‘3rd Strike’ Case Arouses Starkly Different Views

People can talk all they want about how justice prevails and how, in the end, the truth will win out. But sometimes we can look at the same set of facts in a case, can agree on every detail and still not agree on what it all means.

What then are we to make of the case of Nigel Fitzgerald Hall?

If the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office is right, there is no doubt the 25-year-old Inglewood resident should be locked up for 25 years to life because, after serving a four-year prison term for a gang shooting that wounded two small girls, Hall proved he had not learned his lesson and was caught, red-handed, last October with a handgun.

But if Hall’s family and friends are right, a young man who did his time, went to school, got married and got a job, who did all the things ex-cons are supposed to do, will waste away in prison until he is too old to think of anything but dying. All for the mistake of carrying a gun because he had been threatened on the streets. All because he knew that if the gangs come calling, you can’t count on anyone but yourself for survival.

In two days, Hall will begin his trial in Torrance Superior Court on a single charge of carrying a firearm--an offense that is a misdemeanor for anyone but those previously convicted of a felony.

Before “three strikes” became law, Hall’s offense would have carried a maximum prison sentence of four years. And even a more liberal interpretation of the 1994 law would have him facing up to seven years in prison for what would amount to his second felony conviction.

But because the 1989 shooting involved two victims, both slightly wounded by ricocheting bullets meant for a gang rival, prosecutors are treating this charge as Hall’s third strike.

The decision has devastated Hall’s family and friends.

“We’re not saying he doesn’t deserve to be punished,” said Hall’s father, Jimmy, “but we cannot agree with 25 years to life.”

Or as attorney and childhood friend Malissia Lennox wrote in a letter to prosecutor Stephen R. Kay: “The ‘three strike’ law is designed to remove certain repeat offenders with apparently little hope of rehabilitation from society. Mr. Hall does not fit this profile.”

Such arguments do not dissuade Kay, who heads the district attorney’s Torrance office and opted for the “three strikes” approach.

“He shoots two little girls by mistake . . . [and] after he was in prison and released, he was carrying a gun . . . so he hasn’t learned anything. He’s right back where he was when he did the drive-by shooting,” Kay said. “And I think that this is the type of case that this law is designed for. This guy is a danger.”

The circumstances of Hall’s earlier case are far less complicated than the recent case that could put him away for decades.

Records and interviews suggest that when he was sent to prison in 1989, Hall, then 18, already had spent twice as many years running with the Crips as he had attending high school.

Just after Christmas in 1988, his parents were called by administrators at one high school with word that Hall had been brought in by Los Angeles police for questioning about a murder. But his son was quickly released, Jimmy Hall said, and the who, what and other details were never brought to the family’s attention.

The next year, Hall was arrested by Gardena police, this time for a drive-by shooting. Court records show that the June 14 incident occurred on 144th Street near Western Avenue and resulted in minor wounds to two young girls, one of whom later testified against Hall, showing the court a penny-sized scar on her leg caused by the ricocheting bullet.

Although the alleged target of the shooting escaped injury by running into a house, a judge said he had no doubt the incident was gang-related. But he reduced the charges pending against Hall to assault with a deadly weapon, not attempted murder. And after Hall was held to answer on that charge, he pleaded no contest to two counts of assault, receiving a seven-year prison sentence.

With credit for time served in Men’s County Jail and other factors, Hall was released from prison April 6, 1993. And from that day until his arrest Oct. 30 for carrying a weapon, records and interviews suggest, Hall had chosen a new path. In August 1993, he moved in with Krishtina Lazard, a single mother of two young children whom he later would marry. That December, Hall got a job working for an airline custodial company at Los Angeles International Airport, where Krishtina also worked for an airline. In a letter from his employer, on file with the courts since Hall’s arrest in October, he was described as a good employee and a “very important asset” to the company.

In addition to his full-time job, Hall pursued an associate’s degree at ITT Technology in computers. And during his 18 months there, one instructor wrote to the court, Hall not only scored consistently in the top 5% of his class, he demonstrated leadership, a commitment to improving himself and a moral character that seemed “beyond reproach.”

In her letter to the district attorney’s office, Hall’s childhood friend Lennox stressed something that she worried might be forgotten:

“At the time of his arrest,” she wrote, “Mr. Hall was not engaged in--nor about to engage in--criminal activity . . . he only carried [a gun] in response to threats he received from neighborhood thugs.”

Days before he was arrested by sheriff’s deputies in Lennox, Hall has said, he stopped at a mini-market near his home in Inglewood and was confronted by two gang members who wanted to know his affiliation.

“[They] asked him, ‘What set you from?’ ” Hall’s father said he was told by his son. “All he told me was that [he responded], ‘If you’re gonna do something, go ahead and do it. If you’re gonna shoot me, shoot me. Otherwise I don’t have time for this.’ ”

After that, Jimmy Hall said he was told, his son just turned away from the gang members and walked off.

He also decided to start carrying a gun, Jimmy Hall said.

In a report on file with the court, Hall’s parole agent said the defendant “was doing excellent on parole and . . . claimed that someone was ‘messing with him’ and he had to have the gun for protection.”

Regardless, when he was stopped on the way home from work for speeding and having a broken taillight on his 1977 Cadillac, no explanation excused him from breaking the law by carrying a gun.

“He would rather have been caught with it,” said Hall’s father, “than be without it.”

That argument is lost on prosecutor Kay and another probation official, who both said Hall’s arrest proved he had not learned anything from incarceration.

“It appears that his prior commitment has done little to alter his negative lifestyle in the community,” said one probation official.

Added Kay: “He shouldn’t be carrying a gun. If people are messing with him, he should have gone to the police and tell them . . . [or] move out of the neighborhood.”

True, Kay said, Hall’s conduct between his prison release and his arrest seemed solid enough. But how can that offset Hall’s decision to carry a gun again, Kay argued, ready to resort to street justice rather than find some way, any way, to avoid more violence?

“Here, we have him in a car with a gun again . . . he said he is carrying it because people are messing with him. So conceivably, he was going to do another drive-by,” Kay said.

“I think it is scary to have a guy like this, with his background, driving around looking for trouble,” Kay said. “We have to learn from history, and I think we, as prosecutors, have learned from his history what we should do this time.”

But that position, Hall’s family counters, has little to do with the reality of the streets. Maybe in some other world, Jimmy Hall said, his son could have called the police or done something other than buy a gun. But that is not the world they live in, said Hall, who can count the number of young men in and around his neighborhood who have been gunned down by gangs in recent years.

“I don’t like what Nigel is going through. I would rather him not have had the gun,” said Jimmy Hall. “But I don’t want him dead either.”

Fighting the case, the Halls’ friends and family know, will not be easy.

Given the district attorney’s position, Hall’s only chance of avoiding a “third strike” sentence may rest with the admissibility of the handgun taken by deputies.

Hall’s public defender, Arnold Lester, hopes to prove that the discovery of the weapon was illegal because deputies had no probable cause to order Hall from the car.

But beyond that legal issue, Lester said, the “real question” is whether Hall’s possible sentence is appropriate.

“Here is somebody who appeared to be rehabilitating himself . . . and my attitude is this is the kind of guy that deserves to get a break,” Lester said.

But whether or not that will happen is in doubt.

“It is really tough,” said Jimmy Hall, who noted that he voted for the “three strikes” law because he believed it would help keep career criminals off the streets.

Now, he said, it could take away his only son for decades.

And the only consolation, Jimmy Hall said, is that at least his son did not meet the fate of a niece’s 19-year-old son--gunned down in November after attending a high school football game in Compton.

To this day, Hall said, he is haunted by what his niece told him after she buried her son.

“[She] said if she had a choice . . . she would rather be fighting the case I am fighting with Nigel,” Hall said, “than have her son be dead.”