The state’s three-strikes law ends the lives of even low-level offenders. Trust me, I know
When the three-strikes law was being first considered back in 1993, there was a lot of debate about just how this law would be used. For what kinds of crime and on what kinds of criminals? One of the concerns people raised about this law was its potential for abuse, that over time the bar could be lowered, striking out those with less and less serious offenses: Drug addicts and alcoholics who commit crimes due to their addictions, for example, but generally not the worst of career criminals.
One of this law’s biggest supporters was no surprise: rightwing radio talk show host John Carlson, Seattle’s own answer to Rush Limbaugh. Carlson, along with the NRA, helped to lobby for three-strikes legislation. Responding to concerns about prosecutorial abuse and misuse of this law if it was enacted, Carlson shot back both on his radio show and in The Seattle Times with feigned incredulousness: “Oh, that would never happen! The three-strikes law will be reserved only for those with the most serious of offenses focusing on the most severe of repeated offenders.” In other words, only the worst would be locked up for life.
In June 2003, I graduated from Highline Community College in Des Moines with a degree in Human Services and Chemical Dependency. After a decade in recovery from alcoholism, my hope was to help others find their way back from addiction. During my years of active alcoholism, mostly back in the 1980’s, I had a number of arrests, two of which were third-degree assault, the lowest-level felony in the criminal justice system. These were basic bar fights common with the disease of alcoholism. Crimes which only merited relatively short county jail sentences. In my 40 years I had never once been to prison.
Then I relapsed, and the unthinkable happened: after a night of heavy drinking in a blackout I assaulted another man. The next morning, wanting to take responsibility for the harm I had caused, I turned myself in to the police.
I was shocked to discover that even though I had no prior strike level offenses and no prior prison record, they were nonetheless going to strike me out, sending me to prison for life without parole! They would accomplish this through a convoluted process they call “Adjusting for Foreign Jurisdiction.” My life was over.
In Tacoma, a woman with a long history of drug addiction and many arrests for theft walked into a 7-ll store and attempted to steal some Hostess fruit pies. Homeless and high on drugs, when confronted she threatened the store clerk with a women’s hair curling iron that she’d pulled from her coat. The prosecutor said this made the shoplifting a second-degree robbery, which is a strike.
Now while her conduct is without a doubt criminal, and she certainly deserves to be incarcerated (hopefully during which time she would be given treatment for her addiction, the source of all her troubles) one has to pose this question: Is this really the worst criminal conduct deserving of the most severe sentences short of death? Her case was deemed so outrageous that in 2004 it was cited in a legislative bill designed to amend three-strikes. The bill failed to pass the State Senate.
Here is an interesting comparison to add some prospective: In 2006 the United States sentenced the 9/11 terrorist Zacarias Mussoui to life without parole for his part in the terrorist attacks. This is a man who laughed with maniacal glee as those who lost loved ones testified to the horrors of that day. Now is the terrorist attack of 9/11 really the same as a girl stealing fruit pies from a 7-11? Because the three-strikes law seems to be implying that it is. And if it’s not the same crime, then why the same sentence?
When we as a society can condemn these two very different people, with two very different motives, to the same life sentences, then we have lost all perspective.
Nearly 150 years ago Henry David Thoreau wrote, in a very important essay called “Civil Disobedience,” words which were famously quoted by Dr. Martin Luther King during the Civil Rights Movement: “Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them?”
The three-strikes law is an unjust law. It is a law that does not address the underlying problem of addiction, nor provide for any future rehabilitation. It is not only inhuman but ineffective, only warehousing the problem at enormous expense. We are now living in the 21st century and this is the United States of America, which I know we would all like to believe is the most enlightened nation on earth. Then why can’t our laws fight crime effectively and do this belwief some justice? n
James C. Moody is an inmate at the Monroe Correctional Center.