Califas: Another strike at 'three strikes' law: 01-09-06

Monday Morning ~ 06-09-06

Great reporting Sandrine ~ I will pass this on to other groups and individuals, plus, put it on my Humane-Rights-Agenda Blog.

I am 'in the process' of building up a community education party here in Sacramento called the Humane Liberation Party and know we have to reach out to people in order to help educate them about social issues, register to vote and actually get out and VOTE on Election Day !

We are making a difference, each voice, every hand, every vote can make a difference!

Free Leonard Peltier!
Coordinator Peter S. Lopez
Humane Liberation Party
Sacra, Califas, Aztlan
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

To: PrisonNewsNetwork@yahoogroups.com
CC: PRUP@yahoogroups.com
From: "Sandrine Ageorges" sandrine.ageorges@free.fr
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 14:57:40 +0100
Subject:  [PNN] CA - Another strike at 'three strikes' law
    
Another strike at 'three strikes' law
Monday, January 9, 2006

NO CIVILIZED SOCIETY should be imposing life sentences on offenders  
who have committed relatively minor crimes such as shoplifting or car  
theft.

Yet that is precisely what the voters of California have done through  
the state's "three strikes" law, which was advertised as a way to  
lock up irredeemable psychopaths such as Richard Allen Davis, the  
killer of 12-year-old Polly Klaas in 1993.

Unlike other states with three-strikes laws, however, in California  
only the first two strikes must be a serious or violent felony. As of  
last June, 7,716 inmates were serving 25-years-to-life three-strike  
sentences. Nearly 60 percent of them had committed nonviolent third-
strike felonies.

Yet in November 2004, voters defeated Proposition 66, an initiative  
that would have reformed California's harsh three-strikes law by  
requiring the third strike to be a serious and violent felony.

Fortunately, there have since been numerous behind-the-scenes  
discussions to come up with "three strike" reforms more likely to be  
get voter approval. San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris  
helped lead post-Prop. 66 discussions, which have included Alameda  
County District Attorney Tom Orloff and Los Angeles District Attorney  
Steve Cooley, a Republican. Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco,  
convened a series of meetings to fashion a bill that the Legislature  
could approve and then put on the ballot for passage by voters. But a  
legislative consensus proved elusive.

Last week, in a potentially significant development, Cooley, together  
with Brian Dunn, an attorney with the late Johnnie Cochran's law  
firm, submitted a new three-strikes reform initiative to the  
California attorney general's office for a fiscal analysis and title  
and summary, as required by state law. Once it is cleared by the  
attorney general's office, the next step will be to collect  
signatures to qualify the initiative for the November's ballot.

The initiative, which is based on the language of the legislation  
Leno was fashioning in the Legislature, addresses the concerns that  
arose with Prop. 66. For example, the new plan only applies to  
inmates serving a three-strike sentence of 25 years to life, not to  
those serving enhanced "two strike" sentences. Unlike Prop. 66, it  
does not eliminate some crimes such as burglary of an unoccupied  
residence from the list of serious and violent crimes.

Cooley and others from his office worked intensively with Dunn over  
the New Year's weekend to write the initiative. Because of time  
pressures, they say, they were unable to consult some of the key  
constituencies attempting to reform the law.

A key group for Cooley to persuade is the California District  
Attorneys Association, which led the opposition to Proposition 66.  
The association will meet on Jan. 23 in Palm Springs for its winter  
meeting, and we urge its members to take a more constructive approach  
to reforming the law than they did in 2004.

As Leno noted, California already incarcerates a higher percentage of  
its population than any other state. Yet in his State of the State  
speech last week, Schwarzenegger called for the construction of more  
jails and expanding California's prison population by another 83,000  
inmates. We think the state should be reserving prison space for  
those who belong there.

This state cannot afford the burden of prolonged incarcerations of  
nonviolent inmates, especially when the governor is contemplating an  
ambitious $200 billion public-works program to sustain our economy  
and improve our quality of life.

California's three-strikes law should be reformed to meet the needs  
of public safety and fiscal prudence. It's time to restore sanity to  
a system that now imposes punishments that are wildly out of  
proportion to certain crimes.

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URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/01/09/
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©2006 San Francisco Chronicle
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