Honolulu Lite
Honolulu Lite
For criminals, court
is a sport they can winIn the wake of the killing of a police officer by a career felon, some are suggesting we need a "three strikes" law. That might be a little rash for a place like Hawaii, the only state with a "mulligan" law.
If you aren't up on your sports/courts metaphors, let me explain.
In golf, players are sometimes given a "mulligan," or an extra shot if their ball goes out of bounds or ends up in the beer wagon, or whatever. According to Hawaii's "mulligan" law, criminals have to kill at least TWO people before they get the attention of a judge. A criminal's first killing, rape, robbery or similar outrage is a mulligan, or as Black's Law Dictionary puts it, a "freebie."
Historically, Hawaii judges have been very liberal in their reading of the "mulligan" law. Where, technically, a mulligan allows a golfer or homicidal maniac only one freebie, criminals here generally get several mulligans. That's why it is not unusual to find out that some guy charged with a heinous crime actually has been arrested 73 times before and has 20 or 30 felony convictions.
If the average weekend golfer were allowed such a generous interpretation of a mulligan, he could beat Tiger Woods in match play. By Hawaii's "mulligan" law standards, Shane Mark, the man accused of shooting a cop to death, had a fairly restrained criminal career. He had only 14 prior convictions, and merely four of them were felonies.
CONSIDERING HAWAII'S tolerant penal tradition, it probably would be considered cruel and unusual punishment to suddenly lock a guy up for simply committing three felonies. But that's what some legislators want to do. They want to radically change our legal system from a golfing motif to one of baseball, in which a batter gets three strikes before being declared "out." "Out," in the criminal "three strikes" scenario actually means "in," because the offender would be put "in" prison for at least 25 years.
Some states that have "three strikes" laws have been criticized because they put criminals in jail for 25 years for stealing a loaf of bread. The reasoning goes that if the bad guy's first two strikes are serious felonies, like manslaughter, it's uncool to put him in jail for the rest of his life if his third strike is theft of a bakery product. Why they call that reasoning, I don't know. Seems to me that if I committed two major crimes and still was allowed to walk the streets, I'd be pretty careful about committing ANY type of crime and would avoid bakeries altogether.
Perhaps we need to work toward a "three strikes" law gradually, possibly by considering different sports models. Football offers an "extra point" law possibility. Other sports may inspire "free kick," "double fault" and "slap shot" laws.
The point of each would be to make sure that we look like we are protecting the community without actually putting lawbreakers down for the count. That just wouldn't be sporting.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com