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Court Overturns Shoplifter Sentence
Friday, November 2, 2001
(6:01 PM ET)
By David Kravets / The Associated Press

In dissent, Circuit Judge Joseph T. Sneed said that voters approved the three-strikes law with 71 percent of the vote, and that the courts should not interfere with the electorate's will.

SAN FRANCISCO -- AP
A federal appeals court Friday threw out a shoplifter's 50-year sentence under California's “three strikes” law as overly harsh -- a ruling that could lead to hundreds of challenges from defendants who received near-life terms for petty crimes.

In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Leonardo Andrade's sentence violated the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

It was the first federal court ruling declaring that California's sentencing law, the nation's toughest, could produce unconstitutionally harsh sentences.
(More: The Austin American-Statesman & Austin360.com News Source)
2001 © The Associated Press.

"We have before us the clearest indication possible that severe, mandatory sentences for recidivist offenders is the expressed penal philosophy of the citizens of California," Sneed wrote.

No. What we have here is Sneed's firm belief that there is no interpretation required for the practice of law.

Dan