Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court Friday threw out a shoplifter’s 50-year sentence under California’s "three strikes" law as overly harsh — a ruling that could lead to hundreds of challenges from defendants who received near-life terms for petty crimes.
In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Leonardo Andrade’s sentence violated the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
It was the first federal court ruling declaring that California’s sentencing law, the nation’s toughest, could produce unconstitutionally harsh sentences.
Andrade got 50 years in prison for stealing nine videotapes, valued at $153, from a Kmart. The court noted that kidnappers and murderers could receive less time than Andrade, who had a record of several nonviolent, petty crimes.
"The harshness of the sentence appears grossly disproportionate to the gravity of the offense and the culpability of the offender," Circuit Judge Richard Paez wrote.
Had Andrade’s prior convictions not made him subject to the three-strikes law, he would have faced six months at most.
Andrade’s lawyer, Erwin Chemerinsky, said the case could have broad implications.
"This especially opens the door to those whose third strike is like my client’s: petty theft with a prior," said Chemerinsky, a University of Southern California constitutional law scholar.
Attorney General Bill Lockyer’s office, which defended Andrade’s sentence before the circuit court, said the state might ask the court to reconsider its ruling.
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.
The law mandates a minimum 25 years-to-life term for defendants convicted of any felony if they have already been found guilty of two serious or violent felonies. A serious felony includes such offenses as burglary of an unoccupied house.
The California Supreme Court has dismissed cruel-and-unusual punishment challenges to the law. The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to entertain such a challenge.
Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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