County Officials Are Divided on Impact of ‘3 Strikes’ Law

Beyond the promise of safer streets and the threat of overloaded courts, Ventura County law enforcement officials say the new “three strikes” law aimed at career felons carries a load of question marks.

While prosecutors were weighing the first “three strikes” cases last week, officials disagreed over whether the law--meant to imprison repeat felons for 25 years to life--will reduce crime, hobble the courts or truly deliver justice.

But all agreed on this: The law will achieve its main goal of getting some violent criminals off the street, but it will take time for its side effects to become clear.

The first effects will be felt on the street, they said.

The law could be put to good use in Santa Paula to take chronically violent gang members off the street, Police Chief Walt Adair said.

“When you have people that are walking around that have absolutely no compunction about killing someone, they just have to be removed,” Adair said. “People that rape and rob and maim other people just have to be removed from society, since they have proven they have no intention of rehabilitating their life.”

But Oxnard Police Chief Harold Hurtt said the law will not deter ruthless criminals still on the street from hurting people.

Hurtt agreed that some people “need to be locked up forever.” But the law is mistargeted, he said.

“I think ‘three strikes and you’re out’ works extremely well on individuals like you and me, where we’ve got something to lose. We fear going to prison,” Hurtt said. “But I don’t think it’s going to have much of an impact on individuals that are not in the ballgame. . . . You’re spending money on individuals that are already lost to society.”

The $21-billion estimated cost of building new prisons to house “three strikes” convicts for life would be better spent on schools, crime prevention, drug intervention and mental health care, Hurtt said.

“It’s almost like continuing to pour money into a bankrupt business,” he said.

The law also will affect how accused felons are prosecuted and defended.

Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury said his office is already reviewing cases to be prosecuted under the “three strikes” law.

“At this point, my job is to make it work,” said Bradbury, who had lobbied against the law in favor of a narrower version known as the Rainey Bill, preferred by many prosecutors and judges.

While the bill signed last week by Gov. Pete Wilson allows juvenile crimes to count as strikes, the Rainey Bill would not. The Rainey Bill would trigger a life sentence only if the third crime were also a serious and violent felony. Under the new law signed by Wilson, any felony can be considered a third strike if the first two were violent.

*

The California District Attorneys Assn. is preparing a set of suggested guidelines for prosecutors on how and when to apply the new law, Bradbury said. Otherwise, prosecutors in various jurisdictions might use the law differently, Bradbury said.

“We’re hoping we’ll get some unanimity in our approach,” he said.

Bradbury and Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin J. McGee are weighing whether to use the law against Preston A. Shelton, 36, of Oxnard, the first Ventura County resident with at least two felonies to be arrested for a third since the law was passed.

Shelton, a parolee twice convicted of armed robbery, was arrested on suspicion of cultivating seven marijuana plants--a felony--just hours after the law took effect last Monday, McGee said.

This arrest may not be the kind of clear-cut case the law was designed for, McGee said, but it was the first to fall under the law.

“The law required us to consider this case,” he said. “It would not be the case we would necessarily choose if we had the luxury of choosing . . . but it’s the case that circumstances have presented us with and it’s the one we have to prosecute first.”

McGee said Preston may have many more felonies on his record, but prosecutors are still researching it.

Bradbury said his office will try to use the “three strikes” law fairly, meaning that prosecutors might choose not to apply it, say, in the case of a two-time felon who commits a third, nonviolent felony after 15 or 20 years of obeying the law.

Ventura County Public Defender Kenneth I. Clayman predicted that the law could create “terrible injustices.”

“People are genuinely aggrieved over crime, as they should be,” Clayman said. “And selfish politicians are glomming onto this fear and whipping it up in the most demagogic way they can do it without a proper analysis of all the proper arguments and debate. And these (cases) are going to get stampeded through.”

It also will cause a greater number of trials as accused felons choose to fight their charges rather than plead guilty, as the majority of defendants have in the past, Clayman said.

But Bradbury brushed aside the specter of gridlocked courts.

Similar predictions of doom failed to gel after the passage of previous get-tough measures, such as Proposition 115 and Bradbury’s own policy against plea bargaining in felony cases, he said.

“You may initially see an increase in trials, but it will return to an acceptable level very quickly,” he said.

In any case, court officials said they already are bracing for the possibility of a case overload, and might have to assign some civil court judges to hear criminal trials, they said.

“I’m not sure how carefully all of this was analyzed,” said Presiding Superior Court Judge Melinda A. Johnson. “The cost we’re going to see is in terms of time.”

The state Judicial Council’s office has said Ventura County’s courts already are short three Superior Court judges and two Municipal Court judges, considering the size of its caseload, Johnson said.

“What really gets to me in terms of planning is it was only a year and a half ago the Legislature told us to go on the fast-track system for civil trials,” Johnson said, referring to the requirement that civil suits be tried or settled within a year of filing. “Now a year and a half later they could well have doubled our criminal load.”

The greater number of cases will be falling on the back of a court system already struggling with change. The Municipal and Superior Court support systems have already merged and some judges are already being cross-assigned.

Now, judges are preparing to switch assignments if the “three strikes” caseload demands it, said Presiding Municipal Court Judge John R. Smiley.

“It remains a big unknown--we don’t know how many more cases are going to be going to trial,” Smiley said.

“I’m not one of the doomsayers,” he added. “All I’m saying at this point is if there is a significant impact, the impact’s going to be on the other participants in the criminal justice system--the sheriff, the California Department of Corrections and the judicial system.”

Sheriff Larry Carpenter predicted the law might help decrease the jail population when third-time felons who might have served one-year sentences there are sent away to state prison instead.

The question, he said, is whether it is the fairest approach to putting career criminals out of business.

“ ‘Three strikes and you’re out’ is a great concept,” but it should be applied carefully only to third-time violent offenders, said Carpenter.

“If someone early in their life has a couple of convictions and then gets it right and goes on for 15 or 20 years living a good life and then writes a bad check at the department store, they ought not be locked up for the rest of their life,” said Carpenter.

*

Noting the irony of a law enforcement officer worried about overly harsh penalties, he said: “It almost sounds like those of us in the business have become social workers, and the politicians on the outside have become law-and-order nuts.”

Carpenter said he, too, backs the Rainey Bill, which could get to the governor’s desk in the near future.

But even if the Rainey Bill is signed, superseding the current law, it could in turn be superseded by a “three strikes” voter initiative that seems headed for the ballot in November.

That measure, circulated by a Fresno photographer, Mike Reynolds, whose daughter was killed by a repeat felon, mirrors the law Wilson signed last week.

Officials say it will be many years before the long-range effects of “three strikes” become clear.

In addition to the estimated $21-billion prison construction tab, the Judicial Council estimated that the additional recurring cost in courts could top $250 million a year.

“It will add cost to the prison level,” Bradbury conceded. “But what we quickly forget is it costs $21,000 to $27,000 a year to incarcerate someone in the penitentiary. And conservatively estimated, that person would cost society $187,000 in crimes,” he said, citing figures from the state Office of Criminal Justice Planning.

But Oxnard’s Chief Hurtt pointed out that incarceration is still an expensive cure.

“I was talking to a representative of the Boy Scouts,” he said. “They told me they can serve 8,000 kids in a Boy Scout program, where it takes a similar amount of money to lock up three people for a year.

“When we talk about crime and quality of life on our streets . . . we need to weed out the extremes on both ends and come up with something that’s sensible and workable that’s going to provide a positive impact on our quality of life,” Hurtt said.

In any case, lawyers and probation officers are already reconsidering strategies for accused third-time felons or even first- or second-timers who are headed for court, said Cal Remington, deputy director of the county Corrections Services agency.

“If you have someone who has a prior serious felony and now they’ve committed another one, those attorneys are going to be less apt to plead their clients out,” Remington said last week.

And whether convicted felons heed the law once out of prison, they will get ample warning about the consequences of re-offending, he said.

Remington added, “If you have someone who is given probation and has two serious felonies, I think certainly the probation office is going to make it clear to the person that the stakes are extremely high.”

* HEAT IS ON: Repeat offenders are feeling the pressure of tough law. A1