Appeal Planned of Homeless Man’s 3-Strikes Sentence

The lawyer for a homeless man who was sentenced to 25 years to life under the three-strikes law for trying to break into a church to steal food said Wednesday that he will make an appeal to the state Supreme Court.

But attorney Howard J. Specter said the appeal won’t be able to address the “absolute obscenity” of the application of three strikes to Gregory Taylor’s case.

He said he would be limited to the issue addressed by the appellate court that upheld the conviction last week: the trial judge’s refusal to let the jury decide whether Taylor believed he had the church’s permission to take the food.

Taylor, now 37, was arrested in July 1997 after being caught trying to pry open a screen over the kitchen door of a Los Angeles church. He said he was trying to get something to eat. A priest testified that Taylor had often been given food at the church and had sometimes been allowed to sleep there.

He was convicted of burglary for using a board to reach inside the church in an attempt to commit theft. A prosecutor said Taylor may have been trying to steal valuable items such as chalices and alms boxes.

Because of two robbery convictions in the 1980s, the burglary was Taylor’s third strike under California sentencing laws, requiring a sentence of 25 years to life. Superior Court Judge James Dunn refused to use his authority to disregard one or both of Taylor’s past convictions, which would have lessened his sentence.

The 2nd District Court of Appeal upheld his conviction in a 2-1 ruling. The court agreed with Dunn’s refusal to instruct the jury that the crime would be only trespassing, and not burglary, if Taylor believed he had the right or permission to take food from the church.

Although Taylor may have believed that the priests had consented to his past acceptance of food, he could not have held a good-faith belief that he had the right to break into the church, the court said.

Specter, Taylor’s lawyer, said Wednesday that it was “outrageous that the jury was not able to consider that Mr. Taylor believed he had a claim of right to this food.”

“You wonder what kind of heart [a judge] has to have” to keep that issue away from the jury, he said.

He said the case was also a stark illustration of the inequities of the three-strikes law, which requires a 25-to-life sentence for any felony conviction after two serious or violent convictions.