Having a criminal record adversely impacts your life. Depending on the severity of the convictions, your criminal record can make it difficult for you to find housing, establish relationships, and secure some jobs. The fact that you're living in the technological age where anyone with...
Most people worry about the possibility of their child being kidnapped from the park or shopping mall. While these things do happen, most kidnapping cases don’t involve strangers but are actually parental kidnappings. According to Safe, at Last, more than 90% of all reported kidnappings are the...
Getting caught in possession of a counterfeit item in California isn’t a laughing matter. The counterfeit item is considered forgery and can be the reason you spend some time in jail. California lawmakers understand just how much trouble counterfeit items are to the state’s economy. The...
It doesn’t matter if it’s a phone call asking that you schedule an appointment or if officers knock on your door. Learning that the police want to talk to you is enough to strike terror into your heart, even if you haven’t done anything wrong. When...
California’s famous three strikes law was created in 1994 and received voter approval. The murder case of Polly Klaas and Kimber Reynolds was the catalyst for implementing the three-strikes law.
Kimber Reynold’s life was brutally ended in 1992 during an attempted mugging. One of the muggers pulled a gun, placed it against Kimber’s ear, and pulled the trigger before fleeing the scene. Kimber later passed away in the hospital.
A man by the name of Douglas Walker was arrested for his involvement in Kimber’s murder. Walker was able to avoid a life in prison sentence by striking a plea deal. It was quickly revealed that Walker had a history of committing violent felonies. Walker’s violent history prompted Kimber’s dad to start persuing and lobbying for the three-strike law.
In 1994, Polly Klaas was having a great time with friends at a slumber party when she was kidnapped. For two months, the police searched for answers. Polly’s body was eventually found in a shallow grave. She’d been strangled.
Richard Allen Davis was arrested and charged with both the kidnapping and the murder of Klaas. During his trial, it became obvious that Davis also had an extensive history of crime that included assault, attempted sexual assault and kidnapping, abduction, and armed robbery.
Kimber Reynold’s father includes Davis in his lobbying attempt for the three-strikes law. He quickly pointed out that had there been a three-strikes law in effect before the early 1990s, both Kimber and Polly would be alive.
When California’s residents voted on the three-strike law, they were told that if the law passed, it would keep murders, rapists, and others who had a history of violent felonies behind bars. While this has happened, it also turns out that many of the people who have had sentences impacted by the three-strike law aren’t guilty of violent crimes and are actually being forced to serve 25 years in prison for relatively minor offenses.
A common misconception people had with the three-strike law when it was originally enacted is that the person impacted by the law has been convicted of the same crime on three separate occasions but that’s not the case. In many situations, the individual has been convicted of three different crimes. An example of this would be someone who has a felony drug conviction, a felony grand theft conviction, and a felony bribery conviction.
In 2012 California residents decided that the three-strikes law had gone too far and they enacted the Three Strikes Reform Act (also called Proposition 36) which tweaked the original three-strikes act so that nonviolent felons didn’t have to spend the better part of their natural life behind bars.
When the Three-Strikes Reform Act was passed, more than 1,000 prisoners were released. The best news is that of these 1,000 freshly released prisoners, only two percent were later charged with a new felony crime.
The way that the three-strikes rule currently works is that anyone who is convicted for a grand total of three violent felonies sentence will be automatically extended. The extension is anywhere from 25 additional years to life in prison. It’s important to understand that the 25 years is added to the original sentence.
While most people are familiar with the three-strike rule, few realize that there is also a two-strike rule which automatically doubles the sentence of anyone who is convicted of a violent felony crime a second time.
The list of convictions impacted by the three strike law include:
The threat of your young child disappearing when they go back to school is far greater than you imagine. According to Child Find of America, approximately 2,300 children are abducted every single day in the United States. The National Center of Exploited and Missing Children reported that in 2020, an estimated 1 in 6 missing children were victims of sex trafficking.
Stranger danger and abduction prevention lessons are something you and your children should always be working on. With the start of school just around the corner, now is the time to sit down with your child and review everything they know about stranger danger and staying safe.
While you’re shopping for school supplies, use this time with your child to review the rules you should already have in place regarding accepting rides from strangers. The rules your child should already be familiar with include:
Drug cultivation in California is addressed in Health and Safety Code 11379.6 HS. The code clearly states that, “every person who manufactures, compounds, converts, produces, derives, processes, or prepares, either directly or indirectly by chemical extraction or independently by means of chemical synthesis, any controlled...
Everyone always talks about how horrible drunk driving is but far less is mentioned about the dangers and repercussions of distracted driving, which is as dangerous and even more common than drunk driving.
Distracted driving in California isn’t a new thing. For as long as people have been getting behind the wheel of automobiles, there have been distracted drivers.
Examples of distracted driving include: