Unlikely Allies Back Three-Strikes Change
A new effort to restrict California's controversial three-strikes law to violent offenders has been launched by strange bedfellows -- Los Angeles County's top prosecutor and a prominent criminal-defense lawyer.
State officials said Tuesday that Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley and Brian Dunn, an attorney with the law firm of the late Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., have jointly filed a proposed initiative called the Three Strikes Reform Act of 2006. A signature drive to get the measure on the November ballot could start as soon as next month.
The proposed measure calls for revisions to the state's 1994 three-strikes law, which provides for prison sentences of 25 years to life for a felony conviction if the person has two prior violent or serious offenses, or "strikes."
Currently any felony can serve as a third strike, but under the initiative, the third conviction would have to be for a violent or serious offense, except in cases in which the offender had previously committed murder, rape or child molestation.
Defendants whose third felony conviction was for a gun offense, possessing large quantities of drugs or some sex crimes, would not get easier treatment under the proposal: Their offenses would still count as third strikes.
The idea of a prosecutor and defense attorney working together to propose changes to the three-strikes law may seem odd, Dunn said. But "we are both interested fundamentally in making sure this law works fairly."
For prosecutors, the concern has been that continued public opposition to the perceived harshness of three strikes might ultimately trigger a political backlash. "Our slogan is fix it or lose it," Cooley said.
The proposal is the second effort in two years to put revisions to the three-strikes law before California voters. In November 2004, voters narrowly rejected Proposition 66, which would have broadly limited the law and redefined some of the crimes considered strikes. That measure, roundly opposed by prosecutors and law-enforcement interests, would have made thousands of inmates eligible for resentencing.
Cooley and Dunn hope that their initiative, less drastic than Proposition 66, will draw broader support. It doesn't attempt to redefine first and second strikes, and is likely to make fewer inmates eligible for resentencing.
