“Why is rape not considered a violent crime in California?” tweeted California Assemblyman Tom Lackey last week. Unfortunately, that question still remains.
Democrat legislators killed AB 229, which would have defined human trafficking and felony domestic violence as a violent felony for purposes of the Three Strikes Law.
“This bill would expand the crimes that are within the definition of a violent felony for all purposes, including for purposes of the Three Strikes Law, to include additional forms of sexual crimes, as defined, human trafficking, as defined, and felony domestic violence, as defined. By expanding the scope of an enhancement, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program,” reads the bill.
Under California’s Three Strikes Law, non-violent crimes are not considered strikes. This means repeat non-violent offenders avoid longer sentences and they can use generous good-behavior credits to cut their sentences short.
This is common-sense legislation that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle should support.
During the hearing, California Assemblyman Joe Patterson, the author of the bill, made an impassioned plea to hold perpetrators accountable for their violent crimes .
“Call me crazy, but I think dragging a woman out of the bedroom by her hair, punching her in the face and then beating her with a belt should be considered a ‘violent crime,’” tweeted Patterson.
Unfortunately, Patterson’s Democrat colleagues didn’t agree.
Assemblyman member Rick Zbur (D-Beverly Hills) responded saying, “I don’t think this is needed. I don’t appreciate bringing these kind of bills forward… . I won’t be supporting this bill today.”
“What you’re kind of proposing is a ‘Back to the Future’ kind of thing where we did three strikes. That’s how we got to overcrowding in prisons,” said Assembly Public Safety Chair Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles). “That’s how we filled it with black and brown folk… .”
Here the assembly member is bringing up prison reform, as he’s concerned that the proposed bill would cause overcrowding in prisons.
However, this issue needs to be addressed separately. The fundamental issue at hand here is how state law should treat a crime that affects more than one third of women nationwide.
Watch the full hearing here.
Even the liberal San Francisco Chronicle published editorial by Emily Hoeven supporting this bill.
“[B]y failing to treat domestic violence as the violent crime that it is, California is failing not only victims — who sought assistance from law enforcement nearly 165,000 times in 2021— but also society at large by insufficiently addressing one of the greatest predictors of mass shootings,” Hoeven wrote.
If domestic violence were labeled as the violent crime that it is, the state’s worst offenders would receive steeper consequences, keeping guns out of the possession of dangerous people. A misdemeanor has a maximum sentence of one year in jail. With harsher sentences, sex offenders will have less access to weapons, given that the state often fails to enforce laws prohibiting domestic abusers from owning firearms.
Hoeven went on to note that in over 68% of U.S. mass shootings from 2014 through 2019, the perpetrator had a history of domestic violence or had killed at least one partner or family member.
This bill is a vital way for California lawmakers to prevent gun violence and protect women; two goals that all legislators should agree on.
Victims of rape and sexual assault deserve justice, and their perpetrators deserve to be held accountable. As Assemblyman Tom Lackey (R-Palmdale) said during the hearing, to not consider the rape or sexual assault of a drugged or unconscious person violent simply “defies logic.”
