 "We have to share with the worst of the worst, such as killers, violent gang members, rapists and prople with assaults. ... They put us in a place where nothing is funny, and if it is you who takes a chance if you laugh. That could get you into an altercation and maybe even stabbed. For a petty offense, why would the system do this to us and why do the people, the (Legislature) and even the President, allow it to happen?" |
| - Isiah Lucas, 36, Sentenced to 50 years to life in April 1998 for two counts of receiving stolen property. Prior strikes: three residential burglaries. |
| "It gives the local prosecutor the power to choose who gets life and who doesn't. It also let the D.A. go back in time 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years or even further to charge you with a serious or violent felony that you finished parole on." |
| - Jeremiah Sheppard, 56. Sentenced to 25 years to life in October 1996 for two counts of receiving stolen property. Prior strikes: Four robberies between 1966 and 1972. |
| "How do I feel about the law as it's written? It stinks. It sucks. The public was lied to and cheated." |
| - Derril Peck, 46. Sentenced to 25 to life in September 1996 for a second-degree burglary. Prior strikes: Four residential burglaries in 1985, and assault with deadly weapon in 1985 and a robbery in 1977. |
| "My feelings concerning this law is that it's very unfair and unfortunate that it wasn't used for its purpose, and that so may people are being affected in the wrong ways." |
| - Curtis McCowen, 31. Sentenced to 40 years to life in October 1996 for robbery. Prior strikes: three robberies in 1988 and 1991. |
| War of rhetoric It's against statistics such as these that the three-strikes debate continues to rage, sparking passionate and politically charged rhetoric from supporters and opponents. |
| Critics contend that the law doesn't work - that its goal of removing serious and violent recidivists from the streets has fallen far from the mark. |
| They complain that nonviolent offenders are being bused to already overcrowded prisons to live out the rest of their lives on the taxpayer's dole, that the state's dropping crime rate has nothing to do with a law that sweeps pizza-stealers off the streets, and that the Eighth Amendment, banning cruel and unusual punishment, is being chipped away with each passing three-strikes case. |
| Supporters of three-strikes say the law is doing exactly what it was intended to do - that its efficacy lies in its ability to catch career criminals committing crimes - and that jailing a rapist is a good thing, even if it's for writing a bad check. |
| Common sense asserts that any law pulling people out of the cycle of crime must get some credit for dropping the crime rate, they argue. And it's about time that victims' rights win out over the rights of felons. |
| Critics are correct when they say the law is being invoked most often for nonviolent crimes. Of the cases studied, 70 percent involved nonviolent third offenses. |
| The crimes were burglary, drug possession, petty theft with a prior theft conviction, possession of a firearm by a felon, drug sales, receiving stolen property, eluding police or reckless driving, joyriding, forgery, grand theft, failure to register as a sex offender, burning property and extortion. |
| "There are certain three-strikes cases that we understand," says Kenneth McDonald, a Long Beach deputy public defender. "We don't understand - and think it's outrageous - when it's a petty theft, a rock of cocaine, stealing a car." |
| "It's the most painful thing to watch," adds one courtroom assistant, speaking on condition of anonymity. "People don't realize that (criminals) are going away for as little as stealing a pack of batteries" |
| Range of profiles Records show, however, that even those picked up for nonviolent offenses represent a wide range of profiles. The more sympathetic among them include middle-aged men whose once-serious or violent crimes have waned into theft, young men whose prior strikes were committed as juveniles, and people who have never raised a fist or weapon to another person, but instead have spent countless nights crawling into empty houses searching for stereos to pawn. |
| Joseph Pires, Jr., for example, robbed several people between 1975 and 1982. But in recent years, the 45-year-old had turned away from violence. In the '90s, he was convicted of fraud and receiving stolen property. Then, three years ago, Pires shoplifted from a San Pedro Top Value Market. He was sentenced to 25 years to life. |
| John Davis, 28, had a short, youthful rap sheet. He was twice convicted of robbery - once when he was 16 years old, and again when he was 19. Then, in 1997, Davis burglarized a car and was sentenced a year later to 25 years to life. Of the 191 third-strikers studied, he was one of 11 whose juvenile offenses counted as strikes. |
| William Hobson, 30, couldn't even drink legally when he was convicted of residential burglary - two in 1990 at the age of 19, one in 1991 at the age of 20. In 1995, he was convicted of selling drugs in the 1100 block Daisy Avenue. |
| He is now serving 27 years to life in prison. |
| McCrimmon and Hobson were two of the 22 strikers studied who had never been convicted of a violent crime. Residential burglary was the worst crime on their record. |
| If the three-strikes law hadn't existed at the time, McCrimmon would have faced a maximum sentence of three years in prison plus up to three years for his prior offenses. In all likelihood, he would have been paroled by now. |
| Past records "Nonviolent third-strikers" aren't necessarily sympathetic ones. There are those who have made a habit of sticking guns in store clerks' faces, whose two-and three-year prison stints have done little to curb their criminal behavior, and whose earlier violence hasn't waned at all, but who happened to get caught selling drugs rather than assaulting a stranger. |
| Jeffrey Martin's criminal history runs the gamut. In 1977, he was convicted of manslaughter and assault with a deadly weapon. In 1980, he was convicted of rape, robbery and burglary. He was convicted of robbery in 1988, and again in 1991. But his luck ran out in 1995, when the 38-year-old Compton man tried to cash three stolen checks at a Long Beach bank. His crime was forgery, but his two-decade felony career netted him 25 years to life. Without the three-strikes law, Martin would have faced less than four and a half years in prison, plus up to five years for his prior offenses. |
| Like Martin, more than a quarter of the 191 third-strikers studied had at least four previous serious or violent crimes on their records. |
| Rodney Jones, 38, had been imprisoned numerous times during his lifetime. Between 1982 and 1993, the Lynwood resident burglarized seven homes and was convicted of six counts of receiving stolen property - a crime often charged when burglary can't be proven. His career hadn't changed four years later when he was arrested, once again, for burglary. But the law had changed, and he was sent to prison for 50 years to life. |
| William Morrison, 32, had two convictions for armed robbery on his record before he was caught with a gun two years ago in the Long Beach hotel where he'd been living. Given his track record, officials said, Morrison was probably waiting for his chance to commit another armed robbery. He was sentenced last year to 25 years to life. |
| Worst cases The 58 remaining third-strikers studied were those imprisoned for violent third strikes: robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, sexual assault, murder, terrorist threats, carjacking, kidnapping, assault or battery of a police officer, battery, shooting into an inhabited dwelling, child abuse, arson or voluntary manslaughter. |
| Gregory Burr's crimes escalated through his criminal career. In 1986, when Burr was 22, he was convicted of burglarizing a home. In 1989, he was convicted of anned robbery. And in 1998, he was convicted of aiding and abetting a second-degree murder and attempted murder. |
| According to prosecutor Marilyn Seymour, Burr stood by as his buddy fatally shot Danielle Williams in her Long Beach apartment during a dispute over drugs. The conviction signified Burr's third - and most brazen - strike, and he was sentenced to 110 years to life in prison. |
| Had the three-strikes law not been in effect, Burr still would have faced a hefty sentence: 26 years to life plus up to 15 years for his prior offenses, Seymour says. |
| Troy Mendenhall, 33, showed a similar escalating pattern. He served prison terms for assault with a deadly weapon in 1985 and again in 1990. Two years ago, the San Pedro man was convicted of robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, kidnapping in the commission of a carjacking and eluding a police officer. His sentence: 121 years to life. |
| Robert Creswell's mother might be alive today if the three-strikes law had been enacted a decade earlier. The 63-year-old Long Beach man had a record littered with robberies, drug convictions and burglaries dating back to the 1950s. In November 1996, Creswell severely beat his 81-year-old mother, who died three months later. He was sentenced last year to 55 years to life in prison. |
| Cases reviewedUltimately, says Stephen Kay, head deputy at the Long Beach DistrictAttorney's Office, it's the person's criminal record - not his third strike - that spells his fate. |
| Determining which strikers deserve life sentences requires in-depth reviews of each case, he says. Shoplifter Terry Bryant, for instance, had two robberies and an assault with a deadly weapon on her record, along with a felony drug charge and some misdemeanors. |
| It is this procedural step - studying each prior case - that justifies locking up drug users and shoplifters for prison terms usually allotted to rapists and murderers, some prosecutors say. |
| "You're not sending them away for petty theft with a prior," Long Beach Deputy District Attorney Christopher Frisco stresses. "You're sending them away for their felony history." |
| If it weren't for a drug offense, for instance, two-time sex offender Jose Ramirez, of San Pedro, would still be on the streets. Ramirez, 45, raped a 31-year-old mentally disabled woman in 1981. Six years later, he forced a lewd act upon a 15-year-old girl. His third offense, possession of heroin, was far less serious than his previous two, but it was the one that got him locked up for 25 years to life. |
| Fifteen of the 28 sex offenders studied were, like Ramirez, picked up for nonviolent crimes. |
| It tskes only two previous serious or violent felonies to invoke the three-strikes law, but some of the strikers studied had dozens of felonies on their rap sheets. Many were on parole when their third strike was committed. George Payton, 53, was picked up for a petty theft after committing 15 robberies between 1969 and 1989. Had the three-strikes law been on the books during the height of his criminal activity, his last 11 robberies would have been avoided. |
| Others, such as 30-year-old Mark Williams, had relatively few felonies on record. In 1992, he was convicted by a single jury of two residential burglaries. Four years later, under the three-strikes law, he was sentenced to 25 years to life after he tried to sell stolen goods to a Long Beach pawn shop. |
| Even misdemeanor convictions may be used to underscore a person's felony record, although they don't count as strikes. Rarely registered in court files, they sometimes show up in transcripts of third-strike sentencings. |
| Prisoner's newsletter Richard Keech, an 80-year-old prisoner at the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo, offers a unique perspective on the law. Keech, of East Long Beach, garnered media attention in 1996 when he shot his daughter's husband to death and was sentenced to 35 years to life. While not a striker himself, Keech wrote in his own newsletter about the addition of strikers to the longterm prison populations |
| "Thanks to (three) strikes," he wrote, the prison is "populated with a lot of decent guys who are largely victims of a somewhat over-eager (district attorney and) court system where careers are based on conviction ratios." |
| He added: "I am in prison because I killed a man. I can accept that a few years in prison is a fair trade. But my friends around me who face the same hardships I do aren't all as lucky. One is in prison for life because he was convicted of shoplifting paint cans at Home Depot. His ability to face that destiny for that reason calls for a greater bravery than mine does." |
| Keech says the three-strikes net is too wide. That's the crux of the three-strikes debate. |
| Long Beach Superior Court Judge Richard Charvat, who sentenced Terry Bryant to 25 years to life, knew that her third strike - stealing men's underwear from a department store - would hardly shock the public's conscience. |
| But, he says, he had little choice. |
| She was a drug user and a petty crook - and she had a violent streak. |
| "She just had total recidivist behavior, and her rehabilitation efforts were nil," says Charvat, now a civil court judge. |
| "But don't think I didn't think about it (afterward). I tell you, you lose sleep over some of these things." |
| Next Page -> |
Back the Badge
Return to Home Page