Dozens of Washington lifers remain in jail despite changes in 3-strikes law

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Dozens of inmates, many of them black, are set to stay in Washington state prisons for life — left out of the latest in a multiyear wave of reforms easing tough-oncrime “three-strikes” laws around the U.S.

At least 24 states including Washington passed such laws during the 1990s, driven by rising violent crime rates. But nearly half have since scaled them back amid concern that habitual but less-violent offenders were being stuck behind bars for life with hard-core felons.

Washington’s 1993 threestrikes law was among the first and stands out as among the nation’s strictest. Lawmakers targeted it for reform this year with legislation removing second-degree robbery — generally defined as a robbery without a deadly weapon or significant injury — from the list of crimes qualifying for cumulative life sentences.

The original reform made inmates sentenced under the former law eligible for resentencing. But an amendment pushed by a prosecutors’ group cut out the retroactivity that would have applied to those behind bars. Washington governor and Democratic presidential contender Jay Inslee signed the changes into law April 29.

That means 62 inmates convicted of second-degree robbery will still serve life sentences, according to state records, even after judges stop “striking out” new offenders convicted of the same crimes. The racial makeup of the group is disproportionate: About half are black, despite African Americans making up 4 percent of Washington’s population.

Under the original bill, the inmates with a robbery “strike” would have had the opportunity to have their life sentences re-examined by judges — but now they won’t.

Supporters of the amendment have said even less serious robberies can leave emotional scars, and that prosecutors might have set aside more serious charges because they knew second-degree robbery convictions would mean life in prison for those offenders.

But inmates facing life behind bars described frustration that offenders with similar records might face drastically shorter sentences going forward.

“It’s just wrong on its face, to make people rot in prison for the rest of their life on a sentence that doesn’t even exist anymore,” said John Letellier, 67, whose 1999 fast-food restaurant robbery earned him his third strike.

Three-strike laws — typically focused on handing out life or near-life sentences — surged in popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s in response to peaking violent crime, driven in part by gang crime and the crack cocaine epidemic.

But a movement to reform the laws grew as backers cited the high cost of life imprisonment.