Interview with Nation's 1st 3-Striker: Video & Transcript

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Sunday May 30, 2010 · 7:45 AM PDT

2010/05/30 · 07:45

In January 1994, 2 months after Washington passed the nation's first 3-Strikes law, Larry Fisher robbed a Subway shop of $151. He used no weapon or physical force. Not knowing about the new law, he'd just struck out - with three no-injury, no-weapon robberies. He's now serving a sentence of 777 years, 77 months, and 77 days With No Possibility of Release.

Defendants with all lower-seriousness crimes no longer get 3-Strikes sentences. Snohomish County Public defenders are representing Larry pro bono in a clemency petition -- and seeking donations to defray expenses.

In Washington, 1 out of 30 adults is behind bars or under community supervision at any one time. (1) 3-Strikes expresses a dysfunction of democracy that brings us climate change and the Gulf catastrophe. It's urgent we address these socially destabilizing laws.

CLEMENCY DONATIONS
Email me at noemie_maxwell (at) yahoo and I'll send a form to donate to Snohomish County Public Defender Association for Larry's clemency petition.

Photo: Larry Fisher at McNeil Island Correctional Center. CLICK PHOTO TO VIEW FILM. Transcript below. Read More

Poll
12 votes Show Results
What is the connection between mass incarceration and the dysfunction of democracy that brings us the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico?

Our choice as a society to allow so much economic injustice and untreated mental illness - and then to lock away - and permantently remove voting rights from such a large percentage of the population -- distorts the electorate

The over-punishment of street crime is part of a dynamic that helps enable large-scale environmental and other mass forms of dangerous misbehavior by the powerful

Both of the above

Both of the above and more (please specify in comments)

Something else (please specify in comments)

There is no connection

12 votes Vote Now!
What is the connection between mass incarceration and the dysfunction of democracy that brings us the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico?

Our choice as a society to allow so much economic injustice and untreated mental illness - and then to lock away - and permantently remove voting rights from such a large percentage of the population -- distorts the electorate

8%

1 vote

The over-punishment of street crime is part of a dynamic that helps enable large-scale environmental and other mass forms of dangerous misbehavior by the powerful

2 votes

Both of the above

3 votes

Both of the above and more (please specify in comments)

2 votes

Something else (please specify in comments)

0%

0 votes

There is no connection

4 votes

Seattle: 1st City to Affirm Charter for Compassion

noemie maxwell

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Monday April 26, 2010 · 1:40 PM PDT

2010/04/26 · 13:40

Compassionate Action Network, Fetzer Institute, Seeds of Compassion, and Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education hosted a celebration and symposium on compassion on April 24 at The Center for Spiritual Living.

The day began with a ceremony honoring the affirmation by Seattle's Mayor and City Council of the Charter for Compassion and their declaration that Seattle is a participant in the Ten Year Campaign for Compassionate Cities. Seattle is the first city to adopt the Charter, which appears below the fold with additional photos.

Above: Panel Discussion on Personal and Intergenerational Compassion, *L-R Ruby Love, Isa D'Arleans, Andy Himes, Deb Grover, Ron Hertel (see links to their organizations, below).

noemie maxwell

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Tuesday April 06, 2010 · 9:55 AM PDT

2010/04/06 · 09:55

In this film interviews with current and former 3-Strikers, family members, public officials. Script below the fold.

Justice Is No Game: A Briefing on 3-Strikes

If you're in Washington please come to an April 14 benefit for 3-Strikes reform. Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness keynotes.

noemie maxwell

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Sunday August 30, 2009 · 7:11 AM PDT

2009/08/30 · 07:11

In a 5-year span from the ages of 19 to 24, Dean Fillion, coming from a childhood of abuse, neglect, addiction to alcohol, and guidance provided mainly by other street youth, had accumulated several felony convictions. On his last conviction, he was sentenced to Life Without Possibility of Parole under Washington's 3-Strikes.

None of his crimes are classified as a "Serious Violent Offense". (1) All are Class B or C felonies classified in the bottom quarter of the state's criminal seriousness scale. (2) In 2001, Washington's Sentencing Guidelines Commission recommended removing Robbery 2 from the 3-Strikes list and evaluating if any form of Assault 2 should remain. Those two crimes happen to be the sole basis of Dean's life sentence. (3)

Below the fold, find commentary by Mr. Fillion and background on his case and the law. Read More

Washington State 3-Striker Released Under Clemency

noemie maxwell

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Friday May 08, 2009 · 1:37 PM PDT

2009/05/08 · 13:37

Yesterday afternoon Stevan Dozier, whose story was featured on Washblog in December 2007, was granted clemency from a 3-Strikes sentence of 777 years Without Parole and released after Governor Gregoire approved the unanimous recommendation of Washington's Clemency and Pardons Board made December 11, 2008. Dozier has served under that sentence since 1994, the year 3-Strikes went into effect. His convictions are all for Robbery 2, a crime in the lowest quartile of criminal seriousness under state law. In 2001, Washington's Sentencing Guidelines Commission recommended removing Robbery 2 from the 3-Strikes list.

Dozier is the first Washington 3-Striker to be released under clemency. Washington is the first 3-Strikes state in the nation.

King County's Prosecuting Attorney, Dan Satterberg, who has acknowledged that prosecutors now rarely request 3-Strikes sentences for people with all Robbery 2 convictions, testified on Dozier's behalf at his clemency hearing.

noemie maxwell

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Monday April 27, 2009 · 10:32 AM PDT

2009/04/27 · 10:32

Gerald J. White, Jr. authors the story below the fold. His son Gerald was sentenced to Life Without Parole under Washington's 3-Strikes in 1996. None of Gerald's convictions qualify as a "Serious Violent Offense". One was for Robbery 2, a crime the state Sentencing Guidelines Commission recommended removing from 3-Strikes in 2001.

Washington is the first 3-Strikes state in the nation. Typical of national trends, politics has trumped evidence, cost considerations, and ethics, blocking reform for over a decade. Leadership in the majority Democratic party is believed to have opposed reform this year.

From 1994-2000, nearly 100 defendants with no conviction for a serious violent offense were sentenced under Washington's 3-Strikes. That dropped to about 40 defendants during the next 7 years. Tom McBride, testifying for WA Association of Prosecuting Attorneys to oppose reform this year, acknowledged that some of these life sentences are questionable. Read More

Is This Not Also Torture? "Treating" Addiction with Life Imprisonment

noemie maxwell

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Friday November 28, 2008 · 2:30 PM PST

2008/11/28 · 14:30

JOIN THREE STRIKES RAPID RESPONSE
1-4 notices per month of key opportunities to help reform this law in Washington, the first 3-Strikes state in the nation.

James Moody, serving Life without Possibility of Parole under Washington's 3-Strikes law since 2003, contributes the two posts that appear below the fold.

James' first two strikes were committed when he was in his twenties. The first was for a 1987 assault in a California bar "with a deadly weapon, to wit, a bottle" for which he served slightly over a year in county jail. The maximum term for this crime in California is four (4) years. Washington state "adjusted to foreign jurisdiction" by interpreting it as equivalent to an Assault 1, a crime with a maximum term of twenty-three (23) years. James' second strike was a 1992 felony 3 assault in Utah for which he served several months in a county jail.

Photo of James Moody by Noemie Maxwell 8/21/08. Read More

How does a person get sentenced to 777 years? Ask Jackie Fletcher

noemie maxwell

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Sunday November 23, 2008 · 11:19 AM PST

2008/11/23 · 11:19

Editor's note: This story is by Theresa Matheson, a close friend of Jacqueline Fletcher who is serving a sentence of 777 years without parole in Washington.

Jackie began her sentence in 1996 when she was convicted of her third Robbery 2, an unarmed, no-injury crime. Robbery 2, the most common trigger for life sentences under 3-Strikes in Washington, is in the lowest quartile of seriousness in state law, at level 4 on the 16-level scale at RCW 9.94A.515.

In 2001 Washington's Sentencing Guidelines Commission recommended removing Robbery 2 from the 3-Strikes list. Each year since then legislators have introduced bills to do so. Legislators who support reform have said that, for the bills to be successful, a public outcry is needed. A bill to remove Robbery 2 will once again be introduced this year. Please consider joining our list to be notified of key times to call or write legislators to encourage them to support it.: THREE STRIKES RAPID RESPONSE

noemie maxwell

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Tuesday September 16, 2008 · 7:41 AM PDT

2008/09/16 · 07:41

Schawn Cruze and his family collaborated on this story, 10th in a series, as part of Justice Works! 3-Strikes reform campaign.

When Schawn Cruze was 13 and his brother Jason 11, their mother Katherine went to prison. The state placed the boys in a group home in Centralia, one of two Kiwanis homes later shut down by the state. (1) Schawn and his mother say the brothers were abused and neglected there.

Three years later, after Katherine's release, the family returned home to a neighborhood of Vancouver with high gang and drug activity. Schawn's sister Kaity was born soon after. It's a neighborhood, Kaity told me, that she'd never venture out in alone. She credits Schawn with helping to talk her safely through her teen years. Schawn was not able to do that for his younger brother or himself. Within 8 years of Kiwanis, he was sentenced to Life without Parole under 3-Strikes. A few months later, Jason was murdered in connection with gang activity. Read More

Cherease Cross, Kind, Beautiful, Caring: She Deserved a Better Chance

noemie maxwell

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Tuesday August 26, 2008 · 9:52 AM PDT

2008/08/26 · 09:52

Washington was the first US state to pass a 3-Strikes law. This story is the 7th in a series showing why the law is unjust and ineffective. The factors in Cherease's path to committing crimes: poverty, addiction, sexual abuse, and mental illness, are often found in the lives of 3-Strikers. Treatment reduces crime at much lower fiscal and social cost than life imprisonment. This story was written by Shirley White, mother of a WA 3-Striker, in collaboration with Cherease's friend. JOIN RAPID RESPONSE

Back in March, 2000, a young woman named Cherease Cross was convicted of her third offense. She was the third woman to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole under Washington's 3-Strikes law. She did not deserve to receive a sentence of life in prison.

Mental illness and drug addiction had plagued Cherease's young life. She was a single-mom, a crack addict and a sexual abuse victim. She had committed three low-level second degree robberies to support an expensive drug habit.

noemie maxwell

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Monday June 30, 2008 · 4:50 AM PDT

2008/06/30 · 04:50

This story is the 6th in a series written by Washington 3-Strikers. Author Steven Darby McDonald's 3 convictions are for Robbery 1, Robbery 2, and burning a doormat, which he denies. I've read excerpts of trial transcripts, investigator reports, media reports and other documents he provided and believe they raise serious questions about local police handling of the case and whether testimony was illegally excised from the trial verbatims. An active campaign seeks to remove low-violence crimes from the state's 3-Strikes list.

DATELINE MOUNT VERNON WASHINGTON: A crime took place in a downtown motel in Mount Vernon Washington on February 4, 1996. A door mat was burned. Damages were hard to calculate, but an estimate might be determined on the basis of this description in a Washington Supreme Court decision:

"The State charged McDonald with first and second degree arson. The first degree arson charge was based upon the defendant setting fire to the welcome mat outside a motel room, which destroyed the mat and discolored the door before being extinguished." (1)

noemie maxwell

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Sunday May 25, 2008 · 11:24 AM PDT

2008/05/25 · 11:24

[WA was the first state in the nation to pass a 3-Strikes law. Low-violence offenses are the most common strikes. Rapid Response. Posted for David by Noemie. Thanks for putting this on the recommend list!]

Hello, my name is David Conyers and I am a current 3 Striker residing at the Monroe Correctional Complex.

Back in 1994, 13 years ago, I was the youngest person in the state of Washington, a tender 21 years old, to be sentenced to life under 3 Strikes - charged and convicted of four counts of second degree robbery.

None of my prior convictions, nor my current offenses involved a weapon whatsoever, nor was anyone hurt or killed. I was a kid back then with no guidance or direction, just being reckless and foolish. I very much regret the things I did wrong to my victims, because they didn't deserve to be put in fear or have anything taken from them. I've grown up a lot and I now see life on a different perspective. However, I firmly believe that I shouldn't be spending the rest of my life in prison for a crime such as Robbery 2. Read More

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Interview with Nation's 1st 3-Striker: Video & Transcript

Seattle: 1st City to Affirm Charter for Compassion

Justice Is No Game: Film and Transcript

Locking people like me up for the rest of our lives isn't the answer

Washington State 3-Striker Released Under Clemency

50-year search finds son serving 3-strikes life sentence

Is This Not Also Torture? "Treating" Addiction with Life Imprisonment

How does a person get sentenced to 777 years? Ask Jackie Fletcher

Path to 3-Strikes: Abusive State Foster Care, Deadly Streets, Broken Public Defense

Cherease Cross, Kind, Beautiful, Caring: She Deserved a Better Chance

Life Without Parole for Doormat Burning: 3-Strikes Guest Post

Life Sentence at 21 Years Old for No-Weapon No-Injury Crimes