Victim Refuses to Testify in ‘3 Strikes’ Case

It was billed as San Francisco’s first “three strikes, you’re out” case, but a victim cried foul and wouldn’t testify about a crime that could have sent a car burglar to prison for life.

“You ever heard of Mothers Against Drunk Driving? Well, how about victims against ‘three strikes’?” Joan Miller, 71, said.

Miller risked being sent to jail for contempt of court by refusing to testify against Donald Rae Brown, who was charged with breaking into her car last month.

But the case was resolved, without her being called to the stand, when Brown agreed with prosecutors Friday on a guilty plea and a four-year prison sentence, twice the usual term for second-degree burglary.

Brown, 45, has numerous criminal convictions, most of them more than 20 years old, said Assistant Dist. Atty. Richard Hechler. If the prosecutor had been able to prove that two prior convictions were for residential burglary, any felony--including the burglary of Miller’s car--would have been a third strike requiring a prison sentence of 25 years to life.

Since records have been obtained so far on only one residential burglary conviction, Hechler said, his office agreed to accept the guilty plea to a second strike when the victim refused to testify.

The sentencing law, signed March 7 by Gov. Pete Wilson, classifies a variety of violent or serious felonies, including residential burglary, as strikes. A second conviction requires a doubling of the usual sentence. For someone with two strikes, any new felony conviction requires a sentence of 25 years to life unless prosecutors decide not to seek such a sentence.

Though a courtroom confrontation was avoided, Miller made her position clear. Before Brown appeared Friday in Municipal Court, Miller asked a San Francisco Daily Journal reporter, “Are you familiar with the history of nonviolent civil disobedience?”