When the people of California overwhelmingly voted for the 1994 "three strikes" law, many had no idea what they were approving. The official ballot argument in favor of what Newsweek called "the toughest law in the nation" kept it simple: "Three strikes keeps career criminals who rape women, molest children and commit murder behind bars where they belong." What few people realized, however, was that the sweeping nature of the law would put thousands of nonviolent men and women in prison for twenty-five years to life, for crimes as minor as shoplifting $2.69 worth of AA batteries, forging a check for $94.94, or attempting to buy a macadamia nut disguised as a $5 rock of cocaine. In his riveting, well-documented book, Joe Domanick reveals the drama of the shattered lives involved with the law. Focusing on personal stories, Cruel Justice expands to tell the larger tale of how the law came into existence; how it has played out; what political, social, and economic forces lie behind it; and how the politics of crime and fear work in America. Domanick demonstrates how laws passed in haste, without deliberation, and in reaction to public hysteria can have unforeseen consequences as tragic as those they were designed to thwart. Domanick draws powerful portraits of the two innocent young girls—Kimber Reynolds and Polly Klaas—whose murders were the catalyst for the three strikes law; of the men who killed them; of the fathers who sought their revenge; and especially of the many people serving lengthy prison terms who are victims of the three strikes law itself.
Cruel Justice Three Strikes and the Politics of Crime in America's Golden State
About the Book
Reviews
“Domanick recounts a fascinating story about how Californians embraced the harshest criminal sentencing system of any state.”—Barry Krisberg Los Angeles Times Book Review
“A riveting journalistic account of California’s ‘three strikes’ legislation.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“A riveting journalistic account of California’s ‘three strikes’ legislation.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“A riveting journalistic account of California’s ‘three strikes’ legislation.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“A stark and disturbing account of a very real and ongoing law that is causing tremendous impact in the sate of California today. Highly recommended.”—The Midwest Book Review"Let me risk a prediction: history will remember the 'Three Strikes' panic as a discredited nightmare like McCarthyism, Japanese internment camps, and the Salem witch trials. Joe Domanick's book informs the court of public opinion about the scapegoats, the scoundrels, the cowards, and the few brave citizens who fought back against an era in which justice and cruelty were often indistinguishable."—Tom Hayden, former California state senator and author of Rebel: A Personal History of the 1960s
"A brave and utterly compelling response to the lynch mob mentality that has done so much damage to the moral fabric of California life. Domanick might be our Zola."—Mike Davis, author of Dead Cities
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Part One. Senseless Acts
1. Kimber Reynolds: Outside the Daily Planet
2. The Natural: Mike Reynolds Finds a Vocation
3. Justice Seldom Seen in America
4. Mike Reynolds’s World
Part Two. The Steamroller
5. Mike Reynolds’s Law
6. A Menace to Society
7. Child of the '50s
8. Roots of the Backlash
9. Talk Radio: The New Yellow Press
10. Tough Love: Sue Reams and Her Boy
11."Weird Ducks and Blind Fools"
Part Three. The Poster Child and Willie Horton
12. Right Out of Her Own Bedroom
13. Another Piercing Scream
14. "Guns Don’t Kill People"
15. The Prince of "J" Street: Don Novey Comes on Board
16. Polly Klaas: America’s Child
17. Happily Shaking Fate’s Sorry Hand
18. Checking the Weather Vane
Part Four. Rocks the Size of Peas: Three Strikes in Operation
19. The "Lookout" Gets Life
20. Say Hello to Hitler, Dahmer, and Bundy
21. Pizza Face
22. Another Reynolds Bill: "Ten, Twenty, Life"
23. Jean Valjean Redux
Part Five. The Counterrevolution (Sort Of)
24. The More Committed Executioner
25. Lenny, Drug Court, and Three Strikes
26. The Modification
27. The Trip to Pleasant Valley
28. A "Taliban-Type" Law
Epilogue
Notes
Selected Sources
Index