SFGate
Calif. — California voters overwhelmingly approved changes to the state’s tough “three strikes” law on Tuesday, limiting a practice in which prosecutors could seek 25-years-to-life sentences for defendants even if their latest offense - their third strike - was neither serious nor violent.
The law, approved by state voters in 1994, aimed to lock up career criminals like Richard Allen Davis, who a year earlier had kidnapped and murdered 12-year-old Polly Klaas of Petaluma after an earlier string of assaults, robberies and abductions.
But the law came under criticism when lesser offenders - a man who stole a truck and two bikes at Stanford, for instance, and another who stole a pepperoni pizza in Southern California - got 25-years-to-life sentences
The change in the law will allow an estimated 2,800 third-strike inmates currently in prison to petition the courts for a reduced sentence, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, and prevent an untold number of people from being charged with a third strike in the future.
Full story: Prop. 36: ‘Three strikes’ changes approved