Thread: Jailed for Life, Migrant Says Justice Was Too Blind

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RIGHTS-US:
Jailed for Life, Migrant Says Justice Was Too Blind
Aaron Glantz

SAN FRANCISCO, California, Sep 14 (IPS) - A California immigrant serving a life sentence for lying to the Department of Motor Vehicles got a day in court Wednesday. Santos Reyes has already served six years for that crime, which he has never denied.

"They were trying to get a driver's license for his cousin but his cousin can't read," said Peter Camejo, the Green Party candidate for California governor and a spokesman for the campaign to free Reyes. "The crime that Santos did was to take the written test for his cousin and he got caught doing it."

"They got suspicious and they started asking him questions, so he just admitted it," Camejo told IPS. "He said he was just trying to get a driver's license for his cousin because they need it for work to feed his family. So they called the police and the police arrested him."

When they took Reyes to jail, the police found he had been convicted of felonies twice before. In 1981, at age 17, he was convicted of stealing a radio. Five years later he was convicted of robbery. He then had no offenses for the next 11 years, a period in which he gained employment as a roofer, got married and fathered two children.

But as an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, he couldn't drive legally and neither could his cousin.

"He had a criminal record so to try to get [even] a fake driver's license under his name was very difficult," Camejo said. "There are many tricks that people use to get driver's licenses. You understand what happens if the police catch you driving illegally. They take your car and it's not returned to you. The state sells it and keeps the money. It's a form of robbery."

California has the toughest "three strikes" law in the nation. And under the terms of the law, everyone convicted of a third felony -- no matter what kind -- serves a mandatory sentence of 25 years to life. According to the group Families to Amend California's Three Strikes (FACTS), 4,500 California prisoners are currently serving life sentences for crimes as minor as stealing a slice of pizza.

Dororthy Erskine, 72, turned out for Reyes' hearing in Los Angeles Wednesday. Her nephew is currently serving a life sentence for aiding and abetting shoplifting.

"He was a cocaine addict and this led to his criminal activity," she said. "In 1994, he was in a mall in Cerritos (outside Los Angeles) and these two women were on the same floor as him taking sheets and they stopped him when he left the store. Even though he didn't have any merchandise from the store he was arrested for aiding and abetting shoplifting and he has been in prison ever since."

The severity of California's three strikes law makes it unlikely Santos Reyes will be freed by judicial order. While the Third District Court of Appeals in Los Angeles agreed to hear the case, Reyes's legal team believes their best hope lies in convincing California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to commute his sentence to time served.

At the same time, FACTS wants to change California's three strikes law so that only serious or violent felonies can send criminals to prison for life. Opponents of the three strikes law also argue for changes in immigration law so that undocumented immigrants like Santos Reyes don't have to lie to get a driver's license.

But the backlash has been strong to such proposals. In 2003, former Hollywood actor Schwarzenegger ousted incumbent Democrat Gray Davis pledging to revoke driver's license privileges for undocumented immigrants. In 2004, the state of Arizona passed Proposition 200, which barred all state services for undocumented immigrants. This November, Arizona voters will consider a proposition forbidding judges to grant bail to the undocumented.

Moreover, on Tuesday, anti-immigrant crusader Randy Graf won a hotly contested Congressional primary battle with the help of the Minutemen, vigilantes who have begun to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border.

"We know that large numbers of people who are coming to this country lately are not just immigrants looking for a job," Graf told IPS after winning the Republican nomination for an Arizona House district that includes the city of Tuscon.

"The crime rate and statistics along the border around here and in Texas with drug smuggling all bring us to the same conclusion that we need to secure the border and stop this invasion," he said.

Despite the backlash, immigrants and their allies are optimistic about success in the future. The national Republican Party spent 122,000 dollars to support Graf's opponent, fearing a Graf win would push a growing population of Latino voters away from voting for Republicans. After California passed the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 in 1994, Latino voter registration soared -- their votes have helped put California firmly in the Democratic column. (END/2006)

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... L58N91.DTL

LOS ANGELES
Robber testifies in 1986 case, hoping to invalidate 3rd strike
- James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, September 14, 2006


(09-14) 04:00 PDT Los Angeles -- A Los Angeles man challenging his conviction under the state's "three strikes" law appeared Wednesday in federal court to offer evidence in a 1986 armed robbery case where he is accused of threatening a man with a knife.

Santos Reyes, 42, tried to persuade a federal magistrate that he had not wielded the knife in the hope that he can overturn a 26-years-to-life sentence for a crime a decade later -- lying in 1997 on a driver's license test. But analysts said his chances appear slim.

The armed robbery conviction and an even earlier conviction for the nonviolent burglary of a radio in 1981 are important because they counted as Reyes' first and second "strikes" under state law. Lying on the license test became a third strike, requiring the harsh sentence, because a jury found Reyes did use the knife in a threatening way. Persuading the magistrate the jury was wrong could allow for a substantial cut in his current sentence.

Reyes has a long history of arrests and convictions for generally minor offenses, ranging from driving under the influence of alcohol to petty theft. His first conviction came when he was sentenced to the California Youth Authority at age 17 for stealing the radio from a friend's sister, and his most recent was in 1998, when he admitted to trying to take the written driver's license test on behalf of a relative.

Reyes, who has already served nine years for lying on the driver's exam, appealed to the federal courts, arguing that the sentence was grossly disproportionate to the crime. In a win rare for such cases, an appeals court ordered the federal district court to determine whether Reyes actually used the knife in committing the armed robbery.

Some Latino activists have taken up the matter, arguing that Reyes is being treated unfairly because he is a poor, undocumented immigrant from Mexico.

But one of his champions, Peter Camejo, who is running for governor as an anti-Iraq-war candidate, said at a tiny rally at the courthouse Wednesday morning that Reyes' only hope appears to be in having his sentence commuted by the governor.

Reyes, a slight, dark-haired man with a mustache, appeared in court Wednesday in an orange jumpsuit and testified in Spanish through a translator. He calmly repeated, almost word for word, the story he had told at his trial in 1987 -- that he was merely trying to sell the knife so he could buy gas and look for a job. He testified that, though there was a pawn shop just across the street, he had not gone there because he was unfamiliar with how it operated.

Reyes said he opened the knife for a man sitting in his car in front of a market and did not understand what was happening when that man responded nervously and gave Reyes his money, his wallet and the three gold rings he was wearing.

The jury in that trial determined that Reyes was actually robbing the man at knifepoint, as the victim testified, and that Reyes stopped only when a police cruiser on a routine patrol appeared. He served five years in prison.

Reyes' case is unusual because he has not challenged his convictions, only the circumstances surrounding that one 19 years ago. If Magistrate Charles Eick, who presided over the hearing Wednesday, agrees with the jury that Reyes brandished the knife in a threatening way, then the long sentence in the driver's license case will stand.

If Eick decides the knife was not used to commit a robbery, then the case could be sent back to state court with an order that Reyes be resentenced because both that incident and the 1981 burglary would no longer be considered strikes.

That's unlikely, experts said.

Robert Weisberg, the director of the Criminal Justice Center at the Stanford Law School, said federal courts rarely overturn state jury convictions, unless the law was applied improperly or the defendant had inadequate counsel. Reyes didn't make either of those claims.

"This is an unbelievable stretch," said Weisberg. But he said the fact that the magistrate let Reyes testify suggests the door may be open a crack.

Heather Crawford, the deputy attorney general who appeared for the state, said there was no basis for overturning a decision a jury made after a fair trial. She pointed out in court that Reyes had a string of arrests, making him the kind of habitual offender the "three strikes" law was meant for, and that the long sentence for lying on the test -- which can be charged as a misdemeanor -- was thus appropriate.

"That's the law. and we're here to uphold it," she said after the hearing.

E-mail James Sterngold at jsterngold@sfchronicle.com.

When they took Reyes to jail, the police found he had been convicted of felonies twice before. In 1981, at age 17, he was convicted of stealing a radio. Five years later he was convicted of robbery. He then had no offenses for the next 11 years, a period in which he gained employment as a roofer, got married and fathered two children.

Funny how they fail to mention that it was an Armed Robbery or that he was here all those years and never bothered to become Legal so he could get a license legally.

UB

Funny how they fail to mention that it was an Armed Robbery or that he was here all those years and never bothered to become Legal so he could get a license legally.

In my opinion, no illegal immigrant residing in the United States should be able to become legal from inside the country. Doesn't matter if they are here 5 years or 50 years. Awarding an illegal alien citizenship or placing them on a path to citizenship is forgiving them of their crime - that is called amnesty.

He said he was just trying to get a driver's license for his cousin because they need it for work to feed his family.

Quick...pass me the bucket!

Could we please stop wasting taxpayer's money on public defender's for this loser?