Making a Nonviolent Act a Third Strike Is Just Plain Crazy

There’s the Army veteran who got 50 years to life for a third-strike crime of stealing “Snow White,” “Cinderella” and “Free Willy” videos in Ontario. And there’s the man who got 25 to life for a third-strike crime of stealing three golf clubs from an El Segundo golf course.

It’s cruel and unusual punishment, Fred and Teresa Zullo of Los Angeles believe. But when they flew back East last week to hear arguments against California’s three-strikes law before the U.S. Supreme Court, it was primarily for their youngest son.

“We took this with us,” Fred Zullo says in his North Hills home, showing me a placard with a photo of 25-year-old Philip Zullo. Under the photo, Fred and Teresa had written these words:

“Mentally ill man facing 90 years in prison for making phone threats.”

The Zullos say their son was perfectly normal until his teens, when he seemed to retreat into a distant universe. As it got worse, he’d sleep for 20 hours at a time, then be up for days, his wires crossed.

Attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity were the first guesses by doctors, but in 1999, Philip was diagnosed as bipolar and obsessive-compulsive. A short time later, he decided he wanted to die. In his mind, the quickest way was to threaten mayhem so police would come and kill him.

Philip called an ex-girlfriend and said he’d kill her and her relatives, and then he called police in Simi Valley and told them they better come and get him. He had no gun, but he later told his father he planned to stuff an electric screwdriver into his pants.

“He said he’d pull it out when the police came,” Fred Zullo says, “and they’d think it was a gun and kill him.”

Zullo, who runs a small property management company with his wife, took his son to the psychiatric ward at Northridge Hospital, thinking he’d be kept on a three-day commitment. But two days later he was released, and Zullo arrived at the hospital to find Philip being loaded into a police car from Ventura County.

“I heard him saying, ‘Kill me, please. Please kill me. Please kill me.’ They hogtied him and threw him into the back of the car, and as he was going away he saw me and said, ‘Please kill me. I can’t stand what’s going on in my brain.’ ”

Philip was convicted in Ventura County of two counts of making terroristic threats by telephone and spent nine months in jail. The Zullos were stunned that a man so ill, in obvious need of medical attention, was locked up as a criminal.

“They picked him up from a psychiatric ward, screaming,” Teresa Zullo says, incredulous. “Why not take him back to the psychiatric ward instead of taking him to jail?”

Philip was released in even worse shape, Fred Zullo says. At first, with treatment, he got better. But in classic fashion with such diseases of the brain, he thought he was cured and stopped taking his medicine. Then he made another round of threats by phone, again hoping police would kill him.

This time, he drew three more charges of making terroristic threats. And the Ventura County district attorney’s office, given the two earlier convictions, decided to prosecute him under the three-strikes law.

Zullo spent another seven months in jail awaiting a trial that keeps getting delayed. His parents finally raised $500,000 bail and put their son in a treatment center. Philip has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and the trial is set for January.

If convicted on one of the three new charges, Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathy LaSalle told me, Zullo will get 25 to life. With two convictions, 50 to life. With three, 75 to life.

Special circumstances, based on the two earlier convictions, could add another 10 years, LaSalle said, bringing the total to a mere 85 to life, not 90.

I’m sure that’s a relief to the Zullo family -- Philip getting sprung at the age of 110 instead of 115.

It’s absolutely draconian, Teresa says.

It’s like we’re living in the Stone Age, Fred says.

He doesn’t dismiss his son’s crimes as harmless, but he wonders what society expects to gain by punishing the mentally ill.

You could also ask what California hopes to gain by being the only state in the nation to allow a nonviolent third strike like petty theft to send someone away for life.

“It’s not just cruel and unusual punishment; it’s cruel and unique,” says Erwin Chemerinsky, who argued before the Supreme Court last week in defense of the man sentenced to 50 years for stealing three children’s videos.

“We have 343 people serving 25 to life whose third strike was shoplifting small amounts. We have 650 whose third strike was possession of small amounts of drugs.”

Multiply by roughly $25,000 a year, the annual cost of incarceration, Chemerinsky suggests, and ask yourself if those tax dollars would be better spent on education, drug rehab or mental health care.

The irony is that when the three-strikes measure was on the ballot in 1994, it looked good to Fred and Teresa. They both voted for it.

“We thought it was going to get murderers, rapists and carjackers off the streets. We didn’t read the fine print,” Fred Zullo says. “Our son never harmed anyone, and he could go to jail for the rest of his life.”

LaSalle, the prosecutor, said three-strikes was designed for no other reason than to protect the public from repeat offenders.

“There are a lot of mentally ill people who might actually kill somebody,” she said.

Maybe so, but how good can any prosecutor feel about Philip Zullo rotting away in prison?

LaSalle said it’s conceivable her office will change its mind about a three-strikes prosecution, but she wouldn’t speculate. The issue is whether Philip Zullo was sane when he made the threats, she said. If her office believes he was, he’ll get the three-strikes treatment.

Jim Farley, Philip Zullo’s attorney, is gathering medical reports in his defense.

“Mr. Zullo’s psychiatric disorder often impairs his capacity for making good decisions,” says a 2001 report from Dr. Alex Kopelowicz of the San Fernando Mental Health Center. “In my opinion, incarceration would worsen his condition.... A better alternative would be that he be placed in a psychiatric rehabilitation center.”

“Even if Philip gets out of this tomorrow,” Fred Zullo says, “I’m going to fight for the rest of my life to amend this law.”

He and his wife drive around with placards plastered to their car -- Families to Amend California’s Three-Strikes, www.facts1.com. The group is pushing a ballot initiative that would require any third strike to be a violent felony.

“Do you want to see what we do every night?” Fred Zullo asks, leading me to his kitchen and a countertop vigil with candles. “We stand here and we pray. What else can we do?”

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes .com.