[quote=SD Realtor]Scaredy why don’t you educate yourself about hunger in the US. Here are some numbers for you. There are 49.1 million people in the US that are considered food insecure. There are over 17 million people who live in households that were determined to have very low food security. Here are a couple links for you. http://www.frac.org/html/hunger_in_the_u…
SDR, scaredy has seen it all, over and over. I have no doubt that he has had MANY clients over the years who have been arrested for Petty Theft with a Prior (PC 666). These men and women (very often parents) were busted by store managers for trying to steal diapers, formula, milk, bread, hotdogs . . . you name it, for their hungry families at home. He has to defend them vigorously, for under CA’s infamous “Three Strikes Law,” this parent will be facing mandatory time at the Big House.
One of the more controversial sections of the California Penal Code are the consecutive Sections 666 and 667; Section 666, known officially as petty theft with a prior — and colloquially, felony petty theft — makes it possible for someone who committed a minor shoplifting crime to be charged with a felony if the person had been convicted of any theft-related offense at any time in the past; and if the person so charged has two previous felony convictions (listed as serious or violent felonies [“strikeable” offenses]), this can result in a 25-years-to-life sentence under the state’s three strikes law, which is found in Section 667.
The inclusion of felony petty theft within the three-strikes law, and for that matter, the three-strikes law itself, have sparked much debate both within and outside the state, and even beyond the United States. In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the California three-strikes law against constitutional challenges in two cases where the third strike was a nonviolent crime — Ewing v. California, 538 U.S. 11 (2003), and Lockyer v. Andrade, 538 U.S. 63 (2003).
SDR, how much do you think it costs CA taxpayers for this parent to have to possibly leave their jobs and parenting duties to check in for an extended stay in one of our State’s finest “inns,” such as, Chowchilla, Frontera, Tehachapi and R.J. Donovan, etc?? Oh, and then there are foster-care expenses for their children ($540 mo per child + Medi-Cal, free bus passes and free school lunches).
None of us can stand on a soapbox and tell Piggs with scaredy’s experience what he doesn’t already know, live and breathe, every working day of his life :=]
