Mike Reynolds, 79, force behind three-strikes law

After his 18-year-old daughter was murdered in 1992, shot at point-blank range outside a busy restaurant in Fresno, Calif., Mike Reynolds channeled his grief into activism, embarking on a personal crusade to lock up repeat offenders like the one who took his daughter’s life.

Two years later, amid a surge of concern over violent crime and high-profile killings, he helped secure the passage of California’s three-strikes law, one of the nation’s toughest sentencing measures. The 1994 law meant that people with a serious or violent felony conviction would serve twice the usual sentence for their second felony conviction, and then sentences of 25 years to life for their third.

Developed by Reynolds, who said he drafted the measure with help from lawyers, prosecutors and judges, the law inspired similar measures in more than two dozen states across the country. It also sparked a contentious debate over the effectiveness of measures that critics called draconian, with lengthy sentences imposed even when the third felony is relatively minor, like shoplifting, possessing marijuana or placing a bet in an office pool.

Reynolds, who continued to advocate for strict sentencing rules even as voters elected to reverse the tough-on-crime measures he championed, died July 9 at a hospital in Fresno. His death at 79, from complications following open-heart surgery, was confirmed by his wife, Sharon Reynolds.

“I wish somebody else would have done this and I would have a daughter,” Reynolds told the Los Angeles Times in 1994, after his advocacy efforts brought him national media attention and an invitation to the White House. “If I could, even knowing that this law would save a lot of lives, if I could go back and have my daughter and not have this bill and not have this notoriety and just go back to life the way it was, I’d do it in a heartbeat. But that is not real. What we have to do is go on with the cards that have been dealt.”

As Reynolds told it, he was just an “average Joe,” with little interest in politics or policymaking before his daughter’s murder. He was a professional photographer — he took pictures at more than 4,000 weddings, according to his family — and spent his free time cooking and working on engineering and salvage projects.

“He was constantly tinkering and innovating,” his son Michael said in a phone interview. “It didn’t matter whether it was the criminal justice system or his tempura batter or spaghetti sauce.”