to
Amend 3-Strikes
Assemblyman
Rod Wright
Speaking
before Public Safety Committee in Sacramento
in
favor of Amending the 3-Strikes Law – April 2000
This
Bill has been before this committee, this legislature
several times. Looking at some of the
people who have carried this Bill and unlike anyone in the past, I actually
think there out to be some sense of the 3-Strikes. I am not opposed to the death penalty. The concern I have with what we currently call 3-Strikes law, however,
stems from the fact that so often what we do is not what people thought they
were doing when they passed 3 Strikes.
I am not sure that people would agree that someone who wrote a bad check
or was shoplifting at Sears ought to get life in prison. I’m not sure that people would agree that in
Los Angeles County, as was quoted in the Los Angeles times. . . In the December
31 edition of the Los Angeles Times, there are people who are sometimes
pleading to crimes that they didn’t even do because what they face with a
public defender is 25 to life. And so
what they end up saying, is that it would
be easier for me to plead guilty to a lesser crime that I didn’t do than to
risk being convicted of a felony and facing 25 years to life. I don’t think that was what was intended.
The article in the December 31 edition of the Los Angeles Times attached some of this to the situation at Rampart. And let me remind the members here, particularly those that are not here from Los Angeles that the initial proposal by the City of Los Angeles right now is to take all of the settlement money from Tobacco, some two to three million dollars and set it aside for people who were prosecuted unfairly and unjustly. Because the City of Los Angeles, the County of Los Angeles faces potential bankruptcy in a large part because what we have done is leverage people for crimes they didn’t do. In some cases have police officers engaged in conduct that was unfair.
So in the interest of justice what the Bill
does, in part, again, let me say what I think differentiates me from some of
the other people who’ve raised this issue is that I am not an opponent of 3
Strikes. In fact, I think for some of
the crimes that are committed, and let me remind the members here that I represent an area where people are
victims of crime. I don’t condone,
coddle or in any other way suggest that people who commit violent crimes ought
to be wrongfully cast back on the street, however, the flip side of what we do
under the current guise of 3 Strikes is that we have a lot people who are in
jail for lower crimes because they were there because they were shoplifting at
Sears or because they had a dispute with a police officer.
We’ve got a CRASH unit that was just disbanded
in Los Angeles that was responsible for placing the names of people on lists in
places there were gang members. These
people hadn’t done anything other than the fact that they were walking down the
street and a police officer had the ability to say if you were a gang member,
their name was placed on a file, partly illegally. This mater was being litigated as well, but people’s names are on file with the
Department of Justice here in Sacramento as being gang members, and they are
often getting sentence enhancements, not because of the crimes they committed,
but simply because they were walking down the street dressed in a manner that
somehow a police officer said ‘we believe
that you are a gang member.’ I
submit to you that no one from South Central Los Angeles would condone gang
activity or support that idea that there are gangs running rampant, whether its
in South Central L.A., whether its in East L.A., or Fresno, or San Francisco,
or any place else. But the idea that we
would now begin to use that as leverage against people to be able to exercise
their constitutional rights is wrong.
When you say to someone, and again, it probably
sounds different from a lot of people again:
In the area that I came from, and let me tell
you about where I come from. I grew up
with gang members, as did the chairman of this committee, Mr. Washington, as
did other people who are from urban areas.
Gang members create a kind of cancer within the community. I think we want to do everything we can to
weed it out. But some of the things
that we do in these bills are not the way you do that.
Assembly members, I will submit to you, If you
look at statistics—you will see that San Francisco has a much more lenient
policy relative to prosecuting 3-Strikes crimes. . .not only do they prosecute
3 Strikes crimes, but they experienced a more significant reduction in crime
rates that in Los Angeles, which is now submits almost 40% of 3-Strikes cases
end up in the State of California. So what we’re talking about is saying that
if you commit 3-Strikes violent offense felony, but you didn’t shoplift, you
weren’t driving without a license. --
if you commit violent crime that should qualify you to got to jail for to 25
years to life. However, if you are
shoplifting at Sears that should not qualify you to go to jail for 25 years to
life. I don’t think anyone intended
that that was the kind of effort we ought to be. There are a number of witnesses that I have, and I am certain
that we’ll have a lot more discussions, but one of the first ones I’d like to
introduce, Mr. Chair, is the Grandfather of one of the people who was involved
in a murder. Mr. Joe Klaas drove here
today from Pebble Beach at his own expense to testify at this hearing. And as you may recall, his granddaughter
Polly Klaus was one of the first people involved in a 3 Strike case with a
murder in this area.
Later in the Proceedings
I appreciate some of the people who testified,
the data relevant to crime in California, particularly with respect to the
other statistics is specious. That it
has seen increases in crime --that is just factually inaccurate. One of the things that California did have,
if you begin to consider crimes, is when and where you started it from. In South Central Los Angeles where I live,
one of the things that really solved and caused a reduction in crime is the
reduction in the use of crack cocaine.
That wasn’t because people were put in jail because they were 3 strikes
cases, this is because in many instances, the younger siblings decided that
they didn’t want to do crack cocaine.
If we had continued on the course that we were going to get more people
in jail. One of the other reasons for a
reduction in crime, particularly in Los Angles had nothing to do with that it
saw significant 3-Strikes law enforcement, it had to do with the Chair of this
Committee, Carl Washington, and people like myself began to work with gang
members and in East L.A. a group of gang members started a bakery and people
began to raise money for them. Its not
because of 3 Strikes or fear, its because people found other things for them to
do. And I stated earlier, people,
unlike many of the people who testified in support of the bill today, I think
that in some case 2 strikes should be enough, depending on the type of offense
that you commit. You know, those that
think the death penalty is a deterrent disagree, because I have an absolute
guaranty that the individual won’t do it again. Here in Sacramento, irrespective of the fact that it does not
convince any of his friends not to do the crime, we do know that he will not do
it again. And again, there are
occasions where the career criminal should in fact be prosecuted and should in
fact get the death penalty.
The gentleman from the D.A.’s association, Mr. Fox, as he has witnessed in his story today, I would submit to you that if he brought a gun to a probation officer, or a parole officer, that should have been a third strike, so that he should never have been released from jail for the coffee theft deal in the first place, they had charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm with a parole officer. He should already have gone down.
The thing that I would be willing to do and I
would certainly work with the gentleman from the CCOPA it might be that a
compromise to this would be to codify the Romero
Decision. The Romero Decision does in fact make a lot of
sense. And again, we were about to lose
the entire thing before the Romero Decision. They were going to find that what we were doing with the Romero Decision was unconstitutional and
the Romero Decision actually
preserved what we had. What we are
attempting to do is making something between Romero Decision to be sure
that what we don’t do is put people in situations whereby simply because of the
inability to pay, some 25 to 30 years ago, this might have been a drug
offense. A serious offense,
remember. does not have to be a violent
offense. In 1968 if you were in
possession of getting a legal amount of marijuana, that was a felony. That’s a serious felony. It is no longer a serious felony. But theres no way to chew up what the law
used to be and what it is today. So if
you were selling marijuana in Haight Ashbury in San Francisco, in 1967, you had
two violent felonies on your record, so that means that if you wrote a bad
check in 1999 or 2000, you face 25 years to life. Your first crime is that you were a dope dealer, your second
crime is that you wrote a bad check. I
don’t think that that was the intention of what we were trying to do with 3
strikes.
I was looking and listening at the people who
were describing what we were trying to do.
The idea I would be certain of, from someone who represents an area that
has high crime involvement, is to protect people in society from people who
want to commit crimes.
I submit to this Committee that Institutions
that we operate in the State of California and if you really want to see the
fallacy of what we do with 3 strikes. . . take a ride down to Folsom prison and
look at men who are in their 60’s and 70’s walking around with oxygen bottles
because they suffer from emphysema, who are not going to go out and do crimes
and are absolutely no danger to anyone else.
And where it really goes into and works against something we are arguing
about is that in order to maintain that person in Folsom and let out a person
who did commit a violent crime, who did serve a portion of their sentence, you
have to let them out so that you make room for somebody who’s not going to
endanger anybody.
In Los Angeles County, as we had in the State. .
. we forwarded the money to them to open up what was called Twin Towers
jail. Why didn’t we open up that
jail Because the L.A. County Sheriff
was having to release the violent felons on the street, but because we didn’t
have the room to house people who were coming in the door.
The prison population, as this gentleman
indicated, is not increasing. That is
an idiotic statement for him to sit there and make. As Chair of the Budgets I know that our prisons are over 217%
capacity. Right now we are technically
in violation of federal law relative to the maintenance of prison
population. And what he did mention is
that the prison population has decreased.
What has come in the front door, but we are not seeing consummate
decreases going out the back door. We
could be found in violation of federal law for cruel and unusual right now.
Now before us we have proposed several bills to
add to the prison construction in California.
I submit to you that with a sane approach to the 3 Strikes we could
eliminate the need to fill the prisons, make the streets safer for the people
who do commit violent crimes and allow the people of South Central Los Angeles
not to be put in the position of having to plead guilty to crimes that they did
not commit simply so they can avoid the prospect of 25 years to life.
I would ask for an aye vote in this Committee
and I pledge that as we move this Bill from this Committee and work with the
Gentleman from the CCPOA to determine the methods by which we might codify the Romero Decision and that might be
appropriate compromise that I think we
can all live with.
In front of the Capital Building at a FACTS
rally the same day
You know, its interesting that people who are
from South Los Angeles or San Diego, or the places where you really see the
ravages of this thing that the people call 3-Strikes. And if you’ve ever had an opportunity just from hearing a moment
ago, that the sum of the discussion is that people said “Oh, crime went down because they did all that stuff.” You know, that’s just not true. And every time you have an opportunity at a
Committee to say to people that what you are saying is often just factually
inaccurate. You see, everybody who is from South Los Angeles
. . .and you’ve been on the streets, you know
something about the streets. One thing
that you know is that the crime rate increased when people started getting
involved in crack cocaine. And then,
what you don’t hear as much is that the government was complicit in the
distribution and sales of the crack cocaine.
And people said to me, and it sounds like sometimes, they say, Oh, Rod,
you’re just one of those people who talk about conspiracy and other things. Let me tell you, you know how this
works. Ricky Ross was somebody who
knew.
You know that I am from South Central Los Angeles myself. How did Freeway Ricky Ross meet Manello Blandow? Blandow was the CIA operative in Nicaragua. How did Freeway Ricky Ross meet a guy who was a CIA operative in Nicaragua who admitted that that he was selling cocaine in South Los Angeles to fund his war with the Contras in Nicaragua? How did Freeway Ricky Ross meet him? Clearly, there had to be some government complicity. And, if they would say to your son’s and daughters, if they didn’t know, they should have known. And if you should have known, then you are equally culpable, because its the way the law is written. You didn’t know, but you should have known.
We’re going to being looking at Bills, and let
me say, we’ve got to be able, in this instance to be good legislators. The idea is not to just have a rally and
have you come today and say, “We were at
the Capital.” But we want to win
something. We’re going to look as what
we were describing, at what we need to do to woo some of those people who were
no’s to day to yes’s. The idea is to
win, its not just to have a celebration or a press conference. I didn’t ask you to come all this way for us
to just say that you’ve been here for the second or third time. No, our objective, our aim, our goal is to
get a bill that changes the stupidity of what we now do in California with
respect to what they call a 3 Strikes law.
Its not good public policy, its not sound fiscal policy, and it does not
do what was intended in terms of reducing the crime.
You know, as we start in this effort, it really is a lot of work because people think, “Oh, this is real easy.” But let me tell you, when you come to do this kind of work, one of the things that you’ll find is that there’ll be victims and they’ll be people who say, ‘Wait a minute. My daughter, my son, my cousin, or my good friend was the victim of one of the crimes. “ Our objective is not to say that we want people to just repeatedly be able to commit felonies, we’ve got to say this to people in our neighborhoods. This becomes the hard part of what you do if we’re serious about what we’re talking about today. You’ve got to say to people, if you’re going to continually commit robberies and rapes and what have you, that there is only so much compassion in our hearts for that kind of behavior. However, at the same time we have to say as a society that if you steal $10 worth of toilet tissue at the Rite Aid that is not something that we should put you in jail for life.
(Someone says Amen)
Theres got to be some kind of balance, so that
we are able to distinguish the people who are really career violent criminals
from people who one day may have just had a bad time. And again, you have to be able to say to people, You know what? I understand that you had a bad day today, however, you committed
a violent crime and that was your second one or your third one. You’re going to do Big Ben for that. And people who have never been to London,
Big Ben is a real big clock, which represents a whole lot of time. But we’ve got to distinguish from
people who are violent criminals from people who are just down on their luck.
Speaking
before Public Safety Committee in Sacramento
in
favor of Amending the 3-Strikes Law – April 2000
I want to state up front that the murder/rape,
the kidnapping of my granddaughter
Polly Klass was exploited by that 3-Strikes bill which didn’t stand a chance in hell, its called a no-brainer. We supported it at first because they said it would take all the Richard Allen Davis’ off the street. In the frame of mind that we were in, I don’t know. . .. if they had said that they were going to lock up all people who smoke cigarettes 25 years to life, as if that would have kept Davis off the street That’s no reason to lock up all the people who smoke. Or if they said that everyone who gets a parking ticket goes away for life, that gets rid of all the murders and rapists in our society. That makes about as much sense as putting away shoplifters or drug addicts who have in their possession –they’re sick people, who have in their possession the substance that they’re sick over. If we get them before they get sentenced, we treat them, and if we get them afterwards, we put them away 45 years to life.
I belong to something called Citizens Against Violent Crime. There is no member of my family that is not
opposed to violent crime or any other kind of crime. We’re opposed to all kinds of crime. Anybody that says the Klass family is soft
on crime, is soft in the head. The fact
is, we think people who commit non-violent crimes should get appropriate
sentences. But we don’t think violence
should be perpetrated upon them.
And, as a former prisoner of war, I spent 25
months as a prisoner of the Nazis in World War II in a place that was awful, I
can say that taking 25 years of somebody’s life from them for committing a
non-violent crime is violence, almost on a level with the murderers.
Is admonished after
standing ovation and applause in Assembly room by
Carl Washington, Chair
of Public Safety Committee
Sorry.
It is violence, taking away 25
years to life from somebody’s life because they made a false statement on an
application for a real estate loan -- and that happened in San Diego. Or taking a bicycle, a couple of slices of
pizza. A man got 25 years to life, 22
years after his last felony , a man got 22 years to life for taking aspirin out
of a bottle and putting the bottle back on the shelf in a drugstore. That is VIOLENCE and anyone who supports
that kind of violence, I am opposed to.
Later
at FACTS rally in front of the Capitol in Sacramento
I want to encourage you to keep on fighting
whether we make it this time or not.
We’ll make it. Sooner or
later. Eventually the injustice and the
insane cost of this, those two things together are going to bring it down, and
gravity will bring it down. In the
meantime, I will continue to do what I can.
I turned 80 last Friday. I
shouldn’t have told you. The fact is, I
am slowing down a tiny bit. Just a tiny
bit. And I had to talk a cop out of
speeding ticket on the way up here today.
I live down in the Monterey Peninsula.
I thought 6:30 was early enough to leave, and I was wrong. But, I want to thank you all for being here
today. And encourage you to go out and
do what you can. And this business that
I brought up today about perpetrating violence by other means than physical, it
is physical in a way.
I felt I was violated as a prisoner of war, and
the other side had a right reason for having me there. I was killing them, you know, and they were
trying to kill me, and putting me away probably saved my life because otherwise
they would have had to shoot me. But
the fact is, that I know what 25 years to life must be like in a place that is
not as freely roamed around as the prisoners were in a prisoner of war
camp. And to take somebody who has
committed a non-violent crime and commit the violence of 25 years to life is, I
think, unconscionable.
Polly was so UN-violent. She wouldn’t even look out the window when I
drove through Oakland. Or San
Francisco. I took her to Washington,
D.C. and we went to see ‘Anny Get your
Gun,’ as homework for her schoolteacher, she was supposed to write about
what happened and what she wrote was, “We saw a musical, but you wouldn’t like
the title, because it has violence in it.”
And so she didn’t tell em that it was ‘Anny Get Your Gun.’
Well, to have her name used to perpetrate this
fraud on the people of California I think, was a disgrace to her memory. And it took a couple of months before. . .,
and nobody ever mentioned in the first two months that they showed up in town
at Polly’s Memorial, at her actual memorial
--that they came with thousands and thousands of petitions. And I guess
according to the man who produced the movie ‘The Legacy’, the Attorney General said “ou better get over there”, so they used Polly’s coffin to launch
their campaign and misled us into thinking it dealt with violence, when in
fact, it only deals partly with violence.
I’m not for letting violent people go, I’m for
keeping them in there for a long, long time, but when friends of mine who are
sick because they have a disease known as addiction, which is recognized as a
disease and as treated as such – when they go away for 25 years for life
because they have in their possession what they need to support their disease,
that’s a symptom of the disease. How
can you be a drug addict if you don’t have drugs?
Well to lock somebody up who should be treated
for 25 years to life who should be treated instead is obscene. So hang in there and lets win this war.
Geralyn
Busnardo, Esq.
in
favor of Amending the 3-Strikes Law – April 2000
Good morning, my name is Geralyn Busnardo and I
am an attorney with the Public Defenders Office in Los Angeles County and I
came here not as representative of my office, or as a representative of the
Public Defenders Association, but as a member of an Organization called
Families to Amend California Third Strikes Law. And there are a number of those people in the audience . . .
their outburst is because of their frustration, they have sons, husbands,
brothers, who are serving 25 years to life sentences and -- members of the Committee make no mistake,
they’ve been made very clear -- that these people will never get out of
prison. These are essentially life
sentences. Every governor in the last
twenty years has refused to release anyone who is serving an indeterminate
sentence such as 25 years to life.
These people are going to be spending the rest of their lives in
prison.
Some of the discussion here has been in
abstract, but for those of us who are in the trenches everyday, its not an
abstract. --It takes away our ability to work on more difficult cases, we are
tying up the system with clients and cases that we tried as lawyers, that go to
trial for petty thefts. One of the more
egregious ones being that our hands are tied, you can’t put these people in
Drug Court when they are drug addicts and their record reflects that they are
drug addicts. We can only do one thing
and that is to go to trial, take up a court, take up the judge’s time, take up
the District Attorney’s time, take up my time.
Thousands of dollars are being spent just trying
these cases. The State is willing to
spend $25,000 a year to house these people in the State Prison, but they are
not even willing to spend $5,000 a year to help them with their drug
addiction. Many of the people who have
chronic theft throughout their history have also been drug addicts and thats
why they steal.
I came here last year with a client of mine who
was facing 25 years to life. His
offense was possession of approximately 3.10 of a gram of crack cocaine. His prior conviction had been from 1968 in
a single incident. He had essentially,
between 1968 and 1988 had been out of prison for his original offense and then
some subsequent drug offenses. From
1988 until the present, he had remained arrest free, drug free, conviction
free. He got picked up on this case,
and at the discretion of the District Attorney’s office, they were willing to
offer this 58 year old man 32 months in State Prison for 3.10 of a gram of
cocaine. And if he didn’t have his
strikes, he would have been given probation, he would have been placed in a
drug program.
When we send somebody to prison for 25 years to
life for a petty theft, we have placed human life below the value of property,
and that essentially means we have lost our humanity.
President
of FACTS
Speaking
at Rally after Public Safety Committee in Sacramento
in
favor of Amending the 3-Strikes Law – April 2000
FACTS, FACTS, FACTS, we’re out here. We get a chance to make a little bit of noise now. We don’t have too much time left so I am going to try to be as brief as possible. I want to thank everybody who traveled up from Los Angeles to Sacramento this afternoon. We have people from San Diego, we have people from Orange County, we have people from Canyon Country, we have people from Newhall, we have people from Sacramento, we’ve got people from all over who are concerned, because we are FACTS. Families to Amend California Three Strikes, and there you all are. Right there--the families that are affected by this law.
Really quickly, what a perfect set of
bookends. California Correctional Peace
Officers Association and the District Attorney’s Office. The two organizations that can profit the
most by building prisons.
I mean, one of the facts that he stated was, “You know, well, the prison population is declining.” Well tell me, why is there $500 million dollars in the current state budget to build another prison in the State of California? The prison population is down. We’ve got these other people coming in saying we want to get rid of murderers, we want to get rid of the violent people. You know, we’re sorry that some of these people are innocent and that they committed non-serious non-violent crimes, but you know when the 3 Strikes law Passed, 82% of that first year’s crop was for non-serious, non-violent felonies. 1% of all 3-strikes cases are murder cases. So what the heck are they talking about? You have got to wonder about it.
One person says lets ship the problem off to another state. We don’t want em here.
When the person just before her said, Well, the problem exists mostly on
people who are drug addicts, people that have a problem, people that could be
helped by $500 million dollars put into drug treatment programs or drug
rehabilitation programs which shows that an 85% recidivism problem is
eliminated. Just by drug
rehabilitation. If that’s the problem, why send them off to another state? Lets take care of it here in the State of
California and say that we’re responsible.
We have never said that we are against punishment for crimes. We have
always said Let the Time Fit the Crime.
We don’t want people going away for 25 years to life for small petty
offenses. We are here to change. . . hear
the clattering around in the background?
You hear the bells? Those bells
represent the 3,000 non-serious, non-violent people that are today rotting in
our prisons for 25 years to life, and that’s ridiculous, we have got to change
it.
They come up here. . . Hey the CCPOA gave $2
million dollars to Governor Davis, so you know when it hits his desk whats
going to happen. So you know whats
involved. Its big money, prisons for
profit. That’s what its all about. Lets get a cheap labor force, right here in
the State of California. The Prison
Industrial Complex is the fastest growing business in the State of California,
far outstripping technology, agriculture is down. .. .I mean its ridiculous,
its runaway, its gone amuck. And now
with the passing of Proposition 21 they took another one billion dollars right
off the top so that they can build prisons to lock away our youth. Gut out the heart of our communities.
Did you happen to notice when a lot of people
got up there, and did you happen to notice they happen to be White? Well, that’s because they didn’t say that
70% of all the criminals in the prisons for 3 Strikes are Black and Latino
People. Poor people who cannot help
themselves. You say in the case of the
White person he is able to buy himself off, Gil Garcetti has done it quite a
bit. We know whats happening in Los
Angeles. We know whats happening in the
Rampart Division in Los Angeles, and its not just an L.A. problem either. Its all over the place because they want to
fill these prisons up with the people that they need to promote their products
and keep their job security.
Now what I want to do now is to bring up some
people who are involved in this struggle, and as Assemblyman Rod Wright has
stated, we have been at this for a very long time and I want to congratulate
Assemblyman Rod Wright for at least stepping up now and doing this. Its been six years and its about time that
somebody from South Central, the area that’s most impacted by this law has
decided to come forward and do something about it. Lets hope it flies here and we need the cooperation of everybody
out here today, everybody who came up here today can go back and tell their
family members and friends to get involved in this struggle, because we have to
do it beyond what happens today.
Now I’m going to bring up a few people today
that are victims, also. Their family
members are in prison for 25 years to life for non-serious, non-violent
offenses. And this is how we bring a
face to it, because its not all about those statistics, its not all about the
people that are already in there, its about some of these people who are
outside who are suffering from this law.
So let me bring up some of our family members from FACTS, and that is
Families to Amend California Three Strikes and that’s what we’re made of. O.K. families, so come up to the podium and
when you’re done they’re going to step down here to go over to the Scroll of
Shame. This scroll has all of the names
of those non-violent prisoners that have been sentenced unfairly under the
3-Strikes law and we are going to ask them to add their name of their loved one
to the scroll when they’re done. So
please come up to the podium and give a brief account, let us know how you’ve
been affected by this Three-Strikes Law.
Speaking
at Rally After the Public Safety Committee in Sacramento
in
favor of Amending the 3-Strikes Law – April 2000
My name is Kelly Gilette, my brother was
sentenced to 25 years to life for shoplifting at a Walmarts. I know what its going to cost taxpayers and
I think they should be outraged: $600,000 to keep him in prison for 25 years
and I am sure that the item that he was convicted of stealing was less than
$50. To me, as a taxpayer, I don’t
understand, I think it’s a ridiculous, ridiculous law and we need to make some
changes and the public needs to know where their tax dollars are being spent,
and this is going to affect a lot of people.
Right now, it might not. Thank
you.
WILANA RICHMAN
My name is Wilana Richman, my son’s name is
Johnny Richman. He is in Corcoran
Prison, he’s doing 25 years to life. He
and his girlfriend had a domestic dispute.
He slapped her and they called the police and when they got it in court
and they went to trial they said “This is
your third strike” and he’s doing 25 to life just for a little pushing
around. That’s all that he did.
CARMEN EWELL
Hi, my name is Carmen Ewell and I am one of those families that they said, “You’re husband will get 25 years to life
unless he pleads guilty to a lesser charge. So what they did was they struck one strike and they gave him a
second strike which carried 7 years because one of his family members gave him
a bad check. And he had been a licensed cosmetologist for 19 years, never been
in any trouble since he was 18 years old, so at 40 years old they told him, “You passed a bad check” which is a
misdemeanor defense for me, not knowingly and they gave him 7 years.
FREDDI LAWSON
My name is Freddi Lawson and my son is
incarcerated for 25 years for going into a residential home unoccupied. And he has been like a swinging door to a
cell because he’s an addict. He needs
to be in a serious program that will help these people. He is a different, different kind of
person. He’s tried to help himself. . .
but you can’t get a job, you can’t have any diversion programs for them. So what do they do? Make him keep being swinging doors over and
over again.
Hi,
my name is Lee Harris and I have a son in Corcoran, California, and he is in
prison for a non-violent serious crime.
He has had two acquitted and the judge, all I did, was this judge told
me that he was going to prosecute him no matter what but they didn’t know is
why they couldn’t prosecute him. So
they sent him to another judge and I wrote a third letter to the judge, all
they had to do was to talk to him and the judge just cracked his head and just
gave him an appeal, said that he didn’t know, but here some little Satan out of
the ground to say he was taking property.
And let me put it this way, he was a very comical guy, he would make you
laugh. In fact he saved lives, he saved
my life. And that’s why he don’t need
to be there for a 3rd Strike. Amen.
BARBARA BROOKS
I’m Barbara Brooks. My son Jeff Brooks is in Corcoran Prison, 25 years to life on a
3-Strike. In 1986 he did commit a
violent crime by doing armed robbery.
He took a plea bargain and spent 8 years in prison. He quit doing things like that. I think
he learned his lesson on that.
But what he didn’t deal with was his heavy addiction to cocaine. Which, when he was doing his criminal
activity, he was heavily into cocaine.
So, my son has made a lot of changes in his life. We try to be positive and look to the
future. Just for ourselves, right now I
don’t know what to say, but sometimes I get so angry and I feel like the system
is our enemy. I just would ask each of
us to pray for our enemies and those who use us spitefully and we hope in trust
and God for victory on this.
Oh, I forgot to tell you what my son’s third
strike was. He was on parole for a
violation of drugs. he started to get
stopped by the police for a registration violation and he panicked and ran from
the cops for about three minutes and that changed his whole life.
ESSIE ROGERS
The only way is to hope and trust in God. My name is Essie Rogers and my son Johnny
Williams is in Corcoran. He did not get
25 years to life because I hired an attorney who plea bargained. He has had grand mal seizures since he was
18 years old, and through having a grand mal seizure he entered into a house at
one point that he thought was empty.
And the police were called and that was the first time he went to
prison. No violence, he was sittin’ on
a person’s couch when he accused of breakin’ and entering. The first time was when he was a teenager
and he had the enhanced surgery, and he didn’t know anything about it. The next time he went into a grocery store
and picked up a candy bar and the security guard found him outside, when he
grabbed him from behind, he took his stick, and that was his third time, so
he’s now in Corcoran and he has ten years to do right now and he has over $500
to his account and he does not have the presence of mind to draw money out to
buy things for himself.
So, he’s not being helped is what I’m trying to
say. He’s a sick person, and you can be
sick for more than drugs. He’s addicted
really, because he has to take so many drugs for the grand mal seizures and
he’s in his room most of the time – I call his room. But because he falls out on those seizures when he’ll go out to
eat or whatever.
So the law is not justice, and its not for all
people, it should be and they should take into account if the person is sick
and the person needs help. I’m not
saying he shouldn’t go to jail and justice shouldn’t be done. But I’m saying that while he’s there, give
him some help. And once they’re plea
bargained you can’t even have an appeal.
He’s lost, he’s stuck there. So
I’m just here to support everybody who has a family member and I believe that
we have the faith that whatever we are doing, we will be victorious. I know it doesn’t seem like it, we will make
it.
ROD WRIGHT
Public Safety Committee has Voted, Comes out
to Rally to Inform the Crowd
You know, every now and then you always like to have good news. And I’m proud to report today that Mr. Keely made it back from presenting his bill, we got the fifth vote so we’ve moved out of the Public Safety Committee.
And let me say that for all the efforts of those
who have come up let me now say that we've cleared what is now the first hurdle
and now we will go on to the Assembly floor where we will begin working with
the different committees to make sure that what do is make a significant
commitment to change this dreaded 3-Strikes law. Again, thank you so much and we are now over the first hurdle and
on to the second.
DENNIS DUNCAN
We’re going to continue with our program very
briefly because we don’t have this time out here for very long. O.K. We’re going to make a very brief, for
the family members and actually, now we have more of the people coming out from
the Assembly Chambers, so please, lets give a little round of applause for
Assemblyperson Carl Washington.
CARL WASHINGTON:
My friends, we are on our way. CHEERS
This law is not fair. We are
going to change it, we are going to make it so that everyone benefits, that the
society is protected, and at the same time a man is given a second chance. I stand on this Capital step as a result of
a second chance. We all deserve that
second chance, WE WILL GET ONE. God
bless you, Thank you.
ASSEMBLYMAN GILBERT ZADAO:
Praise God.
Praise God for Carl Washington.
Praise God and all praise to the Good Lord Jesus and Amen. AMEN says the crowd. Praise to Carl Washington, to Rod Wright,
for leaders who know that they are only here to serve the people. When you have leaders like Rod Wright and
Carl Washington, we know the life experiences of all the people that we are
blessed to serve, you will then have justice.
And they can say that justice delayed is justice denied, but when
justice comes, its always time.
Some people have suggested that 3-Strikes was
the solution. That 3-Strikes was the
cure for a cancer of crime and poverty.
But it was the type of solution, like, it was the social chemotherapy. Its the solution thats worse than what it is
trying to cure. And if the problems
don’t get you, the cure will. And so
what we have, is we are putting people in jail who need treatment, who need
medical care CHEERING. . . who need our love and support, don’t get it and now
we are going to put them in jail. And
so we need to do something that people don’t think that we can do. They think well, that this is a snowball’s
chance, but with our unity, with our leadership, with our faith coming
together, all people, different experiences, different backgrounds throughout
the State of California, KNOWING the injustice of this law, that we can build a
movement of understanding and faith and turn back this law and bring us
ultimately justice for all good-willed people of this State. God Bless you, thank you for keeping in the
struggle and thank you for fighting.
DENNIS DUNCAN
O.K. folks, you heard them. We’ve got them all on record now. We got all these folks right up here, they
have their names up here saying they’re going to be backing AB 2447 and the
ball is in their court from up here, but down there the ball’s in your court
too because you got to keep the pressure on em’. You can’t let em’ lax up and come out here and talk to us just
one day. They have got to keep kicking, fighting, from now and when this bill
gets passed, even when it hits Governor Davis’ desk, they got to still be
kicking, biting and scratching for this bill.
You know they can’t give it up in one day. Its an all day struggle, seven days a week, 365, we’re out there, we’ve been on the front
lines for over five years now. They
need to be on these front lines and out there every day until this bill gets
passed.
Now, I don’t want to take anything away from our
family members. We did want to give
them a change to come out here and say something from inside the chambers and
we are going to go back o our family members very briefly, get their statements
and then move on with the Program, for our family members are one of our most
important people, our most important factors, our strength are the family
members..
Fortunately, I have no family member that’s been
a victim of the 3-Strikes, I’m a private defense attorney who has handled a
number of 3-Strikes cases. Fortunately,
a lot of them with very favorable results.
Part of that accomplishment was on the part of Mary Evanti who is the
San Jose FACTS chairman, who has actually worked for me as an investigator on a
number of different cases and helped me achieve something other than 25 to
life.
I have here a 4-page flyer on a story about one
of my 3-Strike clients, who fortunately, had a very happy ending after six
months of Hell. Robert Scott Grigsby.
This story should be read by everyone because it involves police corruption, perjury
and the County of Monterey who was just frothing at the mouth to put away 25 to
life for failure to tell the State of California he was moving to Iowa. They wanted to put this man away for failure
to tell the Salinas Police that he was moving to Iowa with his wife so his wife
could care for her mother that had cancer.
The Salinas Police Department got the bright idea that he was somehow connected with the Christina Williams’ murder disappearance at Fort Ord. His face was all over the national media as a result, even though Robert Scott Grigsby was never a suspect in that case and after an extensive interview with FBI agent Rick Black was cleared of any connection with the Christina Willliams case. But however, the County of Monterey Prosecutor’s office, in an effort to save face, so they didn’t look like total idiots, decided they still had to go forward and try to put him away for 25 to life. Thank God it didn’t happen.
My name is Gloria Watson and I have a son thats doing 25 years for sheer stupidity. He was standing in Hollywood on a sidewalk, minding his own business when a plain clothes policeman walked up to him and asked him “Did he know where he could get some drugs?” He told the policeman “I do not sell drugs, I never have.” So he said, “Well, do you know where I can get some?” And instead of him saying, “No, I do not.” He took the man to somebody else that was sitting on a bus stop minding their own business. Took the money from the policeman, gave it to the young man who was selling the drugs, brought the drugs back and gave it to the policeman and they arrested them both. And he got 25 years to life for that, which is a case of stupidity.
I’m Shauna and my husband is serving 25 to life
for possession of .05 grams of heroin.
He’s an addict, he’s been an addict since he served his time in the
army. His first offense was burglary,
and that was in 1981, he was put on probation for that. His second offense was in 1988, his car
broke down on the freeway, he went up to his mother’s property to use the phone,
to call for some help. The tenants were
not at home, but John went in anyway, was using the phone, the tenants came
home, he panicked, ran out with the receiver of the phone still in his hand. He was convicted of second degree burglary
on that offense, because his attorney told him to plead guilty so that he could
get probation again.
Now, in
1997, he was picked up, for like I said, possession of .05 grams of
heroin. This man is a non-violent
person. He has never ever been involved
in any kind of violence. Now he’s
serving 25 to life in Centinela.
That is horrible, just some of the atrocities of
the 3-Strikes Law that we hear about and see everyday. Well, last, but certainly not least, I am
going to bring up a woman who is the Founder of FACTS. She is one of the Generals in our
Revolutionary Army against the
3-Strikes Law, Ms. Geri Silva. . .
GERI SILVA
One unbelievable story after another. There is so much pain and frustration out
here its unbelievable. And yet, with over
3,000 people in prison for life for non-violent offenses, we should have 10,000
people out here. And that means, that
means that our job is nowhere near over.
So all the work, all the frustration, staying up all night on the bus,
missing work, spending money -- we need
to do it AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN until this law changes,
and you know that. Because this will go
on and we will go on suffering until we change the law.
I agree with Dennis, Carl and Rod and Gil and
Herb and everybody that co-authored this bill got to be in the community with
us, OPEN DOORS FOR US. Let the
thousands of men and women in jail. . .We need
the Latina Caucus to get on board people. You are beautiful, people that are here. . . many of us for the
third year. Many of us are out daily
with flyers and I am looking at a woman right now who has worked
tirelessly. The sacrifices that we’ve
made will be rewarded.
LET US NOT QUIT.
Families to Amend California's 3-Strikes (FACTS)
3982 S. Figueroa St., No. 210
Los Angeles, California
90037
213/746-4844, hhtp://www.facts1.com
Meetings Monday evenings at 7:00 p.m. at
4167 S. Normandie Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90037