Trevon Wilson won't be voting on Tuesday. He can't — he's on parole.
L.A. County District Attorney Steve Cooley tried to convince dozens of California DA's to soften
their approach to third-strike cases.
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"They don't want me to vote," he says, although he wishes he could. "I do believe there's a gang of good stuff on the ballot."
For instance, there's the small matter of re-electing President Barack Obama. There are Jerry Brown's and Molly Munger's two huge warring tax hikes, Propositions 30 and 38. And there's Proposition 34, which would repeal the death penalty.
But most important to Wilson is Proposition 36, which would soften California's three-strikes law so that nonviolent and less serious offenses would no longer count as third strikes. Voters seem amenable, with the most recent poll showing 63 percent support.
The Nov. 6 outcome could someday affect Wilson directly, since he already has two strikes.
Wilson lives in Watts, on the outskirts of Nickerson Gardens, the largest housing project west of the Mississippi River. It's a collection of more than 150 cream-colored, box-shaped apartments with dark orange security doors — and new security cameras, paid for by federal stimulus money, that directly link to an LAPD monitoring system.
Wilson's clothes are perfectly monochromatic: black do-rag, spotlessly white extra-large T-shirt, extra-large black Dickies shorts reaching down to his shins, black sneakers with the shoelaces untied.
The only color comes from a pink iPod Nano he holds gingerly with his right hand; with his left, he pushes a small Razor scooter back and forth, like a child's toy. His demeanor is calm and carefree — when he recalls his last 13 years, it's matter-of-factly, almost with detachment, as if that were someone else, someone he once knew.
When Wilson was 16, he was arrested for a string of armed robberies — mostly liquor stores and hole-in-the-wall bodegas. The out-of-control boy was set to be tried as an adult, but he pled no contest to 11 counts of robbery and 11 gun charges. The robberies counted as one strike and the gun charges counted as a second strike, and he was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
He ended up doing 10 years in a smattering of California prisons — Delano, Pleasant Valley, Avenal and finally an Arizona state prison, thanks to the California prison system's overcrowding. Three years ago, Wilson was released. He was 26.
While in prison, Wilson met a number of people who "struck out." That is, they were convicted of two violent crimes, followed by a third felony conviction that was sometimes for a minor or nonviolent crime. He actually did some time with an uncle of his, whose third strike was conspiracy to manufacture drugs. He met a man whose third strike, he says, was property damage.
"This one dude I met on the yard," Wilson remembers, "he threw a brick at a window. And they struck him out."
He can cite another example: "Terrorist threats" — often used to prosecute people who threaten to kill bosses, family members or friends. Wilson sees that as "pretty petty stuff. You'd be surprised."
One person who isn't surprised is Michael Romano, who co-founded the Stanford Three Strikes Project, which represents inmates doing life for third-strike offenses.
"California's three-strikes law is by far the harshest sentencing law in the county," Romano says. "It's the only place you can get a life sentence for a misdemeanor, like shoplifting socks or possession of a joint of marijuana" — although such third-strike convictions are atypical.
Proposition 184, aka the three-strikes law, was approved by voters in 1994, when the murder rate statewide was double what it is now. In then–blood-soaked L.A., it was triple.
By 2010, violent crime had plummeted in the vast majority of U.S. cities — setting off intense debates over the catalyst, and prompting many police chiefs to claim that his or her brand of crime-fighting was the reason.
There were fewer than 300 homicides in L.A. that year, compared with 1,000 in 1992.
Eighteen years ago, it was two murders in particular that pushed voters over the edge. The first was Kimber Reynolds, an 18-year-old shot to death by a prison parolee trying to steal her purse.
Kimber's dad, Michael Reynolds, made it his mission to pass a "three strikes and you're out" law. His idea was to double the sentence for a criminal's second violent offense; for the criminal's third conviction, violent or not, he or she would receive 25 years to life. That's the same mandatory sentence, in California, as first-degree murder.
Reynolds has little sympathy for a criminal whose third conviction is nonviolent or even petty. For him, twice a violent criminal, always a violent criminal.
"These are high-level offenders that just happen to be caught in low level," he says. "They should be put away."
When the state Legislature rejected his law, Reynolds started a campaign to gather signatures and put the matter before voters.
Proposition 184 might never have passed were it not for a second gruesome and highly publicized crime, the slaying of 12-year-old Polly Klaas.
Klaas was hosting a slumber party at her mom's house when she was kidnapped at knifepoint and strangled to death by an intruder, parolee Richard Allen Davis.
Davis had been arrested countless times, for everything from burglary to sexual assault. In addition to murder and kidnapping, Davis was convicted of committing a "lewd act" on Klaas.
