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Jordan Hayes wrote: <<What's strange about the California 3
Strikes law is how it all came
<BR>about. It started as a backlash against the guy who killed Polly
Klass, but turned into almost a comedy of errors and hijacked intentions.>>
<P>California's 3-Strikes law has its demotic roots not in the murder of
Polly Klaas but in the earlier murder, in 1992, of Kimber Reynolds during
an attempted robbery in Fresno. Following his daughter's death, Mike
Reynolds reportedly collaborated with an appellate judge on the initial
wording of 3-Strikes legislation, developing a campaign that received a
huge boost in 1993 when Polly Klaas was murdered in Sonoma County (north
of San Francisco) by yet another repeat offender. Reynolds immediately
(if only temporarily) recruited Polly Klaas's father, Marc, to the cause
and, with Pete Wilson's meretricious assistance, was eventually able to
get 3-Strikes legislation banged through in Sacramento as AB 971 in March
1994. Reynolds then decided that he couldn't trust Sacramento legislators
not to muck about with 971, so he resuscitated his original campaign to
put 3-Strikes on the ballot as a proposition. With throw-away-the-key
hysteria rampant in the land, Proposition 184 passed in November 1994,
with supporters mustering more than 70% of the votes cast.
<P>Subsequent elections in California have all been enlivened by hair-pulling
contests intended to show who supported 3-Strikes more vigorously, with
Mike Reynolds often enlisted for the semi-divine purpose of chucking Olympian
thunderbolts at 3-Strikes sissies and other back-sliders.
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