Gone Forever

by Kaponda

While the oath of office was being administered to the statesman during his inaugural ceremony at Yerba Buena Gardens, I was initiated into a notorious institution by his secret drug force agents. They continued to mangle each of my arms until I buckled over like still water contorted by a vicious current. As the president of the United States had ended his long-distance congratulatory speech to the first-ever African-American Mayor of the City and County San Francisco, I was being hoisted from the ground by Sergeant Miller and hustled to the Hall of Justice by Sergeant Lofton to a cell in which I had been selected to spend the next year of my life.

"You are gone forever!" stated an irascible Sergeant Lofton, watching blood trickle from one of his two arms used in his heavy-handed assault on me as I walked down Sixth Street on that January 8, 1996 I could sense his consolation from having bent my left thumb until it almost touched my elbow, as I wore handcuffs. The civil rights of many people were trampled upon by the Willie Brown Sweep, as it was later dubbed, since it appeared to have been coordinated to occur durin his inaugural ceremony.

Aware of the Three Strikes initiative approved in 1994 to create fixed determinate prison sentences for people who re-offend, Sergeant Lofton knew that his threat to cast me into perpetual oblivion was supported by a mandate by voters of California and upheld as constitutional by the courts of California. The authority to make sentencing decisions have devolved from the courts and juries to cops and district attorneys as a result.

Now the District Attorney of San Francisco has decided to preclude a man who was recently convicted of receiving stolen goods from ever seeing the light of day by exercising the power vested in him to invoke "Three strikes and you’re out." This decision by Terence Hallinan confounded many people because he has expressed strong opposition to imposing three strikes to nonviolent offenses. In one of the first cases presented to Hallinan involving Freddie Lee Williams, Hallinan is quoted in an article by Reynolds Holding of the San Francisco Chronicle, dated Sunday, November 3, 1996. In this article, Hallinan expresses his attitude concerning three strikes by stating that, "If we did the three strikes, that would be the same as a sentence for murder. But the jury had just made a decision that it (Williams’ crime) was manslaughter."

But in the case decided Friday, Troy Hayles, who had earlier been acquitted of murder, was convicted only of receiving stolen property. Those goods had belonged to 70-year-old Joyce Ruger, who was murdered more than two and one half-years ago at 719 Webster Street in the Fillmore district of San Francisco, a murder that has remained indelibly fastened in the memories of many Fillmore residents.

"I didn't know the late Joyce Ruger personally," stated Bishop Valentine of the New Christian Fellowship Church, located two doors from the fourplex Ruger owned and lived in. "As I understood it, she was like a neighborhood watch person trying to take care of her community. But the stuff that is going on in the neighborhood is so rough and tough that it takes more than just one person to fight this thing."

In my case, Sgt. Lofton had been aware that I had no violent cases on my record when he taunted and interrogated me in an effort to get me to cooperate with him. He wanted me to inform him how the transaction of a $10 rock of cocaine happened between me and the person from whom he claimed I had purchased it.

I asked Bishop Valentine what he thought about the District Attorney's decision to invoke the Three-Strike statute in the case of Troy Hayle, and did he think that the decision was imposed, in part, because of Hayles refusal to cooperate with the police?

"If the District Attorney said that he would only invoke the Three-Strikes sentence for violent offenders, and this individual had nothing to do with it, then there should be an alternative other than the third strike. But if there is more to the case that they are concealing, then light needs to be cast on the the facts. The District Attorney has to justify the harsh sentence that is being imposed upon this man."

"Three Strikes should not be imposed because of the decision of a person not to cooperate, because we are protected by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. If that is the case, and Hallinan's decision was based on Hayles' refusal to cooperate, then that is like retaliation because he will not speak to what is going on," concluded Bishop Valentine.

Opponents of charging a nonviolent offense as a third strike cannot understand why the District Attorney had elected to use Three Strikes against Troy Hayles.

"They were unable to get language that would make it a third strike only if it was a violent felony," stated Stephen Bingham of the National Lawyers' Guild.

Having vowed publicly and throughout his campaign never to use the Three Strikes statute in cases that involved nonviolent offenses and acknowledging the draconian language, and that it could not be applied fairly, why did Terence Hallinan backdown on his promises to the people of San Francisco by imposing the three-strikes statue in the case of Troy Hayle, the man who was charged with receiving stolen goods? During the weekly Community Newsroom at POOR Magazine, the Director of Families with a Future, Ida McCray, talked about her reasons why she thought the District Attorney elected to relegate Hayle to the house of jackals.

"This case is politically charged because Joyce Ruger was a wealthy woman who had several houses one of which was on Webster Street! This is very reminiscence of the antebellum laws in the South where some black man had to hang from some tree because some white person got killed. The jury found that there was no evidence that linked Troy Hayle to the murder of Joyce Ruger...," stated McCray.

Sergeant Lofton knew that I would take the high ground and preserve the one quality that I had never in life compromised -- my honor. Conversely, I knew that Sergeant Lofton would also manufacture a statement that would satisfy the "three strikes and you’re out" sentencing guidelines. He did not disappoint me, as he charged me with assault on two police officers because of the injury to his partners that resulted after they had barreled into and mauled me.

According to McCray, Hallinan had attempted to jostle Hayle into renouncing his principles by giving him a "testify or else" ultimatum which was probably the reason Hallinan was compelled to apply three strikes in the case of Hayle.

"He [Terence Halliinan] decided to use his ‘discretion’ in this case. And using his discretion is to convict Troy Hayles, who did not cooperate with police and was unable to testify, and who was unable to be uaed. He was not the murderer, and the office of the District Attorney knows that he was not the murderer. But he is being used as a scapegoat by that office. ‘We are going to hang some,’" stated Ida McCray.

Have the political winds in San Francisco shifted so drastically that the ethics of extrajudcial decisions are the issues around which interest revolves. I asked Matt Gonzales of he San Francisco Board of Supervisor about the Troy Hayle matter and whether there has been a major shift of attitudes around three strikes?

"I am opposed to the use of three strikes in any nonviolent case," Gonzales stated with absolute resolve.

DeShawn (DeFresh) Blake, a rapper, and resident of the Fillmore district in 1998 and was just released from San Quentin Penitentiary, provided a personal perspective to arbitrary sentencing.

"I feel that if he did not go out and commit a violent felony, then he should not be given that much time. That is a long time to be away from your family and the people who care about you." The mother of Troy Hayle had passed away during his time awaiting trial, and his wife and sister attended his trial.

Had I known the magnitude of authority at the disposal of undercover cops like Miller and Lofton and the push to fill the growing prison industrial complex with my body and your money, I would have struggled even harder to avoid the one year of jail time to which I was sentenced.

According to the latest statistics released by Families to Amend California’s Three Strikes, "the California Department of Corrections projects that the second- and third-strike prison population will exceed 55,000 by 2002; nearly 75 percent of second and third strikes are for nonviolent and non-serious offenses; the most common "strike" charges are drugs, theft and burglary."

According to Ida McCray, "To convict someone who is nonviolent sends the wrong message. I think what has happened to San Franciscans is that they have been placed in jeopardy because as soon as that news hits the community, for those who are criminal minded -- we are dealing with the heart when we see someone one-on-one. When these men who receive their third strike go to prison -- and this is what a lot of people don't want to know -- they will have to learn to kill. They will have to learn to kill because Troy Hayle will go to a Level-4 institution. People with that amount of time go to a Level-4 institution. So we are going to send people who are nonviolent in the first place to institutions where they are going to have to either kill for their life or become subject to something else."