Some Crimes Look Pretty Far From Strike Zone

At a recent town meeting in Orange organized by opponents of the three-strikes law, Public Defender Carl Holmes said he felt as if he were preaching to the choir.

Not completely. There sat Assemblyman Ken Maddox (R-Garden Grove), an ardent supporter of sending felons away to prison for life after a third conviction. And then, too, there was me. I like the three-strikes concept.

But concept is the key word. The question is whether the Legislature gave the public what it thought it was getting when three strikes became law in 1994.

This town hall session was sponsored by a local group called FACTS--Families Against California’s Three Strikes. It’s made up mostly of loved ones of third-strikers now in prison. But it’s also garnered support from a wide range of county leaders, such as Holmes.

“The question is: Do we send someone away to prison for stealing a bottle of shampoo?” Holmes said.

It could happen.

The law imposes a 25 years to life in prison sentence for anyone in California convicted of a third felony. The momentum came soon after 12-year-old Polly Klaas of Petaluma was murdered by Richard Allen Davis, who had a long history of criminal convictions.

Though the courts in 1996 gave judges more latitude in reducing three-strike sentences, we’ve got some 5,000 three-strikers serving life sentences now.

Problem is, one of them is Douglas Rash, 32, of Fountain Valley.

Rash has had a drug problem since he was 14. In 1985, at 19, he was convicted of burglary. He committed a second burglary in 1987, when he was 21.

He stayed clean for several years, got a job and got married. But in 1994, after an argument with his wife, he fell back in with his old crowd. He was arrested with a small amount of cocaine in his pocket.

That made him a third-striker. Instead of six months, he got 25 years to life.

The three strikes law doesn’t designate degree of offense. It doesn’t consider that Rash was essentially just a stupid kid when he committed his first two offenses. Three strikes and you’re out.

Rash’s mother, Vivien Moen, also spoke at the town hall meeting in Orange. It was easy to see that she was one of the victims of the law’s inadequacies.

You have to remember, she said, “I was a single parent with no money. It’s not easy under those circumstances to get your son in a drug treatment program.”

The same for Sue Reams, also of Fountain Valley, one of the leaders of FACTS. She has the burden of knowing that her drug addict son Shane, now 30, is serving a life sentence in part because she turned him in for one of his early burglary offenses. “I thought I was practicing tough love,” she said. “I thought I was helping him.”

He was convicted of aiding and abetting in a drug deal in 1996. His co-defendant got two years. Reams, third-striker, got 25 to life.

Not that Rash and Reams don’t deserve a return to prison. But a life sentence for these offenses?

“What the public wanted was murderous, violent people behind bars,” Holmes said. But instead, nearly half the three-strikers got their third strike on nonviolent offenses.

Others who spoke that night included Fred Smoller, chair of the political science department at Chapman University, Irvine City Councilman Larry Agran, and Jeanne Costales, chairman of the Democratic Party in Orange County.

Several speakers thanked Assemblyman Maddox for being there. They might not have been so grateful if they’d known the Republican legislator actually showed up to explain why he wouldn’t vote their way. His chief of staff, Mark Reeder, said later that Maddox had expected to speak but, due to a misunderstanding, was never called to the podium.

“He won’t vote to change the law,” Reeder said. “He’s of the opinion that most third-strikers have probably committed lots of other crimes where they just never got caught.”

Democratic leader Costales blamed Republicans for holding up any changes in the three-strikes laws. “This is a bad law, and I’ll do whatever I can to get it changed,” she said.

Gov. Gray Davis is on record supporting three strikes. Leaders in the Democrat-controlled House and Senate are too. Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) has a bill that makes good sense--amending the law so that the third strike must be for a serious or violent felony to qualify for a life sentence. But Hayden’s bill isn’t expected to even be heard this year.

That’s too bad. It’s closer to what the voters had in mind.

None of the FACTS people, or their supporters, is talking about eliminating the three-strikes law. They just want to make it more equitable. As Irvine’s Agran argued, what’s wrong with passing a bill to set up a committee to simply reassess the whole issue?

Smoller summarized it succinctly as a problem of “proportionality.”

“The law should distinguish between those who do dumb things and those who are criminals,” he said.

By the way, that shampoo bottle theft Holmes talked about? That’s a real three-strikes case pending in the courts elsewhere in California. But I doubt it could happen in Orange County. The new district attorney, Anthony Rackauckas, has instructed his lawyers to look closely at the circumstances before filing a three-strikes case.

“I think three strikes is a good law,” Rackauckas said. “But district attorneys have to use discretion, not use it in a case where the third strike might be a wobbler [misdemeanor or felony]. If we don’t use discretion . . . I’d predict that there is a likelihood of some amendments.”

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Monday and Thursday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling (714) 564-1049 or by e-mail at jerry.hicks@latimes.com.