Families of Inmates March in Protest of 3-Strikes Law

The moment crept by imperceptibly almost everywhere else in the region. But in Exposition Park on Sunday, 2:45 p.m. was greeted by about 100 protesters with tearful silence, followed by loud jeers and boos.

To them, the time marked the exact instant five years ago when California legislators put the three-strikes sentencing law into action, dramatically transforming the state’s criminal justice system in the process.

Holding signs with photos of incarcerated loved ones and chanting slogans like “Life is not a baseball game, three strikes is a damn shame,” the protesters marched through the Los Angeles neighborhood near the park to air their frustration with the 1994 law.

Their two-hour demonstration was part of a statewide protest coordinated by a group of affected family members called FACTS, Families to Amend California’s Three Strikes.

Silently bowing their heads at 2:45 p.m. in unison with their imprisoned relatives, parents and siblings of felons sentenced under the law also marched through various cities in Northern California, organizers said. A group in Orange County held an evening candlelight vigil in a plea for reform of the law.

In Los Angeles, drivers along the congested streets of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Vermont Avenue honked their approval and flashed thumbs-up signs, as the marchers wound their way to the southernmost section of the park.

There, they predicated the view that the law, which doubled the sentence of second-time felons and mandated 25 years to life imprisonment for those convicted of a third felony, discriminates against low-income blacks and Latinos.

About 70% of the 40,000 criminals sentenced under the law so far are black or Latino, according to California Department of Corrections figures. Most second- and third-strike cases have been for property crimes, like theft, or for drug-related crimes, mainly possession, state figures show.

“This is one of the most racist laws there is,” said Maria Andrade, whose younger brother Joseph Carrero was given a 50-year-to-life sentence after he was caught, she said, with less than an ounce of crystal methamphetamine.

With a car theft and another drug conviction on his record, Carrero, 43, is appealing his case to the state Supreme Court, Andrade said.

Andrade, of Claremont, was among scores at the rally who relayed stories of family members sent away for life after committing nonviolent crimes.

“Most people here still can’t believe this has happened to their families,” said Christy Johnson of San Juan Capistrano. Her husband, Dan, was sentenced to 25 years to life after he was caught with a small amount of drugs in his car.

“That’s why we’re all here,” she said, “for support.”

The law, meant to clear the streets of violent repeat offenders, has instead pulled in poor minorities who lack the resources to secure adequate representation, the marchers said.

Such complaints are part of an ongoing debate swirling around the law. Politicians and law enforcement advocates hail it as a key reason behind dipping crime rates, along with a stronger economy and a stabilized drug trade.

The three-strikes law “has done everything that the Legislature and voters intended. We have put away the worst of the worst and have made our communities safer as a result,” Lawrence Brown, executive director of the California District Attorney Assn., recently said.

But critics deride the law as an unnecessarily costly measure responsible for cramming thousands of cases into already taxed county courtrooms. What’s more, the law has had no tangible effect on crime, the critics contend.

One study released last week by the San Francisco-based Justice Policy Institute found little difference in the decline in crime between those counties that have aggressively enforced three strikes and those that have not. Los Angeles County accounts for 40% of three-strikes cases in the state.

Since the law took effect, less than 1% of the second- and third-strikes sentences handed down were for murder, the study, commissioned by the nonprofit Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice, found.

About 20% were for other violent offenses, like assault or robbery, while more than two-thirds of the sentences were for property crimes like theft and drug offenses, the study found.

“The money they spend on keeping somebody in prison for life should be used for more useful things like drug rehabilitation,” Andrade said.

In response to such complaints, state legislators have introduced bills designed to alter the three-strikes law. Among them are measures that require further studies of the current law or mandating that third-strikes prosecutions stem from violent offenses.

None of those proposed laws have garnered much support in Sacramento, representatives from FACTS said.

But “we’re going to keep it up until they do,” said Dennis Duncan, who raced along the line of chanting marchers barking into a bullhorn: “Louder. I can’t hear you!”