‘Three Strikes’ Pressure Alters Proceedings in Minor Drug Trial

Even before the trial of Douglas Warren Martin began, before the judge decided to inform the jury it was a “three strikes” case, one prospective juror got himself excused by saying that he had no stomach for anything that might involve a third-strike prison sentence.

What worried him, the man said, was the jury experience of a business colleague. The colleague found out after the fact that a suspect he had helped convict was sentenced to life because the case was subject to the state’s “three strikes” law. Now the ex-juror was having psychological problems.

Having heard that story, the prospective juror told Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ralph W. Dau that he could not follow any judicial instructions that might implement “three strikes” sentencing.

This was but one of several telling ways that the specter of “three strikes” sentencing played out in the recent Martin trial. To sit in on this ordinarily anonymous drug case was to witness some of the extraordinary pressures that have been created by the “three strikes” law, which requires a 25-year-to-life sentence for a third felony conviction.

Initially, Dau had ruled that the jury in the Martin case would not be told that Martin had three prior felony convictions, all for nonviolent robberies in the 1980s.

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But soon after the prospective juror was excused, the judge said he had reviewed the law and decided that as long as the public defender representing Martin had no objection, he would tell the jury about the prior convictions.

In doing so, Dau instructed jurors that they should not consider the 25-years-to-life term that Martin, 38, would get if found guilty in the drug case.

Martin was facing “three strikes” because he had allegedly been found in possession of 11 pieces of rock cocaine while in the Men’s Central Jail.

Ironically, the original robbery charge that put Martin in jail in May 1995 had been dropped long ago, when his fiancee admitted that she had made the story up out of jealousy over another woman.

The fiancee, Adrian Ishmael, played an impromptu role Friday in the trial when she loudly reminded the jury of the “three strikes” element as it neared deliberations.

She stood up in the courtroom and screamed at the jurors:

“This ain’t worth 25 to life! It ain’t fair! He’s the father of my child!”

Ishmael fled the courtroom after her outburst but now faces arrest on a contempt citation.

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There were conflicts in the trial’s key testimony between Sheriff’s Deputy Dominick Recchia, the jail guard who said he found a bag of cocaine in Martin’s pocket during a random search of inmates in a jailhouse line, and Martin, who testified on his own behalf.

Martin testified that he had picked up a knotted bag while going for a meal, thinking that it contained a grooming set given to inmates, and had not opened it before he was stopped.

In an interview before the case was heard, Martin also charged that inmates are often set up by jail guards who leave such bags lying around.

He said Recchia had originally offered him a deal: to forget the discovery if he identified other inmates who had narcotics.

It came down at the trial to whether the jury was going to believe Recchia or Martin, who claimed among other things that he had never been convicted of earlier robberies.

In fact, Martin was convicted in 1982 of taking gasoline without payment and of a residential robbery, receiving a concurrent five-year prison term.

He was convicted in 1986 for the burglary of a neighborhood fast-food shop in which an employee entered the premises, his lawyer said, and the theft became a robbery.

The jury was never told that before the trial began the state had offered Martin a deal. Prosecutors would strike two of the earlier convictions and agree to sentence him to 10 years in jail if he pleaded guilty to the new possession charge.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Matt Dalton said the offer had been decided on at a different level in the district attorney’s office. He hinted that he might have made an offer of less time had he made the decision himself, although he defended the 10 years as fair.

Martin’s attorney, Lou Spinelli, would have preferred a deal in which Martin was sentenced only to the year that he has already spent in County Jail.

Martin, hoping to be found not guilty, spurned the 10-year offer.

Spinelli brought to the jury’s attention the case of another inmate, seized about the same time in the jail--for a similar offense by the same deputy--and noted that the language in the crime reports was often identical.

It didn’t work.

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On Tuesday, jurors found Martin guilty on one count of possession. They found him not guilty on a second count of possessing cocaine for sale, but it took only one count to make Martin subject to “three strikes.”

Martin, who seemed to take the verdict hard, will be sentenced July 10. He will not be eligible for parole for at least 20 years.

Three jurors interviewed after the verdict said they believed Recchia.

Martin, they said, had destroyed his credibility on the stand by claiming that he had never been convicted of prior robberies. And an inmate who testified on Martin’s behalf had been unpersuasive, they said.

Spinelli said he will file a motion holding that the “three strikes” sentence in such a case constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, although he acknowledges that the courts have not been sympathetic to such reasoning.

The defense attorney, a former social worker, said he believes that the “three strikes” law for such nonviolent offenders is unjust.

“Some day, this law will be reconsidered,” he said. “I hope when that day comes, Doug Martin will be among the first to go before a special parole board.”