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Juvenile Justice and the Punishment of Recidivists Under California's Three Strikes Law |
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Amanda K. Packel |
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| The inclusion of juvenile adjudications as prior strikes under
California's Three Strikes law sets up an inevitable clash between
the re-maining rehabilitative purposes of the juvenile justice
system and the puni-tive intent that motivated Three Strikes.
The California Supreme Court, faced with a poorly written statute,
has dealt with the statute's ambiguities in a way that has further
confused the rules and obfuscated the rationales behind them.
In People v. Davis, the court ignored traditional canons
of statutory construction and unjustifiably expanded the number
of juvenile adjudications that can count as strikes. In People
v. Garcia, when the court finally recognized a distinction
for the use of juvenile adjudications as strikes, it did so reluctantly
and without acknowledging that it was in effect overruling Davis.
The supreme court should expressly overrule Davis, including its
methods of statutory interpretation and its broadening of the
scope of juvenile adjudications that qualify as prior strikes.
Trial and appellate courts should use their discretion to dismiss
prior juvenile adjudication strikes and resolve the tension created
by Three Strikes' application to juvenile adjudications and exacerbated
by the Davis and Garcia opinions. This Comment also
suggests a number of other ways that juvenile court judges, criminal
court judges, and legislators can reduce the conflict between
the juvenile justice system and the Three Strikes fueled criminal
justice system in California. |
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Copyright
© 2002 by California Law Review, Inc. |
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