STRIKING OUT

Critics Decry Sentencing Law But Prosecutors Say It Works

Like millions of Californians, Judy Savoy voted without hesitation for the
"Three Strikes, You're Out" law when it was on the ballot in 1994.

The measure passed by a whopping 3-to-1 margin and seemed like a good idea:
Locking up dangerous, career criminals for at least 25 years to life after
their third felony conviction. Coming on the heels of the Polly Klaas case
in Petaluma, public support was overwhelming.

But Savoy regrets her vote now. In fact, the 43-year-old Santa Barbara woman
has joined a drive to get the law rewritten -- an arguably futile effort
that defies popular opinion and bucks political odds.

Earlier this year, she helped start a Santa Barbara chapter of Families to
Amend California's Three Strikes, or FACTS for short. Normally private and
apolitical, Savoy wanted "to get the message out to people (about) the
insanity" and injustice of parts of the law.

"I voted for it, unfortunately, because it was presented as just being for
really horrible, violent crimes,'' she recalled.

But, as she and others slowly came to realize, the law encompasses far more
than just heinous killers like Richard Allen Davis, who has been sentenced
to death in the kidnap-murder of the 12-year-old Klaas.

The three-strikes law kicks in once criminals with two "serious or violent"
felony convictions on their rap sheet commit a third felony of any type --
even relatively minor offenses, like chronic thieves who shoplift or someone
getting nabbed with cocaine.

Earlier this month, Savoy sat in a Santa Barbara courtroom as 12 jurors
unanimously found her husband of 15 years, Ervin Savoy, 35, guilty of
burglarizing a Santa Barbara home Dec. 19 while he was drunk and high on drugs.

He had been convicted and imprisoned for burglary twice before, and this was
his third strike.

Now he faces a possible sentence of 25 years to life in prison -- the same
term given for first-degree murder in California. Imposing similar sentences
for such vastly different crimes seems grossly unfair to critics of the
three-strikes law like Savoy.

"It's crazy," she said. "To me, there's got to be a better way of dealing
with the problem than life in prison ... throwing somebody's life away" for
nonviolent crimes.

Savoy feels so fervently about the issue that she got behind FACTS in hopes
of getting the law rewritten so that the third strike, like the other two,
must be be restricted to a violent or serious nature. That category ranges
from residential burglary to child molestation to murder.

Such efforts have been under way for the past few years in Los Angeles and
several other communities. FACTS has about 15 chapters around the state, but
the group is in its infancy locally. The local chapter's first meeting was
held April 8.

Members contend the current law casts too wide a net and has been applied
more to nonviolent criminals than those who earned their third strike
through violence. Statewide, roughly half of the 5,000 or so people
sentenced to 25 years or more under the law had third strikes that were
neither violent nor serious, according to FACTS representatives.

"In case after devastating case, Californians have been sentenced to life
sentences for such crimes as possession of small amounts of controlled
substances, forgery and small-scale theft," according to a FACTS news release.

However, figures for Santa Barbara County don't support that assertion.
Statistics compiled by District Attorney Thomas W. Sneddon show that since
the law took effect in January 1995, nearly three-fourths of the criminals
sentenced locally under it had committed either a violent or serious third
felony.

Sneddon says there's little chance of someone getting a life sentence for a
relatively minor felony. The reality, he said, is that judges are using
their discretion not to impose lengthy three-strikes terms when the
situation warrants leniency.

FACTS members disagree and have spent much of their time this year pushing
the latest of several bills aimed at redefining what crimes can be
considered a third strike.

But that effort faces a seemingly insurmountable hurdle: Because the law was
enacted by voters, a change requires two-thirds approval of both the state
Senate and Assembly, as well as the governor's signature.

Despite such difficulties, members say they are in it for the long haul,
recognizing that the changes they are seeking may be a long time in coming.

About 10 days ago, any hopes of rewriting the law for at least another year
evaporated recently when state Sen. Tom Hayden, D-Los Angeles, reluctantly
gutted a bill he had introduced. Now, instead of changing the law, the
measure -- SB 79 -- only would require that the effects of the current law
simply be studied.

Hayden agreed to the change his bill because "we were looking at certain
failure to get two-thirds" passage as it was written originally, conceded
his chief of staff, Rocky Rushing.

Such setbacks on the legislative front, while disappointing, aren't enough
to stop the drive to get the law changed.

"It makes me a little upset" that SB 79 was rewritten, confided FACTS member
Sherry Davidson, whose husband is serving a three-strikes term of 35 years
to life. "It makes me think I better get off my keister and do a little more
work."

She and Marc Davidson, 40, were married at the County Jail in April 1996,
shortly after he was convicted of his third-strike felony. They tied the
knot even though he was facing the possibility of spending the rest of his
life behind bars.

Davidson, who lives in Lompoc, was 34 at the time and managing a busy
dinner-house restaurant. Marc Davidson had been out of prison for just 10
months, after serving six years for kidnapping his ex-girlfriend from a
Lompoc bar. That was after spending a year in San Quentin Prison for robbing
then-Lompoc Mayor Charlotte Benson when he was 19.

Blinded by love and admittedly naive about the court system, Davidson
refused to believe when she said "I do" three years ago -- as jail guards
looked on -- that her groom would be an old man before he gets out of
prison, if he ever does.

"When we were married, I thought he would serve two or three years and be
out," she confided. "I thought, with the right legal help and the right
attorney," his three-strikes conviction could be undone.

Instead, a state appeals court let stand his sentence and a jury's unanimous
finding that Marc Davidson was guilty of assaulting a police officer with a
knife. Police had responded to a violent dispute between the couple, but
Davidson adamantly contends that charge was exaggerated.

Wiser now, she no longer holds out hope that her husband's punishment will
be reduced before he gets his first parole hearing in about 2030.

"I can't harbor any hope anymore because it's too painful," she said.

The thought that countless other women and families face that dilemma, too,
has stirred Davidson and Savoy to action, even though they know their own
husbands would not be helped by the proposed changes proposed in Hayden's
three-strikes bill and others like it.

"I'm feeling like I've got to do something. I can't just sit here and let it
go by me," said Savoy.

While FACTS would like to see the law changed as quickly as possible, its
leaders understand the political difficulties of accomplishing that end,
said Carrie Rosenbaum, who launched the Santa Barbara chapter after
graduating from UCSB.

"The fact that SB 79 is being tabled (revised) is even more reason for us to
continue meeting with local legislators" to garner support for the next
bill. In the meantime, she said, the group plans to focus on making the
public, politicians and the media more aware of what it calls "the Draconian
nature of the three-strikes law."

The first FACTS meeting here drew an audience of about 25 to 30 people.
Since then, attendance at the semi-monthly meetings has dropped, averaging
to about 10 people per nighteach time, members said.

Besides those gatherings, the fledgling chapter occasionally has set up
tables in front of Courthouse to hand out information.

When California voters passed three strikes, it was the toughest law in the
nation aimed at recidivist criminals. Since then, however, numerous states
have followed suit.

Critics contend most voters expected the law only would be applied by
prosecutors in cases where a new felony either was serious or violent.

"I think most people think that the time (in custody) should fit the crime,"
Rushing said.

"If people had a clearer idea then of what the initiative would actually
do," he added, "the vote (would have) been a lot closer."

Law-enforcement officials, on the other hand, insist the three-strikes law
is doing exactly what the public wants: lowering crime rates by locking away
more repeat felons. They say it is drawing largely from the most
recalcitrant 6 percent of criminals, who account for nearly two-thirds of
all crime, statistics show.

The law is such an effective deterrent, prosecutors claim, that some
first-or second-time convicts are moving out of California when released
rather than risk another felony conviction that would be their third strike.

"Three strikes has had a major impact on crime," said Sneddon.

However, critics of the law cite a host of other reasons, including a
booming economy and changing demographics, for the drop in crime.

Opinions also vary widely on whether the law's heavy penalties are being
imposed arbitrarily in cases where the criminal's most recent felony was not
a serious or violent one.

Although prosecutors suggest that rarely happens, defense attorneys counter
that judges are reluctant to reduce a three-strikes case because of public
opinion and rulings by higher courts requiring specific reasons for granting
such leniency.

"If they (judges) are going to strike strikes, they better show very
compelling reasons why," said Doug Hayes, a Santa Barbara defense attorney
critical of the current law. "They really have very little discretion."

Hayes recently represented a Santa Barbara man with two prior burglary
convictions who was sentenced to 43 years to life for his third strike:
possessing a small amount of methamphetamine and cocaine.

"What was interesting in his case was that there was no violence in his
background whatsoever," noted Hayes.

That argument "misses the point" of why the law was enacted, said Deputy
District Attorney Darryl Perlin, who handles many of the three-strikes cases
filed in Santa Barbara courts.

The new felony, regardless of whether it is serious or violent, "is the
culmination of a career of crime for three strikers," Perlin said.

"They're not being punished just for the new crime by itself," he noted.
"The public should not have to wait until someone commits a serious or
violent felony before a career criminal is taken off the streets for good."

Over the past four and a half years, local judges have reduced charges or
waived previous "strike" convictions 31 times, out of 142 three-strikes
cases filed in the county through March of this year, according to Sneddon's
statistics.

In other words, the kind of judicial override allowed under a 1996 state
Supreme Court ruling has occurred about once in every five three-strikes
cases locally.

Such rulings make it very unlikely that someone will be undeservingly
sentenced to a potential life term, law-enforcement officials and other
proponents of the law contend.

"I don't see anything about the current three-strikes system of punishment
that leads to inappropriate or unfair dispositions of serious felony
behavior,'' said Deputy District Attorney Hilary Dozer, who prosecuted Savoy
and has handled dozens of other three-strikes cases.

"I really and truly believe that three strikes is an effective law and one
that works. My own personal feeling is that three strikes has had a very
large deterrent effect" on crime, he said.

It's often apparent in courtroom discussions and dealings with people
charged with serious or violent felonies, Dozer noted, how most are acutely
aware of the increased punishment they face if convicted of a second or
third strike.

"They recognize that they either change their behavior or it will have those
kinds of consequences," he said. "Sometimes they know more about the
consequences of getting another strike than do some of the defense lawyers."

However, forethought falls by the wayside when a chronic alcoholic or drug
addict is abusing his substance of choice, countered Savoy.

"When the addiction takes over," she said, "that control mechanism
(deterrence) is not in place."

A former drug abuser who quit years ago, she speaks with the voice of
experience. Her husband, who has long been a methamphetamine addict and an
alcoholic, had consumed "several beers and some pills" before senselessly
breaking into a house in December.

"He can't even remember doing it (the burglary)," Savoy said. "He didn't
have any reason. He had money in his pocket."