Pubdate: Tue, 02 Apr 2002
Source: Oklahoman, The (OK)
Copyright: 2002 The Oklahoma Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.oklahoman.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/318
Author: Anne Gearan, Associated Press Writer

COURT TO REVIEW PRISON SENTENCES OF 3-STRIKES LAW

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court said Monday it will review whether some 
three-strikes-and-out sentencing laws result in unconstitutionally harsh 
prison terms, such as up to life behind bars for shoplifting videotapes. 
The court agreed to hear appeals involving two California thieves sentenced 
to terms ranging from 25 years to life for small-time crimes that might 
otherwise have meant just a few months in jail.

The Supreme Court will consider whether long sentences were 
unconstitutionally cruel or unusual punishment for a heroin addict who 
shoplifted videotapes worth $153 and an AIDS patient who shoved three golf 
clubs down his pants leg and tried to walk out of a pro shop.

The court's eventual ruling could be limited to the way the law is applied 
in California, or it could make a more general statement about how far 
states may go in using similar laws to win very long prison terms for 
relatively minor crimes.

Twenty-six states and the federal government have some version of a 
three-strikes law, which typically allow a life prison term or something 
close to it for a criminal convicted of a third felony.

Critics say the laws are too harsh and inflexible in general, and 
particularly so in California, which has the nation's strictest three- 
strikes law. It requires a sentence of 25 years to life in prison for any 
felony conviction if the criminal was previously convicted of two serious 
or violent felonies.

"If an individual is charged with growing a single marijuana plant, and he 
has on his record two qualifying prior convictions, he's dog meat," said 
Jerome P. Mullins, a San Jose, Calif., criminal defense lawyer who has had 
several clients prosecuted under the state three-strikes law.

"He's looking at 25-to-life for growing a plant."

Crimes that might otherwise be considered misdemeanors may also be 
considered felonies, meaning that a shoplifting charge like the one Leandro 
Andrade faced can trigger the three-strikes provision.

Andrade was convicted of twice stuffing videotapes down his pants at 
southern California Kmart stores in 1995.

He had previous burglary convictions, making him eligible for extra 
punishment under California's three-strikes law.

"No other state in the country has such a sentencing scheme where 
misdemeanor conduct can be the basis for an indeterminate life sentence," 
said Andrade's lawyer, University of Southern California Law School 
professor Erwin Chemerinsky.

A state court upheld Andrade's sentence, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of 
Appeals, in a widely noted decision last year, ruled it unconstitutional. 
The ruling was limited to cases like his, and did not overturn the 
three-strikes law itself.

A divided three-judge panel of the appeals court found Andrade's sentence 
"grossly disproportionate" to the theft, and said Supreme Court rulings 
require a trial judge to examine whether the punishment fits the crime.

The Supreme Court also said it will hear a case that came out the other 
way. A state court upheld Gary Ewing's sentence of 25 years to life in 
prison for trying to steal three golf clubs at an El Segundo, Calif., golf 
course.

Ewing had four prior convictions for robbery and burglary. Although 
prosecutors could have charged him with a misdemeanor in the golf club 
case, they chose to charge him with a felony under the state's 
three-strikes law.

"Serving 25 years to life for stealing golf clubs is cruel and unusual 
punishment," Ewing's lawyer wrote in asking the Supreme Court to get involved.

California voters and lawmakers approved the three-strikes law in 1994 amid 
public furor over the kidnapping and murder of 12- year-old Polly Klaas. 
Richard Allen Davis, a repeat offender on parole at the time of the 
kidnapping, was convicted of the murder and sentenced to death.

Three-strikes laws in other states and the federal government were also 
passed in the 1990s, when the spread of crack cocaine fed public fears 
about rising violent crime.

California Secretary of State Bill Jones, an author of the state's 1994 
law, credited the law with helping lower crime in the state by 41 percent, 
more than twice the national average decline in the same period. "We 
clearly focused the law on that small percentage of the criminal population 
that commits the vast majority of the crime in our society," Jones said Monday.

The law is getting career criminals off the street and serves as a 
deterrent for criminals who already have one or two felonies on their 
record, Jones said.

The cases are Lockyer v. Andrade, 01-1127, and Ewing v. California, 01-6978.
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