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CALIFORNIA
Should voters change 'three
strikes' law this fall?: Yes
Why are inmates like me doing life term for a drug
case? If you do the crime, you do the time. Such a concept might seem
reasonable to those who live in a perfect world. But for those of us who
don't, justice is lost and repression wins the day. With a three-strikes
sentence of 26 years to life, I have served six with an unimaginable 20
to go. My crime against humanity — I am a man with a past who possessed
some drugs in the present. Welcome to the world that fear built.
For the first time since this nightmare began there is
some light at the end of the tunnel. A group of concerned citizens has
found the financial backing to qualify the “Three Strikes and Child
Protection Act of 2004” on November's ballot. If approved, minor
offenders would be removed from the equation while drastically
increasing the penalties for child molesters.
“We're making it 'one strike and you're out' if you
sexually molest a child under 10,” said Joe Klaas to reporters. He is
the grandfather of 12-year-old murder victim Polly Klaas in whose memory
the “three-strikes and you're out” sentencing law was passed in 1994.
The Golden State maintains an army of the incarcerated
consisting of 162,000 men, women and children with a price tag of almost
$6 billion a year. While many states showed a modicum of restraint
during the apex of the get-tough movement in the '90s, California simply
went too far for too long. Any felony has been included in the language
of the sentencing statute. This covers too much ground. If someone has
two or more serious or violent felony priors and is arrested for a bad
check, drunken driving or a drug charge, he is automatically eligible
for a life sentence.
To date, 7,234 have been struck out, 57 percent of
whom are nonviolent. Additionally, 31,996 second strikers have also been
sentenced under this law, the majority of whom are nonviolent as well.
Second strikers must serve 80 percent to 85 percent of their doubled-up
sentence. This steady stream of second-and third-strikers brought into
being mammoth super-prisons that feed from bankrupt school districts.
Despite the rhetoric of “No Child Left Behind,” the children from
underfunded education are systematically absorbed into the California
Department of Corrections (CDC) by $100,000-a-year prison guards who
earn more money than tenured CSU professors.
All over the country, with the exception of
California, there is a growing movement to get smart on crime. State
governments are modifying or abandoning many of their toughest
sentencing mandates. Even Michigan and New York, with arguably the
harshest drug laws in the nation, have altered their policies. But if
one listens to representatives from the California District Attorneys
Association, they paint their own picture of justice. They claim judges
have the right to exercise discretion and impose non-life sentences in
the interest of justice. This misleading safeguard is more fallacy than
reality. Since the case law favors the prosecution, few judges rule over
their objections. Missing from the entire three-strikes discourse is the
fact we already served our time on the strike priors that are used to
bury us alive.
Exactly 20 years ago, at the age of 18, I embarked on
a career of crime that lasted four years. These acts involved robbery,
burglary and drugs. For my transgressions I received a 12-year prison
term in 1988. My punishment fit the crime, and I paid my debt to society
without complaint or incident. By the time I paroled in 1994, I had made
a break with my past. I owned and operated a small construction company
in Antelope while I went to school full-time at CSUS and majored in
sociology. I buried myself in work and study. It didn't work. After
eight years of sobriety, I relapse. Yet the extent of my decline solely
involved the use of drugs. The self-destructive youth from my late teens
and early 20s no longer existed. When the CHP found in my possession a
small amount of methamphetamine and marijuana in the fall of 1998, life
as I knew it came to an end. My conviction for a nonviolent drug offense
triggered the toughest sentencing law in the country.
In the coming months innumerable “experts” will
advance a myriad of doomsday hypotheticals. Don't buy into their
pseudo-science. While they claim expertise, I live it. Those of us
struck out for minor crimes might not be angels, but we are definitely
not demons either. We are an enormous assemblage of unfortunates who
share a common bond — injustice.
“Three strikes” in its current form has no place in a
civilized society. It has been promoted as a public safety device by
fearmongers and overzealous prosecutors who've conducted unjustified
witch hunts of permanent incapacitation for the past 10 years.
Nonviolent recidivists do not deserve lengthy prison terms, let alone
life sentences. Drug offenders need treatment, not the heavy hand of
justice. Petty theft offenders deserve misdemeanor punishments, not a
penalty just below death.
By voting for the “Three Strikes and Child Protection
Act 2004” in November, society receives a one and two strikes law for
child molesters and a three-strikes law for serious and violent
three-time recidivists. If the people vote for change, California can
close an ugly chapter of state history in which shoplifters and drug
addicts serve life sentences alongside child molesters, rapists and
murderers.
Bring the state out of the criminal justice Dark Ages,
and let justice win the day.
Eugene Alexander Dey
27 July 25 2004
http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/10129305p-11050055c.html
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