High Court Clarifies Three-Strikes Law

The California Supreme Court, in its second examination of the state’s tough three-strikes law, handed prosecutors a victory Thursday by ruling that out-of-state convictions count as strikes toward life sentences.

The unanimous decision is likely to affect dozens of pending cases and potentially scores of criminals with convictions for serious or violent felonies from outside the state.

“It prevents California from being a haven for other states for people who move here to get a fresh start,” said Contra Costa County Deputy Dist. Atty. L. Douglas Pipes.

The 1994 initiative, Proposition 184, did not clearly say that prior crimes outside the state would count toward three strikes. But the Supreme Court held that voters intended to include them.

“Without a doubt, the law gets a little bit worse, a little bit harsher with this interpretation,” said defense attorney Ron Boyer, who represented the defendant in the case.

In its first three-strikes ruling in June, the court dealt the law a major blow by giving judges authority to disregard prior convictions and grant more lenient sentences.

While Thursday’s ruling does not change that decision, it allows judges to count out-of-state crimes toward the harshest possible sentence under the law. There was no dispute that such convictions qualified toward a doubling of a sentence allowed for two strikes.

Justice Janice Rogers Brown, writing her first majority opinion since Gov. Pete Wilson appointed her to the court last spring, noted that a three-strikes law passed by the Legislature before the ballot vote included offenses outside California as among those that make a criminal eligible for a third strike and a life sentence.

“There is no evidence that voters intended to change the legislative version, or in particular, adopt a more lenient three-strikes law,” Brown wrote.

The court unanimously agreed that William Royal Hazelton, who had a previous qualifying California conviction and an attempted rape offense in Nevada, could be sentenced to the harshest term possible for robbery committed more recently in Contra Costa County.

Boyer, a Contra Costa County deputy public defender, said Hazelton, if convicted of all charges, will now face “a minimum term of something over two centuries.” Boyer said his client still must be tried on some of the charges.

Justices Stanley Mosk, Kathryn Mickle Werdegar and Joyce Kennard wrote separate decisions, contending that they agreed with the result reached by Brown but for different reasons.

A concurring opinion written by Mosk and signed by Werdegar complained that the majority’s decision was “not only unnecessary but also unsound.”

They argued that the law passed by the Legislature is still in effect and clearly included out-of-state convictions as qualifying for a life sentence. Therefore, the court need not “construe” the initiative to say more than it did, they contended.

Kennard agreed that the initiative did not repeal the law passed by the Legislature.

The court also is grappling with other three-strikes cases, including how juvenile crimes should be handled under the law. Although Thursday’s opinion did not deal specifically with juveniles, it indicated that the court will not rely on differences between the initiative and the Legislature-passed law to preclude juvenile crimes from being counted toward a life term.

Boyer, however, said disputes over how juveniles should be treated under the law will continue until further rulings are made. One of the main questions pending is whether convictions for offenses tried in juvenile court with the prosecution’s consent can be counted toward a third strike. The court is now reviewing written arguments on that point in a different case.