The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Prop. 66 -- "three strikes" initiative -- is defeated
Prop. 69, to require DNA from felons and some suspects, wins passage

By Andy Furillo -- Sacramento Bee Staff Writer

November 3, 2004 An expensive campaign to change the state's "three strikes" failed to sway voters.

With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Proposition 66 was opposed by 53.4 percent of the state's voters.

Proposition 69, meanwhile, which would require the collection of DNA samples from all felons and from adults and juveniles arrested on specific crimes, was victorious.

Voters backed the initiative, 61.8 percent to 38.2 percent.

Proposition 66 would have substantially weakened the tough three-strikes sentencing law that 72 percent of California voters approved in 1994.

It would have required that the third felony needed to qualify an offender for a 25-years-to-life term be classified by statute as either serious or violent. Under the 1994 law, any felony could result in the indeterminate life term if the offender had two prior serious or violent felony convictions.

Proposition 66 also would have eliminated burglary of an unoccupied residence as a strike. Five other categories of crimes also would have been no longer be strikes.

The chief financier of the Proposition 66 campaign was Sacramento car insurance executive Jerry Keenan, who contributed nearly $2 million, according to the secretary of state's office.

Keenan's son, imprisoned for vehicular manslaughter, would have gotten 32 months early under the provisions of Proposition 66.

Billionaire financier George Soros and two other wealthy out-of-state political contributors, Peter Lewis and John Sperling, also contributed $500,000 on behalf of Proposition 66.

Opponents of the measure received a huge boost in the last week of the campaign when Henry T. Nicholas III, a self-described "engineering nerd" who co-founded Broadcom and has an estimated worth of more than $1 billion, contributed $3.5 million to the campaign. The California Correctional Peace Officers Association added $700,000.

Nicholas, an Orange County billionaire, decided to make the contribution after his mother attended Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's rally Oct. 20 in Ontario.

Sparked by Schwarzenegger's involvement in the campaign, opponents of Proposition 66, in a survey released four days before the election, chopped 25 points off what had been the proponents' huge lead in a Field Poll taken in early October.

The two sides battled in the campaign over how many offenders would be affected and whether they would be released if the measure passes.

Proponents said Proposition 66 would have affected no more than 4,200 current three-strike prisoners and that none of them would be guaranteed a release, only a resentencing hearing.

Opponents said all 4,200 three-strikers now in prison on 25-years-to-life terms would have been virtually assured of release, and that another 22,000 two-strike prisoners, whose terms were doubled under provisions of the 1994 law, also could get early outs.

Proposition 69 received more than $1.8 million from Newport Beach lawyer Bruce Harrington, whose brother and sister-in-law were murdered in 1980.

Opponents of Proposition 69, which included the American Civil Liberties Union, argued the measure threatened the privacy rights of people arrested but not charged or convicted of felonies.

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