As I discussed in a post from last night, the Ninth Circuit yesterday issued an opinion holding that California could not constitutionally impose a life sentence on a shoplifter with two robbery priors involving fairly minimal force. Based on the facts stated in the Ninth Circuit opinion, the defendant appears undeserving of a 25-to-life sentence.

But our local Dog Trainer is not content simply to report these facts in a straightforward fashion. Ever so predictably, the paper buries some inconvenient facts on the back pages, and completely omits others, thus painting a substantially false picture of what actually occurred.

What actually occurred can be more accurately understood by reading a decent article on the decision, like this article in (of all places!) the San Francisco Chronicle. The relevant facts are succinctly set forth as follows:

In May 1996, Ramirez [the defendant] took a videocassette recorder from a Sears in Montclair (San Bernardino County), put it in a box that he sealed with security tape and walked out. He was stopped in the parking lot, admitted the theft and returned the VCR, the court said.

The crime is normally a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail. But under a unique California law, it can be prosecuted as a felony if the shoplifter has served time for theft in the past. Ramirez had spent six months and 20 days in jail for two 1991 robbery convictions.

The court said the 1991 cases also involved shoplifting — from a supermarket and a department store — but Ramirez was charged with robbery because force was used: A getaway driver ran over a security guard’s foot at the market, causing a minor injury, and Ramirez shoved a security guard while fleeing the department store.

Because they were robberies, they counted as strikes — serious felonies — under the three-strikes law. Ramirez pleaded for leniency, saying he had worked to turn his life around since the 1991 case and had young children, but the sentencing judge called him a “professional thief” and gave him 25 years to life.

This is a balanced view of the defendant’s criminal history as portrayed by the Ninth Circuit. His prior offenses both started out as shoplifting offenses, but both became robberies — and therefore “strike” priors — due to the force used: shoving a man in one case, and running over a security guard’s foot (ouch!) in another. Apparently, the injuries in each case were minor to nonexistent, and the cases were pled out for minimal jail time.

Then, on his next shoplifting offense, the defendant was given his first prison term ever: 25 years to life. These facts, fairly reported, paint a reasonably sympathetic picture of the defendant. The 25-to-life sentence seems clearly disproportionate. Even the dissenting judge in the Ninth Circuit decision agrees.

But the folks at the Dog Trainer apparently feel the need to distort the defendant’s criminal history to make him appear even more sympathetic. Their story characterizes the defendant’s prior convictions as simple nonviolent shoplifting convictions:

In 1991, [the defendant] pleaded guilty to two nonviolent shoplifting offenses in Orange County. Under a plea agreement, he served a sentence of just more than six months in county jail.

The editors carefully hide from their readers — until the back pages — the revelation that the defendant’s priors were actually robbery convictions, rather than simple shoplifting offenses.

Worse, you can read the entire Dog Trainer article and never find any hint that the previous offenses involved any force whatsoever. There is no mention of the security guard whose foot was run over by a car. There is no mention of the fact that the defendant shoved a security guard in another case. The overall impression is that the man received a life sentence for three shoplifting offenses involving no force whatsoever, that were bizarrely treated as “robberies,” but clearly were not.

This is terrible reporting, but it becomes understandable once you understand the paper’s strident anti-Three Strikes agenda. I have discussed this at length in several posts, most recently here.

Near the end, the article pushes a study by a liberal think tank, without alerting readers of the organization’s notorious leftist bias:

Last month, the Criminal Justice Policy Institute of Washington, D.C., reported that the three-strikes law had had little impact on violent crime, while costing taxpayers $8 billion to imprison tens of thousands of felons, most of them for nonviolent offenses.

At least the last time the Dog Trainer ran an article citing this study, the editors told readers that the organization is a “left-leaning research and public policy organization.” (They waited until the back pages — the second time the organization was mentioned in the article — but at least it was in there somewhere.) I guess, having told us this over six weeks ago, the paper doesn’t see the need to belabor the point by mentioning it anywhere in this article.

Look for this study to be cited several more times before November, when the initiative to weaken the Three Strikes law will be on the ballot. Based on today’s story, I am assuming we will never again be told that the study was produced by a left-leaning organization.

Amongst all this bias, there was one bright spot in today’s story:

Ramirez argued the case on his own behalf and clearly impressed the judges, including Andrew Kleinfeld, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, who dissented.

I was thrilled to see that former President Bush has made it onto the Ninth Circuit, though I can’t figure out how he avoided a Democratic filibuster.