Pubdate: Sun, 15 Nov 2015
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.utsandiego.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/386
Note: Seldom prints LTEs from outside it's circulation area.
Author: Kristina Davis

S.D. COUNTY FILES MOST PROP. 47 PETITIONS IN STATE

San Diego County has far outpaced the rest of the state in the number 
of requests for relief under Proposition 47, according to data 
released last week.

The law reduced simple drug possession and some other low-level 
property felonies to misdemeanors, and allows old and recent 
convictions to be reclassified.

In the first eight months since the law was passed by voters last 
November, one-quarter of the state's Proposition 47 petitions for 
resentencings and reclassifications of old convictions came from 
within the county - nearly 41,400. Los Angeles County - a region with 
three times as many people - pales in comparison, with about 25,100 
petitions filed to state courts during the same time frame. Orange 
County filed slightly fewer, about 22,500.

The numbers do not reflect how many petitions were actually approved 
by the courts.

The data comes from the state Judicial Council and was highlighted 
last week as part of a report by the American Civil Liberties Union 
on the law's implementation in its first year.

That's not necessarily to say San Diego has more criminals.

San Diego public defenders and prosecutors in part chalk up the high 
numbers to the county's swift reaction to the law.

"We had a plan in place the day it passed," said Deputy District 
Attorney David Greenberg.

The Public Defender's Office identified an initial batch of 
potentially eligible cases - which turned out to be a huge number - 
and had the District Attorney's Office determine upon further review 
whether the defendants were truly eligible or not.

To be eligible for resentencing, an offender can't have a criminal 
history that includes any offenses from a list of about 80 serious 
crimes, such as murder, sex crimes against children, torture and 
kidnapping for ransom. Many times, once prosecutors dug deeper into 
the circumstances or into the person's criminal history, the case was 
rejected as ineligible.

The public defender filed some 3,400 petitions within two days of the 
law passing, and nearly 10,000 within the first month.

As of Friday, the District Attorney's Office has processed about 
6,600 petitions as eligible.

The effort has so far been mostly aimed at providing relief to the 
eligible people currently in custody or on probation or parole.

It will now begin to shift more to people with older cases who want 
their felony convictions reduced to misdemeanors. However, a number 
of people have already called asking to have their old convictions 
reduced in order to get a new job or get a loan, and their cases were 
expedited, Greenberg said.

A prosecutor, public defender and judge met once a day for about the 
first six months after the bill passed to get the work done and iron 
out problems.

Deputy Public Defender Frank Birchak says there are about 114,000 
more cases they anticipate filing petitions on, although not all 
those people will be eligible.

The public defender's database only goes back to the early 1990s, so 
anyone with eligible felonies before then is encouraged to notify the 
office, Birchak said. The deadline to file petitions is November 2017.

"It's been a big shift and a lot of work," Birchak said.

Some other counties have approached the process differently, with 
many waiting for applicants to initiate the filing process 
themselves. Some counties might have also more closely reviewed 
offender petitions for eligibility before filing them with the court.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom