‘Three Strikes’ Law Still Controversial Proponents Say Streets Are Safer Now; Critics Say The Law Is Costly, Too Broad
It’s been four years since the state’s landmark “three strikes, you’re out” law was passed, and sponsors say it has delivered as promised - safer streets with the lifelong incarceration of career criminals.
But critics say the law’s one-size-fits-all approach casts too wide a net, pulling in more street punks and drug addicts than violent offenders.
Before the law, life sentences were reserved for perpetrators of aggravated murder, but “three strikes” offenders now account for 113 - almost 45 percent - of the 254 criminals serving life without parole in Washington prisons.
Although this represents only a fraction of the state’s 13,000 inmates, it will have a significant effect on Department of Corrections’ costs as the prisoners age and their ranks multiply, The Seattle Times reported in Sunday editions.
Initiative 593 was passed by a 3-to-1 ratio in November 1993 by voters fed up with violent crime and hard-core repeat offenders.
It has been upheld by the state Supreme Court; the federal government and 22 other states have copied it in various forms.
Almost 50 separate felonies are considered “strikes,” ranging from aggravated murder to vehicular assault. Anyone convicted three separate times as an adult faces a mandatory life sentence.
The average age of a “three strikes” offender is 37 - slightly older than the general prison population.
Fifty-eight percent are white, 34 percent are black and two are women.
Only 18 of Washington’s 39 counties have prosecuted “three strikes” cases, and almost 70 percent have come from King, Pierce and Snohomish counties.
Murderers and sex offenders make up one-third of the total.
They include Johnny Eggers, a sexual psychopath who killed a 17-year-old Tacoma girl; Kris Howe, who murdered an 89-year-old Seattle woman who had hired him to do yard work; and Martin Schandel, a sex offender.
But many are in for much less serious crimes.
David Conyers, 23, is the youngest person ever sentenced to life in prison under the “three strikes” law.
He robbed six Seattle convenience stores in just more than 48 hours to stay high on crack cocaine. He hinted he had a gun in his pocket.
One store clerk shot him. Instead of going to a hospital, he went to rob two more stores.
Police tracked him down in a cheap Seattle motel where he promptly confessed and routinely was convicted of second-degree robbery - for the third time in three years.
Conyers said that since he hadn’t used a gun or force, he was guilty only of theft, a non-“strike” crime. But the jury disagreed. His sentence would have been about seven years if there had not been a “three strikes” law.
Conyers, who lives in Clallam Bay Correctional Center, began getting arrested when he was 13 for thieving and doing drugs. He promised Juvenile Court judges he’d get his high-school degree but never came close.
Despite what people think, Conyers says he never had a meaningful shot at rehabilitation.
“Most people in society have lived a good life,” he told The Seattle Times. “They have nice houses, boats and cars. The whole family is together. Everybody has insurance. They go hiking and bowling. They don’t want for nothing. They look at other people .. like me … and it’s just ‘Lock ‘em up.’ They’ve never experienced my life, the drugs, the wild life and prison.”
Robberies make up more than half the first and second “strikes” committed by all “three strike” inmates. Conyers’ brother, uncle and cousin are serving life terms under the law after all were convicted within a span of seven months of separate “third strike” robberies in King County.
According to prosecutors, deciding whether to charge second-degree assault and robbery can be tough when the crime is a “third strike” and a conviction would result in life imprisonment.
In a handful of cases, they have allowed “three strike” candidates to plead guilty to non-“strike” crimes, such as third-degree assault or first-degree theft, and avoid life imprisonment.
A Yakima County man recently “struck out” on second-degree assault for throwing a rock that hit another man in the ear.
County Prosecutor Jeff Sullivan said that while the crime itself certainly didn’t merit a life term, the 29-year-old offender had eight prior felonies, including two armed assaults.
“The police tell me - and I believe them - that 10 percent of the criminals commit 80 percent of the crimes,” Sullivan said. “When they get to this point, they’ve earned their way to prison.”
But the law’s critics, including the chairman of the state Sentencing Guidelines Commission, say it is disproportionately affecting blacks at an even greater rate than the already disproportionate share of blacks in state prisons.
Blacks, who make up only 4 percent of Washington state’s population, already represent 23 percent of the state’s prison population. The numbers are even worse under “three strikes.” More than one-third of Washington’s lifers under the law are black.
Hubert Locke, chairman of the state’s Sentencing Guidelines Commission, said “three strikes” is a “barbaric notion” that undercuts the balance of the state’s sentencing system, designed for equal treatment.
“(The law) seems to have restored the business of inequities in sentences,” said Locke, who is black. “I am struck by how many black defendants are being locked away for life for robberies. People who commit robberies should be punished, but in proportion. I don’t put robberies in the same category as murder and rape.”
That sentiment is echoed by Conyers.
“I deserve to be punished, but not worse than these rapists and murderers in here,” he said. “They’re going to get out someday. Can’t society have its punishment and I can have some kind of hope?”
Mark Larson, chief criminal deputy for the King County prosecutor’s office, said race is never a factor in deciding whom to prosecute on what charge.
“I think there are a whole host of sociological, economic and criminologic issues that might help to answer the riddle that Mr. Locke raises,” Larson said. “But I do not think the answer lies in what happens in the confines of this or any other prosecutor’s office.”
“Only two women have been convicted under ‘three strikes,’ but you don’t hear men screaming that it is sexist,” said Dave LaCourse, one of the principal authors of the initiative. “Anyone can avoid it. Just stop committing crimes.”
“A lot of these guys move up to rape and murder,” said LaCourse. “I have not lost a night of sleep over any one of those guys sent away by ‘three strikes.”’ It’s likely the number of sex offenders getting life sentences will rise because the law was altered in 1996 to allow certain sex offenders only two “strikes.”
But the largest group - 40 percent - are robbers like Conyers.
Another issue that continues to concern critics is the cost of keeping people in prison for their entire lives.
Corrections officials forecast they will need a 61 percent budget increase to $1.5 billion by the 2005 biennium. The money will be needed to build and operate prisons, including a new 1,936-bed facility near Aberdeen, Wash.
The governor can pardon a “three strikes” lifer, but the initiative recommends that not happen until the prisoner is 60 - or older if he is a sex offender.
John Carlson, chairman of the conservative Washington Institute for Policy Studies, which developed and proposed the “three strikes” initiative, calls the measure “an aid to rehabilitation” because repeat criminals know the choices: Shape up or go to prison for life.
Carlson said he believes the lowerthan-expected number of “three strikes” offenders sent to prison and the drop in violent crime indicate the law might be working as a deterrent.
But the Justice Policy Institute, a liberal Washington, D.C., research group, has issued a report that found crime dropped more from 1994 to 1995 in states that didn’t have a “three strikes” law than in those that did.
While the findings are too preliminary to prove the law isn’t working, researchers say the findings show that claims the law is making a difference are “blatantly misleading.”