New Policy Established on 3 Strikes

Newly elected Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley unveiled Tuesday his much anticipated new policy for applying California’s three-strikes law, asking his prosecutors to take a closer look at the crimes that suspects are accused of committing before pursuing them as three-strikes cases that carry mandatory 25-year sentences.

In California, a defendant automatically faces 25 years in prison if convicted of a third felony. Prosecutors, however, can decide not to pursue a new felony as a third strike by doing what is termed, “striking a strike.”

Under Cooley’s new policy, most nonviolent, nonserious third felonies will be handled as second-strike cases. That means prosecutors, under supervision of their head deputies, will have one of the defendant’s strikes removed.

Only the more serious crimes, such as those that involve weapons, large quantities of drugs or violence will be pursued as third-strike cases.

Prosecutors also must reveal to the defense as early as possible whether they will pursue a case as a third strike. Deputy district attorneys also are no longer allowed to use the threat of a third strike to coerce defendants into pleading guilty.

“The decision [as to whether to pursue the third strike] will be made independent of going to trial,” said Special Counsel Lael Rubin, who was assigned by Cooley to write the new three-strikes polcy.

In the past, defendants have been coerced into pleading guilty to crimes out of fear that if they lost at trial they could be sentenced to 25 years because of the three-strikes law, Rubin said.

The pitfalls of using the controversial law to persuade defendants to plead guilty came to light during the ongoing investigation into the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart scandal, in which police officers are accused of framing gang members.

Some gang members, whose convictions since have been overturned, said they pleaded guilty to crimes they didn’t commit because they feared the three-strikes law. Cooley, who took office Dec. 4, promised to issue a new policy within his first 30 days in office because he thought the old policy was unfair.

Cooley’s criticism of the way the 1994 California law is applied in Los Angeles County was one of his top campaign issues. But the law has long been a source of controversy.

A national debate began five years ago after defendant Jerry Dewayne Williams was sentenced to 25 years in prison for snatching a piece of pepperoni pizza from four children near the Redondo Beach Pier. He grabbed national headlines as the California pizza thief serving 25 years in prison.

Williams, whose sentence was reduced in 1997 to six years, became a poster boy for supporters and opponents alike of three-strikes laws.

Supporters of the law saw Williams’ imprisonment as an example of how it was working. It stopped, they argued, a person who had spent most of his life in trouble with the law, and whose crimes were only growing more troublesome.

Williams’ criminal history began when he was 14. His first felony conviction came at 19 on a drug charge. Later, he was convicted of robbery, attempted robbery and joy riding.

But others, including Cooley, a career prosecutor, fell on the other side of the debate. They viewed a life sentence for grabbing a piece of pizza as unjust, and lacking basic common sense.