The court's answer could settle whether states violate the Constitution's ban on cruel or unusual punishment when they use the laws to win long sentences for minor offenses that otherwise might result in just a few months behind bars.

The court agreed to hear two cases from California, which has the country's strictest three-strikes law.

Forty states lengthen sentences of repeat criminals; 26 of the 40 have a three-strikes provision.

Only in California, however, may a judge impose a sentence of 25 years to life for any felony conviction if the criminal was previously convicted of two serious or violent felonies.

Crimes that might otherwise be considered misdemeanors may also be considered felonies under California's law, meaning that shoplifting or other small-time crime can trigger the long sentence.

California voters and lawmakers approved the three-strikes law in 1994 amid public furor over the kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas. Richard Allen Davis, a repeat offender on parole at the time of the kidnapping, was convicted of the murder and sentenced to death.

Three-strikes laws in other states and the federal government were also passed in the 1990s, when the spread of crack cocaine fed public fears about rising violent crime.

The federal law is not under review before the high court.

The better-known case the court will hear is an appeal from California's attorney general, who claims the state was justified in seeking a prison term of 50 years to life for a man convicted of stuffing videotapes down his pants at two southern California Kmart stores in 1995.

Leandro Andrade had previous burglary convictions, making him eligible for extra punishment under California's three-strikes law.

A state court upheld the sentence, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a widely noted decision last year, ruled that Andrade's sentence was unconstitutional. The ruling was limited to cases like his, and did not overturn the three-strikes law itself.

``I think it is outrageous that someone could be sentenced to 50 years in prison for shoplifting $150 worth of videotapes,'' said Erwin Chemerinsky, Andrade's lawyer.

A divided three-judge panel of the appeals court found Andrade's sentence ``grossly disproportionate'' to the theft, and said Supreme Court rulings require a trial judge to examine whether the punishment fits the crime.

The court also said it will hear a case that came out the other way. Courts upheld Gary Ewing's sentence of 25 years to life in prison for trying to walk out of a pro shop with three golf clubs shoved down his pants leg.

Ewing had four prior convictions for robbery and burglary. Although prosecutors could have charged him with a misdemeanor in the golf club case, they chose to charge him with a felony under the state's three-strikes law.

``Serving 25 years to life for stealing golf clubs is cruel and unusual punishment,'' Ewing's lawyer wrote in asking the Supreme Court to get involved.

The Supreme Court has turned down previous attempts to challenge three-strikes laws as cruel and unusual punishment, but in 1999, three justices made an unusual point of questioning the law's application in California.

The court's ruling could be limited to the California law, or it could make a more general statement about the reach of sentencing schemes for repeat criminals.

In Andrade's case, the prosecutor had a choice of charging Andrade with a misdemeanor or with a felony that would make him subject to the three-strikes law.

Andrade received 25 years to life for each count, with the sentences to run consecutively. He is not eligible for parole until 2046, when he will be 87.

``Nothing in the Constitution requires society to wait for another person to be victimized by another serious or violent crime before isolating (a repeat criminal) for a substantial period of time,'' California Attorney General Bill Lockyer wrote in asking the Supreme Court to get involved.

Rhode Island, West Virginia, Texas and Louisiana would also allow longer than usual sentences for Andrade's same crime.

The 9th Circuit concluded that only in Louisiana would Andrade have faced a potential sentence as long as the one he received in California.

The government does have the power to punish repeat criminals harshly, Andrade's lawyer argued in court papers, ``but this court has never approved such harsh sentences for misdemeanor conduct, even when the offender is a recidivist,'' Chemerinsky wrote.

The cases are Lockyer v. Andrade, 01-1127, and Ewing v. California, 01-6978.

Source: Associated Press
Author: Anne Gearan, Associated Press Writer
Published: April 1, 2002
Copyright 2002 Associated Press

Related Article:

Calif. Three Strikes Law Threatened
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11948.shtml

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Although patrons, some of whom are multiple sclerosis sufferers, are free to smoke cannabis in the members' room, no other drugs are permitted and no one under 18 will be admitted.

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Here's the link!
http://www.illinois-mmi.org/

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SIR, thank you for corresponding. I am a clutz with a computer. I get sweaty palms with these archane "conventions". I have a brain disorder which causes me to get very anxious and impatient with things that I cannot speak with to learn new things. I cannot post at cannabis.com, because for some reason, my password does not work. Once I try a few times, I get so anxious I start to have an avoidance reaction to trying again. Also at marijuana.com, I am somehow blocked. So I find that I merely repsond to the emails that people leave for me. Since I have activated as a warrior, I know that I cannot have this controversial substance anywhere near my hair follicles (or my urine). Therefore, I am abstinent for the last 7 months from the one substance that I had found to help me with these very deficits of which I speak above. Even as I type, I know that the Illinois legislature is debating a measure that would make my valid political speech on these very issues a felony, by having an Illinois web site that discusses "cannabis". Of course, as I only discuss 1) valid use of a valid statute allowing for a proper authorization to use cannabis & 2) and ways to help people understand these things and learn to discuss & convince doctors to help me to help them & 3) valid medical and ethical and legal arguments to support these very things, ultimately I will prevail in my defenses of charges that I expect to follow quite shortly. Since I continue to rail against and about these manifest improprieties of public "prosecuting" attorneys, that are involved in vicious political battles to culminate in November, 2002, I expect that this political arena that I have entered will get bloody indeed. The efforts that I have undertaken have placed me in a position where I have only two choices 1) to (have and to now) apologize for my audacity in thinking that I have thought any proper thoughts at any time in these things, to accept that I am delusional and a mental defective, and allow myself to be placed on a gurney, to be infused with poisons designed to rob my frontal lobes of all capacity for full and rational thought (lithium salts crystalize and clog the neurons in that area, I believe), or insulin shock treatment befuddles those same areas, or the SSRI's limit effectiveness of those areas, or electric shock treatment does the same, just as the FRONTAL LOBE LOBOTOMIES were designed to do just a few short decades ago, eh?, and accept that I have not been and am not competent to know any things about being a lawyer, or about having concepts chilled and formatted which allow me to know when my people (my clients' rights) are being trampled over, and accept further that I will never again be a lawyer, because I merely sought to try to measure my moods, etc. (they initially told me I could voluntarilly take a tw year suspension because I TALKED BACK AT THEM-HOW DARE I CHALLENGE THE COURT with claims that they committed fraud(!), or 2) continue to fight this despotic cloak of lies and deception and corruption, which might even have placed me in the position where I will be blocked from responding to cannabis.com, marijuana.com, each and every time I wish to post (I recognize that this might only be my own delusional thought process-remember, I know that 1) I am a clutz, 2) I have these anxiety symptoms, 3) I am inept at certain things, 4) I am too broke to hire any someone that will reliably help to train me or assist me in escaping from my own limitations, 5) I have attempted to contact so many media sources and been rebuffed by every and each one so that I truly believe that I am destined to live out this story in quiet silence and solitude, 6) each and every large "advocacy group" must think me either to be a cad (a plant), a shill, a narc, an informer, especially since my story keeps getting more and more incredible as the moments pass!, 7) I continue to lose more and more of the any and everythings that I ever worked to build up, and I see myself more and more as a homeless begger, as the moments accumulate, (you'll want to read my archives, "zine" #2, from last summer where I did a bit about the "Jury Pool Enhancement System", which nicely reprises (in reverse fashion-sort of a precognition thingy) the "Jury Nullification" angle which so nicely came to the fore with that recent LA Times story. Also, I have repeatedly told these people at the ARDC (the lawyer police) of my intention to sue them in Federal District Court under the ADA Act. They have, of course, been noticeably silent about that issue, and just last week I saw an article setting forth that 1) I can't sue them under the ADA Act because some case precludes such suits against state officials, but the article was written because the same Illinois House that I mentioned above, just passed another bill (unanimously) which would allow people just like me to sue the state for violations under the ADA Act! In other words, my story just keeps getting wierder and wierder-I keep making claims, strong ones, and verbalizing those claims, to a wider and wider audience, and working harder and harder to get my message across, and they keep trying to work harder and harder to silence me, and then many things that I have advanced in error, get stronger and stronger, without me having any specific reason to think that they will, and then they do? And just as last summer I found that I could go online once a month for the few stories about pot in the media (as advanced by the best news sources-cannabis.com is one), in this quiet little area of subject, I know find that I can't go a day without some wierd and wierder story line popping up-some people think we are close to the end of the world or something, eh? So I realize that I must continue to advance this cause, to be the lone warrior here, to continue to (yes, I am writing all of this down) live this story, to report on this story, and by the way, I have attached herewith my most recent two "motions" with the ARDC, so that you can see where I am going right now-they are rather voluminous, sorry for my verbosity or bad tact in like "spamming" you with too much to absorb, or something, OK? (I hope this "attachment" thingy works for me still, remember I am still a clutz and all, eh? END OF TRANSMISSION. PAUL PETERSON, warrior, of course.

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VAAI

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