Steven Schiff: “the bill, as presented to the House floor from the Committee on the Judiciary, said that one serious drug offense could…”

“the bill, as presented to the House floor from the Committee on the Judiciary, said that one serious drug offense could be used as one of the three strikes for the purpose of life imprisonment. The House voted a moment ago to raise that to all three strikes. All three convictions could be for serious drug offenses. It must be emphasized first that we are talking here about serious drug offenses as defined already in the bill, and that includes major people who are major traffickers in drugs. Second of all, it has to be emphasized that for all of the so-called strikes in the bill a conviction is a strike, not an offense, so the way this bill would actually work in operation is somebody would have to commit one or more offenses under this act because it could be more than one, be convicted, and that would be strike one. They would then have to go out and commit one or more offenses under this bill, and that would be strike two. Then they would have to go out and commit one or more offenses under this bill, and that finally would be the so-called strike three that would implement the life in prison.”