Prison life must not be all that bad to Orange County's Rodolfo Magana Cortez.
At least Cortez, who already enjoyed two felony strikes against him, wasn't worried about returning to the slammer on July 3, 2007, in Garden Grove.
In fact, he took six simultaneous steps to trigger California's Three Strikes law and potentially keep him locked up for the rest of his life.
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Okay, potential Third Strikers, take out your notebooks and write down the steps:
Step 1: Park a vehicle in a “no parking” area so that police will notice you.
Step 2: Be high on methamphetamine while you're in the vehicle.
Step 3: Keep an extra supply of the illegal narcotic as well as drug paraphernalia in the vehicle with you.
Step 4: Have an open container of booze in the vehicle and make sure it's in a spot where approaching police can easily see it.
Step 5: Don't forget to put a loaded handgun in your waistband.
and
Step 6: Fight with the officers who confront you.
The
scenario wasn't one that a local jury would probably admire. Cortez
waived his right to a jury trial, but still found himself convicted by an
Orange County Superior Court judge who sentenced him to spend at least 25 years in prison or,
perhaps, the rest of his life. When, or if, he ever returns to society
will be up to a future parole board.
Cortez appealed, claiming the officers fabricated their incident report. Last week, a California Court of Appeal based in Santa Ana considered and rejected his claims. But the justices did overturn the trial judge's decision not to award him credit for 1,362 days spent in the Orange County Jail before his conviction.
Upshot: Cortez's life in freedom probably ended at the age of 27.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.