he goes on to college at Hawaii Pacific University and gets his Bachelors degree in Justice Administration. Nine years later he moves back home and gets into a bar fight when someone insults his wife, and intentionally hits someone, breaking his nose. Criminal behavior to be sure, but hardly the crime of the century,yet it is Strike Three. Under this states “Strike 3” laws, he is sent to prison for the rest of his life, end of story. The sad part to this story is that it is very real in principle and happens every day in our court systems across the United States. In my opinion this punishment is a miscarriage of justice and tears against the very fabric of beliefs this nation was founded upon. The bottom line is that these laws directly contradict the principle expressed in the Eighth Amendment known as “proportionality”. It states in part “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted”. In other words, under our system of criminal justice, the punishment must fit the crime. Once a defendant is adjudicated or found guilty the most trying facet of a judge’s job can be the sentencing or punishment phase. No other person can have so much responsibility and power in determining how society will treat its transgressors. Most judges are either elected or appointed to their positions because of our supposed confidence in their impartial views when it comes to dispensing justice. However, the trend in the past few years has been for legislatures to minimize the discretion given to judges at sentencing, partly in an attempt to treat similar defendants more similarly and to avoid the effect of rogue judges. These policies have effectively taken some of the important discretion away from the very people who are supposed to be the most intimately involved in our due process. Legislators are too far removed from this process ...
