Legal News

Judge frees man serving life sentence under three-strikes law

By Richard Binder

Judge Peter Espinoza ordered the release yesterday of Gregory Taylor, a 48-year-old man who had been serving a life sentence for attempting to break into a church soup kitchen.  Taylor had previously been committed two robberies to support a drug addiction in 1984 and 1985, and after the attempted break-in was given the life sentence under California's three-strikes law.

Taylor is one of 14 California inmates who have been resentenced since students working on the Three Strikes Project at the Criminal Defense Clinic at Stanford Law School began reviewing cases in 2007, according to Michael Romano, a law professor who helped found the clinic.

In a habeas corpus petition filed by two students who are part of the clinic, it was alleged that Taylor's public defender failed to adequately investigate mitigating circumstances, including his having been abused and neglected as a child.

In his decision, Espinoza said convictions under the three-strikes law ? which calls for heavy sentences for a third conviction ? had often brought "disproportionate" sentences and "resulted in if not unintended, then at least unanticipated, consequences."

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Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on August 17, 2010 (boomark / email).