JUSTICES LET CALIFORNIA'S THREE-STRIKES LAW STAND

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court left intact California's
three-strikes law, the nation's toughest on repeat offenders, even
though four of the nine justices voiced concerns Tuesday about its
constitutionality.

The justices rejected the appeal of a man sentenced to 25 years to
life in prison after he stole a bottle of vitamins from a supermarket,
a crime one California court called "a petty theft motivated by
homelessness and hunger."

Nine-time loser Michael Riggs, in an appeal he wrote himself, attacked
the three-strikes law as cruel and unusual punishment.

Only Justice Stephen Breyer voted to hear Riggs' appeal. Four votes
are needed to grant such full review. Three other justices, however,
said his case raised "obviously substantial" issues that first should
be considered by lower courts.

About half the states, including Florida, adopted three-strikes
earlier this decade but those laws generally have not been invoked
often.

California has been the major exception. The state has used its 1994
law to put away more than 40,000 people for second and third strikes
- -- a quarter of the state's prison population. About 4,400 of them
were sentenced to 25 years to life.

Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for himself and Justices David
Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, noted that California "appears to be
the only state in which a misdemeanor could receive such a severe sentence."

But Stevens said other courts should determine whether California's
law yields sentences that are so "grossly disproportionate" as to be
unconstitutional.

"It is prudent . . . for this court to await review by other courts,"
he said.

Riggs was convicted of shoplifting a bottle of vitamins from an
Alberston's Store in Banning, Calif., in 1995.

He previously had been convicted eight times -- four nonviolent crimes
and four robberies.

"In this particular case, the sentence was not cruel and unusual
punishment," state Deputy Attorney General Craig Nelson said in a
telephone interview from his San Diego office. "But if the justices
were inclined to believe it might have been, they were right to let it
percolate in the lower courts."

In 1980, the court upheld the life sentence of a Texas man whose three
convictions were for credit card fraud worth $80, forging a $28 check
and falsely obtaining $120. That inmate was eligible for parole after
serving 12 years.

The court in 1983 overturned a South Dakota man's life sentence for
six nonviolent crimes, but his sentence carried no chance of parole.

And in 1991, the court upheld a life sentence without possibility of
parole for a Michigan man convicted of possessing a small amount of
cocaine. The court ruled then that the Constitution bars only those
sentences that are "grossly disproportionate" to the crime.