachusetts Juvenile Judge Jay D. Blitzman got it right when he explained in 2008 why brutal crimes so often lead to bad laws. In an article for the Barry Law Review he wrote: 'As the public and media react to the crime du jour, there is an unfortunate tendency to legislate by anecdote.' Stories gain momentum, get fueled in the press, and can be used for political advantage by the powers that be, and before we know it, the need for change, and in some cases, vengeance, turns too quickly into ill-conceived laws."
"Massachusetts Juvenile Judge Jay D. Blitzman got it right when he explained in 2008 why brutal crimes so often lead to bad laws. In an article for the Barry Law Review he wrote: 'As the public and media react to the crime du jour, there is an unfortunate tendency to legislate by anecdote.' Stories gain momentum, get fueled in the press, and can be used for political advantage by the powers that be, and before we know it, the need for change, and in some cases, vengeance, turns too quickly into ill-conceived laws."
Taibbi: Politicians and Law Enforcement Have Trapped Too Many People in Jail for Life with Extreme Three Strikes Laws
A parade of politicians and law enforcement officials has created a Pandora’s box that’s trapped countless low-income offenders.
California’s colossal calamity known as the Three Strikes sentencing law was made less strident by voters last fall. But according to a profile by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone,
the wreckage from 16 years of putting people away for life continues to
extract an absurd toll in which thousands of petty criminals and
mentally ill people are jailed for no good reason.
California passed its law after the brutal kidnapping and murder of a 12-year-old girl in a small northern California town in 1993. But as Taibbi chronicles, a parade of Democratic and Republican politicians, law enforcement officials and get-tough-on-crime activists has created a Pandora’s box that’s trapped more low-rent offenders than anyone else, ruining lives and costing taxpayers multiple millions.
The law imposing life for anyone convicted of a third felony took effect on March 8, 1994. Nine hours later it found its first victim, Taibbi notes, “a homeless schizophrenic named Lester Wallace, with two nonviolent burglaries on his sheet, who attempted to steal a car radio near the University of Southern California campus.”
Read on...
California passed its law after the brutal kidnapping and murder of a 12-year-old girl in a small northern California town in 1993. But as Taibbi chronicles, a parade of Democratic and Republican politicians, law enforcement officials and get-tough-on-crime activists has created a Pandora’s box that’s trapped more low-rent offenders than anyone else, ruining lives and costing taxpayers multiple millions.
The law imposing life for anyone convicted of a third felony took effect on March 8, 1994. Nine hours later it found its first victim, Taibbi notes, “a homeless schizophrenic named Lester Wallace, with two nonviolent burglaries on his sheet, who attempted to steal a car radio near the University of Southern California campus.”
Read on...
How California’s Three-Strikes Law Struck Out
It was slain by a couple of professors, their students, and a district attorney who wanted reform.
In last week’s election, California voters made a decision that was
at once historic and obvious: They reformed the state’s infamously harsh
three-strikes law. Proposition 36, the ballot measure that passed with
an amazing 69 percent of the vote, changed the state’s three-strikes law
so that offenders who have committed no serious and violent crime will
no longer go to prison for life. The vote was historic because when
voters see crime measures on the ballot, they almost always pull the
lever in favor of retribution, not mercy. And yet this time the result
was also a no-brainer: The state was locking up petty thieves and
shoplifters for life, and given the chance to stop this, the voters
resoundingly did.
The original three-strikes ballot measure passed in California in
1994, following the terrible murder-kidnapping of 12-year-old Polly
Klaas, who was snatched from her own slumber party. The killer turned
out to be a criminal with a violent past who was out on parole. That was
all voters needed to hear to pass a measure that said it would keep
“career criminals who rape women, molest children and commit murder
behind bars where they belong.”
But as the Los Angeles Times pointed out in an editorial
this week, it’s not clear that Californians intended to go beyond the
rapists, murderers, and molesters to permanently lock up offenders like Norman Williams, whom I wrote about for the New York Times Magazine
two years ago. Williams’ third strike was a conviction for petty theft
in 1997: He stole the floor jack of a tow truck when he was homeless and
addicted to drugs. His earlier crimes also weren’t the work of a
hardened and dangerous career criminal: In 1982, he burglarized an empty
apartment while it was being fumigated. After he was robbed at gunpoint
on the way out, he helped the police find the stuff he’d stolen. In
1992, he tried to steal tools from an art studio. When the owner
confronted him, he dropped everything and ran.
Read on...
Read on...
California Voters Scrap Draconian "Three Strikes" Law
Although 25 other states have passed three-strikes laws, only California punishes minor crimes with a life sentence.
After nearly 20 years and over $20 billion spent, California voters have voted overwhelmingly to reform our state’s draconian “three strikes” law. The statewide ballot measure, Proposition 36 , delivered a two-to-one mandate (68.6%-31.4%) to close a controversial loophole in the law so that life sentences can only be imposed when the new felony conviction is “serious or violent.”
Three strikes laws, often known as habitual offender laws, grew out of the “tough on crime” era of the 1980s and 90s. Between 1993 and 1995, 24 states passed some kind of three strikes law, but California’s 1994 three strikes ballot measure was especially harsh.
While the 1994 law required the first and second strike to be either violent or serious, any infraction could trigger a third strike and the life sentence that went with it. Therefore, petty offenses – such as stealing a piece of pizza – have led to life imprisonment for thousands of people.
Read on...
After nearly 20 years and over $20 billion spent, California voters have voted overwhelmingly to reform our state’s draconian “three strikes” law. The statewide ballot measure, Proposition 36 , delivered a two-to-one mandate (68.6%-31.4%) to close a controversial loophole in the law so that life sentences can only be imposed when the new felony conviction is “serious or violent.”
Three strikes laws, often known as habitual offender laws, grew out of the “tough on crime” era of the 1980s and 90s. Between 1993 and 1995, 24 states passed some kind of three strikes law, but California’s 1994 three strikes ballot measure was especially harsh.
While the 1994 law required the first and second strike to be either violent or serious, any infraction could trigger a third strike and the life sentence that went with it. Therefore, petty offenses – such as stealing a piece of pizza – have led to life imprisonment for thousands of people.
Read on...
Proposition 36 Promises an End to California's Punitive 3 Strikes Law
Life-sentencing young offenders for petty crimes costs California taxpayers about $3m a time. Is that rational, let alone just?
On 6 November, Californians will get a chance to vote on Proposition 36, which would reform some elements of its highly controversial "three strikes" law and bring it in line with other states by closing a loophole that has allowed thousands of low level offenders to be locked up for life. As the law currently stands, anyone convicted of a third strike offense – something as minor as stealing a slice of pizza or possessing a joint of marijuana – will be sentenced to life in prison. Prop 36 would change that to ensure that only people convicted of a serious, or violent, third strike will feel the full force of the law.
The measure enjoys the support of a broad coalition of conservatives and liberals, from Grover Norquist to Cory Booker, and from prosecutors to police chiefs. If the measure passes, as is expected, it will go some distance to undo some of the worst excesses of the three strikes law. Unfortunately, it doesn't go nearly far enough.When the three strikes law went before voters in 1994 – then as Proposition 184 (pdf) – the measure was sold as a means of achieving the desirable goal of keeping repeat violent and dangerous felons behind bars for life. It was also meant to save the taxpayer "$23bn over five years". The law came about in response to the public outcry over the kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas by a repeat felon. But even at the time, the law was met with strong opposition, including by the Klaas family itself, because of fears that the majority of people who would be convicted under the proposition would be non-violent offenders and because, as written, the law "treats non-violent crimes the same as murder, rape and armed robbery". Actually, it treats them worse.
Read on...
‘Three Strikes of Injustice’
In 1994, California voters passed the harshest three-strikes law in the
country. Soon after, stories began to emerge about people receiving life
sentences for petty crimes such as stealing a pair of gloves or a slice
of pizza. Such cases challenged the commonly held belief that the law
applied only to violent criminals.
Our interest in this issue deepened when we read the results of a 2010
report, shared with us by the Three Strikes Project at Stanford Law
School. The study showed that more than 4,000 inmates in California are
serving life sentences for nonviolent offenses under the three-strikes
law. While it is possible that some of the inmates may be eligible for
parole after 25 years, a majority face the prospect of decades of prison
time. Many of these stiff sentences struck us as egregious.
Although judges have sentencing discretion in a very narrow band of
three-strikes cases, the reality is that judges almost universally
consider themselves bound under California law to impose a life sentence
for a third felony offense, no matter how minor.
"We can't afford it"
States across the country are revisiting three-strikes laws and other
tough mandatory minimum sentencing laws, particularly for low-level drug
crimes. Of the 24 states that passed three-strikes laws in the early
1990s, at least 16 have since modified them to give judges more
discretion in sentencing or narrow the types of crimes that count as a
“strike,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures
(NCSL).
At least 14 states in recent years also either eliminated mandatory minimum sentencing for low-level drug offenders, or gave judges more discretion to consider alternatives to incarceration, according to the NCSL.
Read on...
At least 14 states in recent years also either eliminated mandatory minimum sentencing for low-level drug offenders, or gave judges more discretion to consider alternatives to incarceration, according to the NCSL.
Read on...
$100,000 Per Year to Lock up a Cheese Thief? The Perverse Logic of "Three Strikes"
That a man with unpaid-for cheese in his underwear could ever have faced essentially the same sentence as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is an absurdity.
In an era of savage budget cuts to the most basic of public services, does it make sense for a state to spend $50,000-$100,000 a year to lock up a cheese thief for the rest of his natural life?
The obvious answer to that question would be "no." After all, $100,000 could keep one or two teachers employed; could pay the home-health care costs of disabled low-income Americans; or could keep an after-school program afloat. And yet, that is precisely what a grandstanding California district attorney's office earlier this month suggested was an appropriate solution for the problem that is Robert Ferguson: a mentally ill, drug-addicted 53-year-old habitual offender who has cycled in and out of prison for most of his adult life and found himself on the wrong end of a three strikes prosecution for the monstrous crime of stuffing a $3.99 bag of shredded cheese down his underpants and hot-tailing it out of a Nugget supermarket without paying.
Read on....
In an era of savage budget cuts to the most basic of public services, does it make sense for a state to spend $50,000-$100,000 a year to lock up a cheese thief for the rest of his natural life?
The obvious answer to that question would be "no." After all, $100,000 could keep one or two teachers employed; could pay the home-health care costs of disabled low-income Americans; or could keep an after-school program afloat. And yet, that is precisely what a grandstanding California district attorney's office earlier this month suggested was an appropriate solution for the problem that is Robert Ferguson: a mentally ill, drug-addicted 53-year-old habitual offender who has cycled in and out of prison for most of his adult life and found himself on the wrong end of a three strikes prosecution for the monstrous crime of stuffing a $3.99 bag of shredded cheese down his underpants and hot-tailing it out of a Nugget supermarket without paying.
Read on....
Three Strikes 15 Years Later: We’re All Out -- of Money, and Time
By Tamar Todd, AlterNet. Posted March 17, 2009.
People are serving 25 years to life in California for drug possession, for stealing a pizza, and in one especially sad case, chocolate chip cookies.
This month the California Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Richard Allen Davis, who kidnapped and murdered a young girl named Polly Klaas over 15 years ago. The murder of Polly Klaas led to a wave of fear among Californians. That fear quickly turned to outrage and that outrage quickly led to the most heavy-handed, over-reaching, costly, and ineffective sentencing policy in California history. This policy has cost the state billions of dollars to incarcerate thousands of people convicted of nonviolent offenses for extraordinarily long periods. This month is the 15th anniversary of California's Three Strikes law.
Read on...
People are serving 25 years to life in California for drug possession, for stealing a pizza, and in one especially sad case, chocolate chip cookies.
This month the California Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Richard Allen Davis, who kidnapped and murdered a young girl named Polly Klaas over 15 years ago. The murder of Polly Klaas led to a wave of fear among Californians. That fear quickly turned to outrage and that outrage quickly led to the most heavy-handed, over-reaching, costly, and ineffective sentencing policy in California history. This policy has cost the state billions of dollars to incarcerate thousands of people convicted of nonviolent offenses for extraordinarily long periods. This month is the 15th anniversary of California's Three Strikes law.
Read on...
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