GOP Backs Bill to Toughen 3-Strikes Law

Despite facing likely defeat, Republicans on Tuesday tried for a second straight year to toughen the state’s three-strikes sentencing statute by limiting discretion of judges to withhold maximum prison sentences under the 1994 law.

But even before an initial vote by a Democratic-controlled committee, GOP lawmakers, along with three-strikes author Mike Reynolds, were warning that they would turn to a statewide ballot to achieve their aims if turned down by the Legislature.

This year’s three-strikes bill (AB 1370), by Assemblyman Robert Prenter Jr. (R-Hanford), was one of scores of crime-related and other measures being rushed through committee hearings to meet a legislative deadline this week.

They ranged from proposals for sex offenders to wear the names of their victims on a wrist bracelet to crime prevention bills aimed at intervening with troublesome youngsters before they drift into lives of full-fledged crime.

Prenter, appearing at a Capitol news conference along with Reynolds and fellow GOP lawmakers, called for restoration of the three-strikes measure to its “original version passed by California voters.”

The bill is in response to a 1996 California Supreme Court decision that permits judges to waive prior convictions in calculating whether an offender has committed a third felony, which under the three-strikes law requires a prison sentence of 25 years to life.

According to some reports, the interjection of judges has prevented full-term sentencing of third-strike felons in more than two-thirds of such cases.

A measure similar to Prenter’s died in a Democratic-controlled state Senate committee last year and now, with Democrats in charge of both legislative houses, chances are considered dimmer than ever for enactment.

But Reynolds said that if lawmakers “deny us the option to go through the legislative process, they force us to take it to the people.”

Reynolds, a portrait photographer whose daughter was murdered by a repeat felon during a robbery outside a Fresno restaurant in 1992, was the driving force behind the three-strikes ballot initiative that voters approved overwhelmingly two years later.

Republicans said a possible 1998 ballot initiative could be drawn to include provisions of Prenter’s bill--which would grant discretion to judges only in three-strikes cases where all three felonies were nonviolent--and another tough GOP measure.

That bill (AB 4), by Assemblyman Tom J. Bordonaro Jr. (R-Paso Robles), adds penalties of 10, 20 or 25 years to life for people convicted of serious felonies if a gun is used, the severity depending on whether the gun is drawn or fired. The bill passed its initial committee hearing last week but is expected to run into trouble later.

Also on Tuesday, Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) began a legislative push on the crime prevention front by bringing lawmakers face to face with a dozen community crime reformers who in most cases had themselves served prison sentences before they entered “the peace process.”

Workers in gang intervention programs, such as Dewayne Holmes and John Heyman from the Los Angeles-based FACES, and Aqeela Sherrills of the Amer-I-Can Foundation, testified in favor of a bill by Hayden to set up a Los Angeles gang task force composed to a large extent of “persons who have personal experience in gang issues” including street violence, prison life and creating gang truces.

The bill was approved by the Senate Public Safety Committee, 6 to 0.

The ex-gang members also met reporters and lawmakers in a Capitol conference room where, by their own accounts, they were sitting around the same table for the first time--African Americans as well as Latinos.

“We can get to people on the street that you can never reach,” Holmes told lawmakers of efforts to turn young gang members away from crime.

It is not money they seek, the young street counselors said. Rather, they want to see state and other public officials show interest in making peace in the neighborhoods, just as politicians and statesmen pursue peace in “Ireland, Bosnia, and the Middle East.”

In other crime-related legislative action, public safety committees in both houses did the following:

* The Senate panel approved, 5 to 3, a bill (SB 931) by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) to expand the 11-member Board of Corrections by four members, all with expertise in juvenile justice. Schiff said juvenile experts are “not adequately represented” on the prison board.

* Based on a rape in January in Burbank, a bill by Schiff was approved by the Senate committee that would make entering California while wanted in another state a crime. A parole jumper from Oregon, Peter Kurges, 28, was picked up by Burbank police but let go because Oregon refused to ask for his extradition. He was charged with raping an 11-year-old Burbank girl, then hanged himself in his jail cell before trial.

* Assembly Speaker Cruz Bustamante (D-Fresno) won 5-0 passage by the Assembly committee of two measures, one (AB 1117) mandating a third strike for juveniles, requiring them to serve time for a third felony offense. “Incredibly,” Bustamante said, “a juvenile can commit three, four, five, or even more felonies” and face no sanction worse than home supervision.

The speaker’s second bill (AB 1118) would place a bond measure on the statewide ballot to borrow $200 million to assist counties in running juvenile boot camps.

* Three bills of interest to Los Angeles were put over by the Senate panel, allowing them to be heard after the impending deadline. A Hayden measure (SB 513) would allow people to buy only one gun in a 30-day period.

A bill (SB 500) by Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) would prohibit circulation of such gang weapons as exploding bullets, nunchaku martial arts devices, leaded canes and lipstick case knives.

Another Polanco bill (SB 643)--one of the major issues for Los Angeles of the legislative session--would allow local governments to enact gun control ordinances tougher than those contained in state law. A similar measure by Assembly Majority Leader Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles) awaits a vote on the Assembly floor.