In the Initiative-happy world that is California politics, where well heeled citizens with a personal ax to grind can and do, in effect, purchase permanent amendments to our state’s Constitution, millionaire and Broadcom cofounder Henry Nicholas III is back for another shot.
Nicholas, himself facing an array of drug and stock backdating charges that could conceivably net him a total of 360 years behind bars if convicted on all counts, is widely credited with ensuring the passage of the three strikes initiative when he donated almost $5 million of his personal fortune toward the effort when it appeared to be facing defeat. Many analysts now credit The Three Strikes Law with the longer prison terms that have resulted in hopelessly over-crowded prisons and jails.
Nicholas is again back in the political arena as the deep pockets and inspiration behind what proponents of Proposition 9, or ‘Marsy’s Law’, call a far reaching victims’ Bill-of-Rights. Proposition 9 would, among other things, mean a wait of up to 15 years for a parole hearing for those inmates sentenced to a term-plus-life with the possibility of parole, and prevent state and county jails from using early release programs as a means of dealing with the state’s chronically overcrowded jails. The proposed law would also open parole hearings, and guarantee a chance to be heard at them, to almost anyone with only a slight interest in the case.
Proponents say that Marsy’s Law would constitutionally guarantee to victims of crimes the assurance of restitution, as well as broadening the role that victims could play in various legal proceedings against the offender. It also seeks to extend protections on the release of victims’ confidential information, and make it more difficult for the accused to gain release on bail.
Opponents of the proposed amendment are quick to point out that many of the supposed victims’ protection guarantees were long-ago clearly set forth in the 1982 voter approved “Victims’ Bill of Rights”, Proposition 8. They maintain that Proposition 9 is unnecessary and an expensive duplication of effort that would seriously deplete the states already vastly over-burdened treasury at a time when it can least afford it.
By prohibiting early release of inmates from overcrowded jails and prisons, the measure, says opponents, would force financially strapped cities, counties and the state to make drastic cuts in many priority programs such as education, health care and services to the poor and elderly.
They maintain that the draconian changes proposed for the state’s already clearly dysfunctional parole system would effectively remove the “possibility-of-parole” clause included by state statute and the courts in most Lifers’ sentences.