Three-strikes laws

...Then Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor dissented...

...But the life sentence available in Nevada is discretionary with the court and is rarely imposed by Nevada judges...

...Kevin T. Weber of Santa Ana, who burglarized a restaurant and stole four chocolate chip cookies, was charged and convicted under the three-strikes law...

...But twenty-five years...

...Further: the very concept behind three-strikes laws abandons the possibility of rehabilitation, when in fact even a person convicted of three felonies can change...

...Canceling the sentence, the Court noted: "It is a precept of justice that punishment for crime should be graduated and proportioned to the offense...

...When prison sentences became the common method of punishing criminals, the same standard was applied, as in a statute enacted in 1275: "Imprisonment ought always to be according to the quality of the offense...

...In San Bernardino, a man who stole one slice of pizza got life...

...In passing, the Court noted that Helm had been dealt with more harshly than he would have been in any other jurisdiction, with the sole exception of Nevada, a state that has long made use of its Habitual Criminal Act...

...Not even Hugo, even in the harsh context of France's criminal justice system, might have been able to imagine a life sentence for stealing a slice of pizza...

...Molina's spokesperson, Michael Bustamante, reported dramatic increases in caseloads for district attorneys and public defenders, overcrowding of jails, and significant court backlogs...

...most demand jury trials, which clog court calendars at great expense to taxpayers...

...In his explanation, Bristow said: "It is purely a moral issue between me and the voters of California...

...More recently (1983), the U. S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision canceled the sentence"life without possibility of parole"given to Jerry Helm under South Dakota's habitual criminal code for passing a worthless $100 check (Solem v. Helm...

...I think he should pay for what he's done"probably clean up the freeway or something...

...California, unlike other states, however, also has a "petty with a prior" law which provides that petty theft can be charged as a felony if the defendant has a prior felony conviction...

...In Victor Hugo's classic Les Misembles, the protagonist Jean Valjean, convicted of stealing a loaf of bread, is sentenced to twenty years at hard labor...

...Justice Lewis Powell's majority opinion found that Helm had received "the penultimate sentence for relatively minor criminal conduct," and therefore ran afoul of the Eighth Amendment's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment...

...If Garcetti refused to exercise "the discretion that is allowed to him by law and is part of his job," said the judge, "then he is a craven coward who is afraid to do his sworn duty...

...Applying them against pathetic social nuisances, apart from its lack of proportionality, does little or nothing to enhance public safety...

...This," he said, "may signal that the jury isn't the protectionist institution it's supposed to be...

...Though it was Helm's seventh conviction, none of his crimes was violent or directed against persons...

...But it is proportionality, not economics or penology, that is the issue with constitutional dimensions...

...Defendants faced with life sentences have nothing to lose...

...if they refuse they are then charged as habitual criminals...

...only Stevens remains...

...Another prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney David Bristow of San Bernardino County, took a different course: He resigned his position rather than prosecute nonviolent offenders under the three-strikes law...

...Many states in the Union now have "three-strikes" laws mandating a twenty-five-year-to-life sentence for anyone convicted of a third serious or violent offense...

...Supreme Court in its 1910 decision, Weems v. United States, in which the prisoner had been sentenced to fifteen years at hard labor for falsifying a public document...

...Informed of the sentence Weber faced, the restaurant owner was appalled...

...And when Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti sought a third-strike conviction against a homeless man accused of possessing three-tenths of a gram of cocaine, Superior Court Judge David P. Yaffe reacted strongly, telling the jury that the district attorney's office was guilty of a "gross abuse of prosecutorial discretion" in the case...

...It's a safe platform...

...When Arthur Daniel DuBois drew a life sentence for stealing an air compressor in Victorville, Deputy Public Defender Michael Kennedy was incensed that the jury returned a guilty verdict knowing it would result in a life sentence for his client...

...I'm shocked...

...Rather, it is used by the state's prosecutors to intimidate repeat felons into pleading guilty to the pending charge...

...If they vote as they did on Helm, and are joined by any three of the "new" justices"Clarence Thomas, David Souter, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer"Helm might well be reversed...

...Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina told a legislative panel that implementing the law cost her county $100 million in its first year and predicted that the tab would rise to $300 million in the current fiscal year...

...it won't offend any significant bloc of voters and it enables campaigners to keep silent on more divisive, controversial issues...

...I'm surprised...

...A few examples: . A Sacramento man was given a life sentence for stealing two packs of cigarettes...

...Justices Thurgood Marshall, William Brennan, Harry Blackmun, and John Paul Stevens voted with Powell in the Helm case...

...Three chapters of the Magna Carta (1215) were devoted to the rule that "amercements" (similar to modern fines) must not be excessive...

...Another criticism is that current practice departs from the original justification for three-strikes laws: they were meant to put violent offenders permanently behind bars...

...If Garcetti's purpose was to show that the three-strikes law doesn't work, "then he is an arrogant bureaucrat who is trying to make fools of the 70 percent of Californians who voted for that law...

...That thirteenth-century language was echoed by the U.S...

...Apart from the moral and legal questions, critics of California's three-strikes law cite the economic burdens it imposes on local governments...

...The two laws are now being applied in tandem, with results that call for reflection, given California's frequent role as trend-setter and the dividends for tough-on-crime electioneering in many other states...

...So are others, including defense attorneys, judges, and even some prosecutors...

...But the question at issue is legal and constitutional as well as moral, involving as it does the time-honored principle of proportionality, a staple of English common law...

...There can be no certainty, however, that if (more likely, when) three-strike laws are tested in the Supreme Court, the Weems and Helm precedents will stand...

...Such considerations are simply ignored by political candidates exploiting the national concern about rising crime rates by running let's-get-tough-on-criminals campaigns...