[Sosfbay-discuss] Greens get behind the Santos Reyes pardon drive.

[JamBoi]

I just copied this from the http://www.GreenCommons.org web site. 
GreenCommons is becoming quite a useful web site for us Greens!  I urge
everyone to check it out! The following was a rally that the Byron
DeLear campaign held and this note gives the story in a bit more detail
(in english ;-) ) about the Santos Reyes case.  Camejo and others have
sent a letter to the CA Gov. to request pardon.

A Million Votes for Peace!

--------------------------
Santos Reyes Press Conference and Rally -- 9:30am, Weds. 9/13

A press conference and rally will take place in front of the U.S.
District Court @ 9:30 AM:

312 N. Spring St.
Los Angeles, CA

PLEASE JOIN US AND DISTRIBUTE WIDELY!- Santos Reyes has served 6 years
of a 26-yrs. to life sentence for taking a DMV test for his cousin. The
Three Strikes Law needs to be abolished! Peter Camejo will be joined by
Green Party candidates Byron De Lear and Donna Warren, and FACTS
advocate as well as Geri Silva, director of FACTS (Families Against
California Three Strikes). Matt Gonzalez is serving as an advisor on
the case and may be at the rally as well.

Santos Reyes, an undocumented Mexican worker, has served six years of a
26-year-to-life sentence in Folsom State Prison under California's
Three Strikes law. The act committed by Santos Reyes that sent him to
prison would normally have been prosecuted as a violation of California
Vehicle Code: Section 20, a misdemeanor (which states that "It is
unlawful to use a false or fictitious name or knowingly conceal any
material fact in any document filed with the DMV"), which carries a
maximum sentence of one year and could not have been used as a "third"
strike. However, the prosecutor elected to charge Santos Reyes with a
more serious offense of perjury, a violation of Penal Code Section 118
(a) a felony, that could triggered the Three Strikes sentencing.

Santos' two priors strikes were a residential burglary as a 17 year-old
minor (he and another youth stole a radio after visiting a house
without a forced entry) and an armed robbery alleging the use of a
knife committed when he was 23 years old (a charge Santos Reyes
maintains he is completely innocent of) Neither of these offenses
occurred within the last twenty years.

The Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals has granted Santos Reyes a
hearing to determine whether he should have been punished under the
Three Strikes law since Santos sought only to provide for his family as
a roofer by seeking to obtain a driver's license, an event totally
disconnected from the previous issues and one created by peculiar and
unjust juridical circumstances; and

In no other country in the world has any individual been sentenced to
such a prison term for falsifying a name on a government form.

_____________________________________________



--- JamBoi <jamboi at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Yes, at the General Assembly, Peter Camejo was very excited about how
> he and other Greens had lead the way at the 'Congresso Latino' on
> creating a unified movement to free Santos Reyes (translated to Holy
> Kings in the following crude mechanical translation to english) who
> had
> been jailed for life 6 years ago based on him having cheated on the
> DMV
> test (a misdemeanor that somehow they upgraded to perjury, a felony
> and
> called that the 3rd strike): http://tinyurl.com/lg6n5
> 
> Here's the story in english from the SF Chron:
> http://tinyurl.com/eocf6
> 
> BTW, We promptly endorsed the letter to the Gov. requesting
> commutation
> of the sentence when he asked! 
> 
> A Million Votes for Peace!
> 
> Drew
> 
> --- Jim Doyle <j.m.doyle at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> 
> > Spanish language of course.
> > url
> > http://www.laopinion.com/primerapagina/?rkey=00000000000000502180
> > 
> > At a press conference with relatives of a person caught in 3
> strikes
> > for falsifying something at the dmv.
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > sosfbay-discuss mailing list
> > sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org
> > http://lists.cagreens.org/mailman/listinfo/sosfbay-discuss
> > 
> 
> 
> JamBoi
> Jammy The Sacred Cow Slayer
> 
> "Live humbly, laugh often and love unconditionally" (anon)
> http://dailyJam.blogspot.com
> 
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JamBoi
Jammy The Sacred Cow Slayer

"Live humbly, laugh often and love unconditionally" (anon)
http://dailyJam.blogspot.com

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