Opening the Cell Door to Fatherhood

Now that a federal court has ruled that a three-strike lifer has a right to impregnate his wife by mailing her a special delivery from prison, it’s a new day in the western United States.

California being what it is, I have a hunch there might be a sunbaked lonely heart or two somewhere between Eureka and Escondido who’d like to be the mother of Charles Manson’s baby. Not a day goes by on Sunset Boulevard, in fact, when I don’t see several candidates.

Thanks to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, long-distance couplings may soon be possible in the nine Western states it covers. The court ruled in a 2-1 decision that a man has “a fundamental right to procreate,” regardless of whether he happens to be locked away for the rest of his life.

If paintings by Night Stalker Richard Ramirez were peddled on EBay, there’s no telling what kind of interest Manson could generate for the gift of life. Someone paid $22 this week on EBay for a T-shirt showing Manson riding a hog.

The 9th Circuit case involved William Reno Gerber, 41, formerly of Riverside County, who had sued California prison officials for not allowing him to get the Mrs. into maternity clothes.

So there’s the toothpick, and now here it goes, right into your eyeball.

Gerber’s third-strike conviction, for which he is now serving a 111-year term, included a terrorist threat on guess who?

Correct.

The woman who now wants his child.

I’d write a song, but country music beat me to the punch about 6,000 times.

“Oh, heavens,” said USC law professor Charles Whitebread. “That’s a hummer.”

Whitebread thinks the U.S. Supreme Court will reverse the decision if the case ever gets that far. He said he sides with the one dissenting judge, Barry Silverman, in the 9th Circuit’s decision.

”. . . There are certain downsides to being confined in prison . . . and interference with a normal family life is one of them,” Silverman wrote in neat understatement. A man has no constitutional right, sayeth he, “to procreate from prison via FedEx.”

Hear, hear. Common sense appears, like a speck of dust, on a stack of law books.

California allows conjugal visits, but not for lifers or sex-abuse inmates. In the case of lifers, one reason might just be that dear old Dad not only won’t be changing any diapers, but he won’t be paying for them, either. And unless Junior knocks off a few convenience stores and moves in with his Pop, there won’t be much bonding going on.

That may be an emotional rather than legal argument, but Gerber’s not talking about planting a Christmas tree farm. He’s talking about starting a family. With the woman he went to jail for threatening.

Am I the one who’s nuts?

“The commonsensical implications of this do have a bearing,” says Gregory S. Walston, the deputy attorney general who represents the state in this case.

Of course they do. But there’s another story here. The man who defended Gerber back when he was sentenced to 100-plus years says Gerber is a prime example of three strikes run amok.

“He’s never physically harmed anyone,” says attorney Michael Angeloff of Hemet.

Strike one came at 18 and involved a robbery. Strike two came when Gerber barricaded himself in a Redondo Beach building, high on drugs and suicidal, according to Angeloff, and held a SWAT team at bay for five hours while shooting into a wall inside the building.

Strike three began with an argument that led to the threat against Gerber’s wife. “He got angry,” says Angeloff, “and in his anger, not unlike Elvis Presley, he put a bullet through a TV screen.” While handcuffed, Angeloff says, Gerber threatened an arresting officer.

None of this is good, but 111 years is insane. Gerber could get half time off for good behavior and still be 90 when he gets out.

“I vehemently disagreed with the sentence,” says Angeloff. He found it particularly draconian given the fact that the victim, Gerber’s wife, was there to stand by her man, just like in the song.

After the sentencing, Gerber demanded that his lawyer ask the judge about allowing him to send his wife a specimen from the penal institute.

“I said, ‘Are you serious?’ ” Angeloff recalled. “He said he was. I told him I didn’t think there was any legal authority, but I tried it anyway. [His wife] was there in the courtroom at the time.”

The judge said no, and so began a saga that is part legal battle, part morality play and, as mentioned, part country song.

Look, it’s understandable that Gerber would want to make up for having threatened his wife and shot up the color TV.

But flowers say sorry, and chocolates say really sorry.

There’s no need to go overboard.

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Steve Lopez can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com.