The Supreme Court of CA throws three strokes present in accordance with the new law

From Joe Garcia and Nickel duraCalmness

This story was originally published by CalmattersS Register about their ballots.

Thehe California’s Supreme Court He brought two decisions last week that could influence the decades of sentence on the gang and allow thousands of people to file a petition to the courts to re -examine their cases.

Both solutions joined Law of 2021 This has raised the standard of evidence to prove that someone has violated a law as part of the “work of a criminal street gang”. In different ways, the Supreme Court chose to apply the new standard to past sentences.

One decision was taken to deprived people of death; The other is from two prisoners who challenge past “strikes” of their records, which put them on a prolonged sentence course.

It is not certain how far the two decisions will be. Both entered divided decisions, reflecting the disagreements on how to apply the law in 2021 with a back date.

In one case, the majority of 4-3 determined that previous fees related to the band does not hold on to new legal standards And this way it cannot be used as strokes.

Larry Fletcher and Eric Anthony Taylor Jr. claim that sentences for improving the band in 2015 cannot be applied as “strikes” to a sentence with three strikes for attempted murder in 2020, as their sentences were still appealed when the law in 2021 came into force.

The Supreme Court in California eventually agreed and released previous sentences for 2015 as related to the gang and therefore crimes that are no longer considered a “strike”-leaving the court court to experience them potentially according to the gang elements and the band’s improvements.

It remains unclear to what extent Fletcher and Taylor’s decision will set a precedent for other people who want to turn life sentences under the Three strikes law.

Chief Justice Patricia Gerero disagreed with the decision. She warned that the implementation of the Gang Improvement Act to past strikes would set a legal standard that would be “practically impossible to implement.”

She exhorts her fellow judges that she refers to “the power to change the law on the three strikes under the guise to interpret it.”

Death sentence

A second case, issued on Thursday, Provided the defendant’s death sentence and left his case back to the court court.

The case was resolved by 5-2, defending Jason Agre’s murder in 2009 and tried to award the murder, but sent him back to the court court in the Orange County for what the court described as “further proceedings”. Both the majority and the disagreement said they would turn the defendant’s gang improvements.

Agre was a white man from the late 1920s, which prosecutors claim to have been hanging out with a Vietnamese youth band called Junior Dragon Family Junior in Orange County.

One night in 2003, he and several younger accomplices pursued a group of people from restaurant to cultural bag, where members of the group broke their car. Agre shot three of them, and one, 13-year-old Min Thorn, died.

At the test, a detective testified that Agre had shot three people for the gang’s reputation benefit. At that time, this was a valid reason for the prosecutor to pursue improvements to the defendant’s sentence.

But the law of 2021 changed thatS The law now states that the band’s improvements must show that any benefit received from the band from criminal activity must be “more than reputable”.

“Understandably, given when the lawsuit is held below, the defendant’s jurors did not receive instructions that monitor the processed language (law in 2021),” Gerero wrote in the opinion of the majority.

“With the relevant aspects of the Assembly Bill 333 (the Law for 2021), which is rear -end, this exclusion with the law, since it has since been amended, has been a mistake affecting the defendant’s sentence for active participation in a criminal street gang.”

Improve the band in the era of difficult crime

Gang improvements and the so-called three shock sentences dates down decades when the crime numbers in California reached a peak in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

State legislators in 1988 adopted the Law on Implementation and Prevention of Terrorism on the street (step) in response to the increasing gang of crime and violence, more special in the Los Angeles neighborhoods.

The participation or association with an alleged gang or gang members have become highly subjective criminal actions that add improvements to the sentence for crimes committed “in favor of a criminal street gang”.

Then, during the era of the so -called “Super Predator”, the voters in 2000 approved a proposal 21, which extended the provisions of the Step Act and increased the compulsory presence for gang crimes.

Over the next two decades, local prosecutors in California have been chasing charges of working on a criminal street gang for both violence and non -violence.

Critics, activists and defenders of the reform claim that accusations in bands and gang improvement disproportionately and unfairly directed The defendants from the minority and low income communities-these low thresholds of evidence have led to prejudiced court hearings, which led to disproportionate sentences, mainly for colorful people.

In 2021, the Law of Step-Statement, the author of the then member of the conscience Sydney Kamlager-Sni Los Angeles – tried to cope with inequalities and excessive criminal impact of the original law on the step and its amendments. The step ahead is the law at the center of the two Supreme Court’s decisions of the new California.

It has significantly changed the criteria by which convicted crimes can be categorized as related to the gang or established as a “model” of the gang activity and further requires the courts to honor defense request for separate proceedings to determine such charges of gangs.

“The current statutes for improving the gang criminalize entire neighborhoods, historically influenced by poverty, racial inequality and mass imprisonment, as they punish people on the basis of their cultural identity they know and where they live,” the bill said.

Joe Garcia is California local news.

This article was Originally Published on CalMatters and was reissued under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivatives License.