California reconsiders 'three-strikes' sentencing



Thursday, October 14, 2004 Posted: 10:04 AM EDT (1404 GMT)

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- California voters are taking a second whack at "three-strikes" guidelines a decade after they first passed the nation's toughest sentencing law.

Crime and punishment have always made for raw politics, and the rhetoric swirling around Proposition 66 can make it tough to sort out just what it would do.

Pass it November 2, proponents say, and restore sanity to a law that has slapped life sentences on shoplifters and small-time drug users. Opponents say its passage would flood the streets with predatory criminals.

The truth, of course, lies somewhere between.

In essence, Proposition 66 turns on the question of how justice should be administered: Is the goal retribution, or another chance?

"If this thing passes, you're looking at a wholesale bloodbath," said Mike Reynolds, who galvanized California's three-strikes movement following his daughter's 1992 murder.

"A bloodbath -- why? We're not letting any violent people out," counters Joe Klaas, a leading supporter whose granddaughter was killed in a famous kidnapping case.

The ballot measure is among the most hard-fought of the 16 propositions that Californians will decide this year. The emotionally charged campaign has included opponents sending out mug shots of the most egregious criminals they say would be immediately back on the streets.

Polling suggests voters may opt to change current law. A poll released Wednesday shows nearly two-thirds of likely voters support the proposition.

The three-strikes law gets its name because felons can get 25-years-to-life sentences on their third conviction, provided the first two strikes were serious or violent felonies. The law prompted an unsuccessful appeal to the Supreme Court on behalf of petty criminals.

The ballot measure would change the law in two primary ways.

First, it would require that the maximum sentence only be triggered if a third conviction is a "serious or violent" felony. That requirement would bring California in line with the three-strikes laws of many other states.

Second, Proposition 66 would make eligible for resentencing any inmate serving life if their third strike is not "serious or violent." Judges would reassess whether a felon is serving an unjustifiably long term.

The proposition also shortens the list of strikes by deleting felonies including criminal threats and burglary of an unoccupied residence.

Proponents say the measure achieves what voters really wanted in 1994 when, cowed by a tough-on-crime lobby that gained clout as public safety deteriorated, they passed the original three-strikes proposition. The unintended consequences, they say, were thousands of hard-luck cases forced to become life sentences.

Opponents counter that voters knew just what they were doing: locking up hardcore repeat offenders before they can rape, murder or rob again.

Wildly divergent claims about how many inmates would be released illustrate how superheated the campaign has become.

Proposition 66 backers say no more than 4,100 felons -- none the predatory villain that opponents claim -- could have their sentences reduced. Opponents assert as many as 26,000 felons could be released.

The Legislative Analyst's Office estimates that some fraction of the current 7,500 third-strikers would be eligible for resentencing, but does not publicly estimate how many might gain freedom.

Another foggy area is how much the proposition might cost.

Proponents hail a legislative analyst's report that says Proposition 66 would save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by reducing the prison population. Opponents call that ridiculous, saying it would cost millions to beef up law enforcement to catch and imprison newly released strikers who will inflict suffering on the public that cannot be measured.

Klaas is among the prominent supporters. He is the grandfather of Polly Klaas, the girl whose brutal kidnapping and murder made her the poster child for the 1994 law. The issue is so divisive that the proposition has driven a wedge between Joe Klaas and his son, Marc, Polly's father and an ardent opponent of Proposition 66.


-----------------------

source CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/10/14/ca.threestrikes.ap/index.html
var clickExpire = "11/13/2004";

I love Joe Klass - for all the crap that family went thru the man is about FAIRNESS and not just making everyone pay for the loss of their family member.

I fully support the revision of this law and have long felt the "time should be equal to the crime!" I'm sick of hearing people sent away for 5 years for burglary and then 25 years for a half sack of dope or the soda they boosted.

October 24, 2004

California Rethinking '3-Strikes' Sentencing

By DEAN E. MURPHY

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 23 - Public outrage over the murder of Polly Klaas, a 12-year-old who had been kidnapped from her bedroom by a man who had repeatedly committed violent crimes, was the driving force behind California's passage 10 years ago of the country's harshest "three strikes" sentencing law.

Now the Klaas family is at the center of an election battle over an initiative that would significantly scale back parts of the 1994 law. This time, Polly's father and grandfather are on opposite sides of an impassioned campaign that criminal justice experts say reflects a broad rethinking of the nation's tough-on-crime legislation of a decade ago.

"The politics of crime and punishment has calmed down," said Franklin Zimring, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of a book about the three-strikes law. "It isn't that people are less punitive; they are less concerned."

One of the most significant changes proposed in the ballot measure, known as Proposition 66, would put California more in line with the 24 other states that have three-strikes laws. The change would restrict so-called third-strike offenses for repeated felons, which require a 25-year-to-life sentence, to serious or violent crimes.

Currently, even crimes not defined as serious or violent can count as a third strike, leading to instances in which multiple offenders have received the maximum penalty for committing crimes like shoplifting or possessing small amounts of narcotics. Last year, the United States Supreme Court rejected constitutional challenges to sentences of 25 years without parole for a man who stole three golf clubs from a pro shop and 50 years without parole for another man for stealing children's videotapes from a Kmart store.

The changes proposed in Proposition 66 infuriate Polly Klaas's father, Marc Klaas, founder of the KlaasKids Foundation, a nonprofit group that focuses on crimes against children. He appears in a television advertisement, expected to be broadcast next week, which features a rape victim worrying about her rapist's going free under Proposition 66.

"I don't want my family legacy to have anything to do with this," Mr. Klaas said in a telephone interview. He said he was so angry about his father's involvement on the proponents' side that he forbade him from using Polly's name in the campaign.

"For them to use this, our family tragedy, for their own political agenda is just terribly unfair," he said. "I think my father has made a huge mistake here. I don't know. It may even be an unforgivable mistake here, quite frankly. I just can't believe my father is allowing himself to be the token victim in this."

His father, Joe Klaas, 84, said the proposed revisions were long overdue and in the interest of justice. While honoring his son's request not to invoke his granddaughter's name, Joe Klaas has emerged as the most listened-to proponent of the ballot measure, in large part because of his family's suffering from Polly's kidnapping and murder in 1993. A campaign official described him as a "stud grandpa" who has been tirelessly flying across the state.

"The three-strikes law needs fixing," the elder Mr. Klaas said. "Everybody thought they were voting to put violent criminals away. It has taken 10 years to get the word out and educate the public."

The Klaas family schism mirrors a philosophical divide across California over the three-strikes law as an array of liberal advocacy and criminal justice groups, backed by money from people like George Soros, clash with law enforcement officials, the measure's main opponents.

Mr. Soros, the philanthropist and financier, has contributed $150,000 to the campaign, as have both Peter B. Lewis, chairman of the Progressive Corporation insurance company, and John G. Sperling, founder of the University of Phoenix. The three also supported a successful ballot measure in 2000, which requires many nonviolent drug offenders to be sent into treatment instead of prison.

The biggest donor has been a Sacramento businessman, Jerry Keenan, who contributed $1.9 million toward the signature-gathering effort and $800,000 toward the initiative's passage, according to campaign finance reports. Mr. Keenan's son, Richard, is serving an eight-year prison term for vehicular manslaughter stemming from the deaths of two of his passengers when he crashed his car in 1999 after drinking beer and smoking marijuana. Though application of the law to his case is complicated, it is possible Richard Keenan's sentence would be reduced if Proposition 66 passes.

On the other side, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Attorney General Bill Lockyer and every district attorney in the state have lined up in defense of the existing statute. The politically influential correctional officers' union also backs the law, having donated $150,000 to the cause.

Opponents argue that the law has contributed to the steep decline in crime across the state since 1994. Though prosecutors have the discretion to invoke the law, they say they need that option to lock up dangerous criminals, even those caught for relatively minor crimes. The law has been applied sporadically and unevenly, with some counties, like San Francisco, virtually ignoring it, and others, like Fresno County, relying more heavily upon it, but none of the state's 58 district attorneys want to forfeit it.

In a campaign appearance on Wednesday, Mr. Schwarzenegger said Proposition 66 "is a danger to public safety and it threatens our neighborhoods." In a Republican Party voting guide mailed this week, defeating Proposition 66 was listed as one of Mr. Schwarzenegger's top election priorities.

But even with the popular governor against it, opinion polls show passage of the measure leading among likely voters of both parties. A Field Poll early this month indicated the measure was comfortably ahead, with the support of 65 percent of likely voters. A recent Los Angeles Times poll put support at 3 to 1.

Professor Zimring said the surveys pointed to a remarkable shift in public perceptions about a law that only a few years ago was considered politically off limits. Though critics have long argued the law was flawed, too costly and overreaching, tinkering with it in the crime-sensitive 1990's was out of the question.

"Any two-sided debate about three strikes is a real novelty in California," Professor Zimring said. "The fact that we are having this kind of conversation is already evidence of an enormous sea change in criminal justice."

While most attention in the Proposition 66 campaign has focused on so-called third-strikers - the felons convicted of a third offense - data compiled by the Policy and Evaluation Division of the Department of Corrections show the 1994 law has had a greater impact on second-strike offenders.

The law doubled the sentences of second-strikers and made it more difficult for them to qualify for parole. The data show that of the 42,920 inmates serving sentences under the three-strikes law as of June 30, 35,462 were second-strikers.

Proposition 66 would make life easier for some of the second-strikers. The requirement that third-strike offenses be serious or violent felonies would also apply to second-strike offenses. The measure would reduce the number of felonies considered as violent or serious. Taken off the list would be crimes like burglary of an unoccupied residence and taking part in felonies committed by a criminal street gang.

Mr. Schwarzenegger and other opponents of the measure have focused on a provision that would apply the law retroactively to prisoners serving an indeterminate life sentence for crimes that were not violent or serious. Proponents estimate passage of the measure would lead to the reconsideration of 4,000 or so sentences, while opponents suggest as many as 26,000 prisoners, including many convicted on second strikes, could be eligible for early release.

Marc Klaas calls the retroactive provision a "get-out-of-jail-free card" for some of the state's most hardened criminals. He said many residents feared that released criminals could strike again.

"Each one of these fellows is going to move next door to somebody," he said. "My father lives in a gated community. None of these guys are going to end up next to him. But I don't live in a gated community and most people don't."

The elder Mr. Klaas said opponents were using scare tactics by raising the specter of criminals on the loose.

"I am not worried about one of them moving in next to him," Joe Klaas said of his son, "because all along we have been talking about nonviolent offenders."


Copyright 2004 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/) | Home (http://www.nytimes.com/) | Privacy Policy (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/privacy.html) | Search (http://query.nytimes.com/search/advanced/) | Corrections (http://www.nytimes.com/corrections.html) | RSS (http://www.nytimes.com/rss) | Help (http://www.nytimes.com/membercenter/sitehelp.html) | Back to Top (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/national/24strikes.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=#top) postamble();

Right on. It gives one hope for humanity!
I love Joe Klass - for all the crap that family went thru the man is about FAIRNESS and not just making everyone pay for the loss of their family member.

I fully support the revision of this law and have long felt the "time should be equal to the crime!" I'm sick of hearing people sent away for 5 years for burglary and then 25 years for a half sack of dope or the soda they boosted.