State committee threatens California's 'three-strikes' law - Yahoo News
At the very moment when Gov. Gavin Newsom and his appointed attorney general, Rob Bonta, were talking tough on crime just after last fall’s wave of smash-and-grab burglaries, an influential new state panel was plumping hard to soften California’s signature law for getting tough on career criminals.
The first-in-the-nation “three strikes and you’re out” law — passed with 72 percent approval as a ballot initiative in 1994 — demands life in prison without possibility of parole for convicted murderers. This does little to improve public safety, said the new Committee on Revision of the Penal Code. It also drives up the prison population and taxpayer costs, but has not quelled crime, the group contended.
The committee’s recommendations stand a decent chance of becoming law as part of the state’s decade-long effort to cut down the number of convicts it houses.
The panel of five Newsom appointees and two legislators recommends repealing three-strikes, despite the huge public vote for it and the fact there is no evidence the sentiment behind that vote has ebbed.
Recognizing the law itself cannot be repealed without another statewide vote, the group instead suggested several alterations possible without consulting voters.
If that happens, it would be yet another example of the Legislature trying to circumvent the plainly expressed will of the voters. Other attempts in recent years have included efforts to get around public votes against statewide rent control and for retention of the cash bail system in state courts.
This time, the panel suggests, legislators ought to rewrite three-strikes, which requires a sentence of 25 years to life imprisonment for anyone convicted of a third felony after two serious or violent crimes. The law now doubles terms for “two-strikers,” criminals with a past serious or violent felony conviction later found guilty of a second such offense.
Crimes committed when those convicted were juveniles should no longer be counted as “strikes,” the panel recommends. The group also suggested counting as strikes only felonies committed in the past five years – even if the criminal spent that time in prison, where committing such an offense is almost impossible.
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source: https://news.yahoo.com/state-committee-threatens-californias-three-164514881.html
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