COURT REJECTS 'THREE-STRIKES' APPEAL

WASHINGTON (AP) The Supreme Court today rejected a challenge to
California's three-strikes law by a man who was sentenced to 25 years to
life in prison after stealing a bottle of vitamins from a grocery store.

The court refused to hear an appeal in which Michael Riggs said the state
sentencing law, which provides longer sentences for repeat offenders,
violated his rights and amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer voted to hear Riggs' appeal, but four votes are
needed to grant such full review.

Three other justices said Riggs' case raised "obviously substantial" issues
but that they were willing to let lower courts consider them first.

"It is prudent ... for this court to await review by other courts," Justice
John Paul Stevens wrote for himself and Justices David H. Souter and Ruth
Bader Ginsburg.

Riggs was convicted of shoplifting a bottle of vitamins from an Alberston's
Store in Banning, Calif., in 1995. When arrested, Riggs had a hypodermic
syringe hidden in one of his socks.

He previously had been convicted of a variety of crimes vehicle theft,
possession of a controlled substance, forgery, receiving stolen property,
attempted burglary, check fraud and robbery.

In a lengthy appeal he wrote by himself from his Corcoran, Calif., prison,
Riggs contended that his lengthy sentence violated his due process rights
and wrongly punished him for crimes committed before the state's
three-strikes law was enacted.

Riggs had not raised those issues when he appealed his sentence in state
courts.

The Supreme Court appeal also argued that the sentence violated the
Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment because it was
disproportionate to the crime.

A state appeals court rejected that argument in 1997, and the California
Supreme Court last year refused to hear Riggs' ensuing appeal.

"Someone who commits a cold-blooded, premeditated murder with a deadly
weapon receives a maximum sentence of 26 years to life, and is eligible for
parole in 17 years, four months" under one California homicide law, Riggs
said in the appeal acted on today.

In contrast, he will not be eligible for parole until serving 25 years.

State prosecutors urged the justices to reject Riggs' appeal, saying the
California law complies with past Supreme Court decisions on sentencing
recidivist criminals.

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
non-violent 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.

The case acted on today is Riggs vs. California, 98-5021.