For the last 20 years, David Coulson has been in prison. In 2002 David Coulson took loose change amounting to $14 from an unlocked garage. None of Coulson’s crimes involved physical harm, and all of them stemmed from his addiction.
Coulson, then 35, was living on the streets of Long Beach and deep in the throes of drug addiction. He was also struggling with mental illnesses after surviving significant childhood abuse. Despite his documented health crises, and having no violent crimes on his record, a judge ordered him to be locked up for life, saying he could only be considered for release after 35 years.
After his arrest, a psychiatrist diagnosed him with schizophrenia and the courts deemed him incompetent to stand trial, sending him instead to a state hospital. But after he was medicated, the courts said he had “regained his competence”, and he was brought before a jury and convicted.
He was incarcerated under one of the most extreme “tough on crime” laws in the US, Three Strikes And You’re Out, which aimed to indefinitely imprison “habitual offenders”. He was released last month because a judge reviewed his case and declared that his punishment “shocks the conscience and offends fundamental notions of human dignity” and that he never should have been imprisoned at all. Judge Daniel Lowenthal told Coulson: “I’m shocked and angry at how you were treated by the system.” An appropriate sentence for Coulson would have been probation and treatment, Lowenthal said
Coulson explains, “All my cases were the same, but nobody asked me why I was using drugs, or put me in rehab. It was just jail, jail, jail … People need help, but you put them away and create monsters in prison where people are in survival mode. That’s what’s broken with the judicial system – they don’t ask you, what’s your trauma?”
Experts say thousands like him remain behind bars in California, sentenced to life due to 1990s legislation, some who may never be freed. The Three Strikes law established life sentences for any felony, if the defendant was previously convicted of two felonies classified as “serious” or “violent”. Proponents said the law would “keep murderers, rapists, and child molesters behind bars, where they belong”. Instead, within a decade, nearly 3,500 people were given life sentences for non-violent offenses such as shoplifting or drug possession.
The Three Strikes law – versions of which were adopted in California and 23 other states and in federal law – contributed to the explosion of California’s prison population and an overcrowding catastrophe. More than 33,000 people remain incarcerated under the law today, and 45% of people serving life sentences due to Three Strikes are Black despite Black residents making up just 6.5% of the state.
Research has found no evidence that the law reduced crime rates or deterred violence.
“It has no public safety benefit,” said Mike Romano, director of the Three Strikes Project at Stanford law school, who serves on a state committee that last year recommended Three Strikes be repealed. “By design, the law has targeted crimes of poverty, like small-time robbery, burglary, breaking windows, purse snatching”
“Keeping people in when they are 50, 60, 70 years old makes no sense and is cruel,” said Kate Chatfield, an advocate with the Wren Collective, a social justice group. “If somebody is not a public safety risk, it’s just punishment for punishment’s sake.”
Three Strikes remains on the books. A major 2012 reform established that “non-serious” and “non-violent” felonies would no longer count as third strikes, and an estimated 3,000 people have since been released. But that still left many people behind, including Coulson, because state statutes classify a wide range of low-level crimes as serious and violent even when little or no harm has occurred. And many “three strikers” who did commit violence have been imprisoned for decades.
Sentenced to life for stealing $14: ‘I needed help, but was given jail’ | California | The Guardian
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