March 29, 2024 Breaking News, Latest News, and Videos

Three-Strikes Change: Another California Initiative Working Well:

Alex Maese is an example of how mistaken critics can be when they claim, as they have for decades, that Californians are not smart or sophisticated enough for direct democracy via ballot propositions.

Maese was convicted in 1997 of possessing a fragment of a cotton ball containing 0.029 grams of heroin, then sentenced to life in prison. No court at the time saw evidence of how he was using that tiny drug dose to self-medicate post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from his service in Viet Nam.

Stanford Law School students learned of his case and in 2008 convinced a Kern County judge to release Maese on the basis of the 11 years he had already served. Having completed a residential drug rehab program, he now lives in Los Angeles.

Maese’s case and the trivial offense that triggered his harsh sentence under California’s Three-Strikes-and-You’re-Out law was typical of those that spurred voters almost precisely a year ago to pass Proposition 36 by an overwhelming 69-31 percent margin.

Now it has become clear that initiative is working well. And Proposition 36 is far from alone. The 2008 Marsy’s Law, passed as Proposition 9, today forces notification of victims and their relatives whenever there’s a bail or parole hearing for persons accused or convicted of harming them.

The 1988 Proposition 103 still keeps California car and property insurance rates below national averages. There are many more examples.

But Proposition 36, the most recent significant initiative success story, is also among the most humane measures voters have ever passed.

Designed to mitigate some of the obvious overkill spawned by the 1990s-era Three Strikes sentencing law, this initiative so far has produced the early release of more than 1,000 convicts whose third strikes were as minor as stealing a car jack from an open tow truck or shoplifting a pair of shoes for a child.

An estimated 2,000 more similar prisoners are probably in line for release in the next year or so, with hundreds more yearly now spared long prison terms for petty offenses. This is one reason there’s some hope of success for new plans to comply with federal court orders to lower prison populations.

When all the eligibles are released, Proposition 36 will be saving taxpayers more than $70 million yearly.

That’s the upshot of an autumn report from the Stanford Law School’s Three Strikes Project and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.

The good news in this study of three-strikers released to date is that so far, they haven’t committed many new crimes. Their recidivism rate of about 2 percent is well under the statewide average of 16 percent committing new offenses within similar time periods after release.

The early results demonstrate the soundness of voters’ instincts in softening Three Strikes to make its maximum 25-years-to-life sentence apply only when the third felony conviction is for a violent or serious crime. The law also allows prisoners serving sentences now deemed excessive by the voters to seek resentencing.

The humanity of the initiative was demonstrated in the Stanford-NAACP report with several individual cases successfully pursued by law students in the lead-up to Proposition 36.

Besides Maese, there was Vincent Rico, sentenced to life in 1998 for stealing children’s shoes from a Ross Dress for Less store in Los Angeles. He once again lives with his wife and works full-time. And there was Gregory Taylor, who broke into a church soup kitchen in 1997 and took food, getting a life sentence for his trouble. Released in 2010, he helps manage a sober-living community.

It’s probably too early to know how many similar success stories will emerge from the early releases spawned by Proposition 36. Or how many failures there will be.

But early signs look positive, with judges having granted resentencing under the new law to almost all those requesting it, as lawyers make their way through the least controversial cases first.

The bottom line: If those released get substance abuse counseling, mental health services and transitional housing, there’s every reason to expect the early results to hold up.

in Opinion
Related Posts

ARB Courage (Part 1 of 2)

March 24, 2024

March 24, 2024

On March 4, 2024, your ARB (Architectural Review Board) ruled in favor of the 521-unit Gelson’s Project at Ocean Park...

SM.a.r.t Column: Can California ARBs Balance Affordable Housing with Community Character in the Face of New Housing Laws?

March 17, 2024

March 17, 2024

By suggestion, I attended the March 4th ARB (Architectural Review Board) meeting that addressed the Gelson Lincoln Boulevard Project.  After...

S.M.a.r.t Column: On the Need for Safety

March 10, 2024

March 10, 2024

Earlier this week, in the dark pre-dawn hours, a pair of thugs covered in masks and hoodies burst into the...

Film Review: The Oscar Landscape 2024

March 7, 2024

March 7, 2024

FILM REVIEWTHE OSCAR LANDSCAPE 2024A Look at the Choices – Academy Awards – March 10, 2024, at 5:00 p.m. on...

S.M.a.r.t Column: Five Saving Historic Santa Monica

March 3, 2024

March 3, 2024

Our beloved City is surrounded by many threats, from sea level rise to homelessness, to housing affordability, to cancerous overdevelopment,...

S.M.a.r.t Column: Gelson’s Looms Large

February 22, 2024

February 22, 2024

Our guest column this week is by SMCLC (the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City). SMCLC is a well-established...

S.M.a.r.t Column: Top Toady Town

February 18, 2024

February 18, 2024

Throughout history, from the ancient Romans and Assyrians to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, siege warfare has served as an...

S.M.a.r.t Column: The Sunset of Home Ownership

February 11, 2024

February 11, 2024

We are watching the sunset of our historical and cultural American dream of home ownership as we now are crossing...

SMa.r.t. Column: B(U)Y RIGHT

February 4, 2024

February 4, 2024

“By Right” state housing laws that give developers, in certain projects, the ability to ignore codes ‘by right.’ Well, that...

S.M.a.r.t  Column: Serf City

January 28, 2024

January 28, 2024

Homelessness is a problem in California, and nowhere is this more evident than in our fair city, where the unhoused...

S.M.a.r.t  Column: Bond Fatigue

January 22, 2024

January 22, 2024

Last week’s SMart article,  described two critical problems faced by our Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD): the declining...

S.M.a.r.t Column: Peace on Earth

December 27, 2023

December 27, 2023

We are all, by now, saturated with jingles, holiday cards, “ho ho ho’s,” countless commercial advertisements, and exhortations to feel...

S.M.a.r.t Column: On the Clock with Mayor Brock

December 17, 2023

December 17, 2023

I became Santa Monica’s Mayor on Tuesday, December 12, 2023, following a simple “switch of the chairs” transition with outgoing...

S.M.a.r.t Column: SANTA MONICA CITY COUNCIL 2024

December 10, 2023

December 10, 2023

Position:Seeking Santa Monica City Council Candidate(s) Introduction:Exciting opportunity for the right candidate(s) to work with like-minded Council members committed to...

S.M.a.r.t Column: ARB (NOT Ready to Build!)

December 3, 2023

December 3, 2023

Santa Monica City’s Architectural Review Board (ARB), established in 1974, acts “…to preserve existing areas of natural beauty, cultural importance...