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State judge frees defendant subject to harshest aspect of California's three-strikes law

By Douglas A. Berman

This Los Angeles Times article report on a notable new development in a notable three-strikes sentencing case from California.  The piece is headlined "Finally, a convict's third strike is struck: Gregory Taylor was a homeless man when he was arrested for trying to break into a church. His third strike brought a harsh sentence ? but now he's going free, thanks to two Stanford law students." Here is how the piece starts: Gregory Taylor's case was so egregious that an appellate justice likened him to Jean Valjean of Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables," so disconcerting that he became the centerpiece of debate in a district attorney's race, so bewildering that a chapter was devoted to his story in a 2005 book about California's three-strikes law. Taylor was a 35-year-old homeless man when he was arrested in 1997 for attempting to break into the kitchen of a Catholic church that served the poor, where he was a regular and occasionally volunteered...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on August 17, 2010 (boomark / email).