U.S. SUPREME COURT: SEVERITY OF THREE-STRIKES LAWS ON DECK CALIFORNIA CASE
WILL TEST LIMITS

Washington -- The Supreme Court said Monday it will review whether some
three-strikes sentencing laws result in unconstitutionally harsh prison
terms, such as up to life behind bars for shoplifting videotapes from Kmart.

The court agreed to hear appeals involving two California thieves sentenced
to terms ranging from 25 years to life for small-time crimes that otherwise
might have meant just a few months in jail.

The Supreme Court will consider whether long sentences were
unconstitutionally cruel or unusual punishment for a heroin addict who
shoplifted videotapes worth $153 and an AIDS patient who shoved three golf
clubs down his pants leg and tried to walk out of a pro shop.

The court's eventual ruling could be limited to the way the law is applied
in California, or it could make a more general statement about how far
states can go in using similar laws to win very long prison terms for
relatively minor crimes.

Twenty-six states and the federal government have some version of a
three-strikes law. These typically allow a life prison term or something
close to it for a criminal convicted of a third felony.

Critics say the laws are too harsh and inflexible in general, and
particularly so in California, which has the nation's strictest
three-strikes law. It requires a sentence of 25 years to life in prison for
any felony conviction if the criminal previously was convicted of two
serious or violent felonies.

"If an individual is charged with growing a single marijuana plant, and he
has on his record two qualifying prior convictions, he's dog meat," said
Jerome P. Mullins, a San Jose, Calif., criminal defense lawyer who has
represented several clients prosecuted under the state's three-strikes law.

Also on Monday:

The court ruled that a judge could oversee a tobacco case even though he
once headed a trial lawyers group that criticized cigarette companies.
Justices had been asked to use the case to determine when judges are too
close --- or at least appear to be --- to legal subjects being disputed.

The court, without hearing argument, said it was clear that U.S. District
Judge Carl Barbier of Louisiana was wrongly told he should not oversee a
case filed against cigarette makers by a state government in Brazil.

"We think it self-evident that a reasonable person would not believe he had
any interest or bias," the court said in an unsigned, unanimous decision.

Barbier, who was appointed during the Clinton administration, was president
of the Louisiana Trial Lawyers Association from 1989-90. The group filed a
brief in a tobacco case in the state Supreme Court in 1991 that charged
tobacco companies "will continue to sell cancer until they know that they
will have to pay for the needless deaths and the needless suffering that
they inflict."

Even though Barbier did not personally make the accusations --- and said he
was unaware of the filing --- the appeals court said a reasonable person
could doubt his impartiality. Barbier's name was on the paperwork.

Leaders of a Kentucky community college lost a free speech case that asked
the Supreme Court whether a college instructor had a constitutional right
to use racial slurs in class as part of a discussion of hurtful communication.

Complaints about the lesson cost the teacher his job, and the court had
been urged to use his dismissal to decide whether the First Amendment
applies to all on-the-job speech. Justices declined, without comment, to
review an appeal from the teacher's superiors.

The court said it will review a West Virginia court ruling that a railroad
must compensate former workers for the emotional distress of being exposed
to potentially cancer-causing asbestos on the job.

The high court agreed to hear an appeal from Norfolk & Western Railway Co.,
which claimed trial lawyers are using sympathetic West Virginia courts to
wring money out of railroads.