Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 21, 1994 TAG: 9403210048
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SEATTLE LENGTH: Medium
Then Samuel Lee Page Jr. secured a footnote in history, the first person snared by the country's first broad "three strikes, you're out" law.
On March 3, he pleaded guilty in King County Superior Court to a foiled kidnapping and stealing $40 at knifepoint - fifth and sixth convictions that put him in prison for life without hope of parole.
Page, 45, declined an interview. His public defender, Damian Klauss, would not say why Page accepted the sentence. "Page won't let me."
Page's refusal to fight disappointed critics of the law who warn of clogged courts and geriatric prisons. His own lawyer was dismayed.
Why Page went willingly may be explained, however, in his life story as told by a sister and federal and state records.
In some respects, they reveal a man of steady habits, including a drinking problem, who stayed close to home.
As he graduated from teen-age troublemaking to joy riding to bank robbery to kidnapping, Page never showed talent for crime. Never going to trial, he always pleaded guilty.
Once out of prison, he soon found his way back behind the walls.
Life held promise for Page when he was born Oct. 1, 1948, the second of five children of a construction worker and a Pentecostal Christian who took her three sons and two daughters to church every Sunday.
Sammy Page did well in school. Then, when he was 10, his mother died and his life unraveled.
His father drank heavily. A gunfight between his father and a neighbor cost a younger brother an eye. Sammy Page was a dropout by eighth grade.
"Sam was bright as far as school was concerned, but I guess he just got disillusioned," said Sylvia Banks, Page's older sister and only living sibling.
Three of his siblings are now dead, one a suicide during a police shootout. All had criminal records.
Banks, 52, recalls her brother's first brush with the law. As a teen-ager, he went to Disneyland with the family's rent money.
Page's juvenile record is sealed. But his adult record begins with a three-year sentence for a 1967 joy ride in a stolen car.
Two years later, barely out of prison for the car theft, Page and Page two others talked their way into a party and robbed six people at knifepoint. Caught within 20 minutes, Page got 20 years in state prison.
He was on parole in 1975 when he pointed a pistol at a bank teller and took $1,654, his biggest haul. Caught by the surveillance camera, he was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison.
He served 5 1/2 years.
Out on parole less than 6 months, in 1981 he and another man held up a mail carrier at a public housing project on welfare check-delivery day.
Page returned to federal prison.
Despite a lengthened stay for bad behavior, Page was paroled in 1989.
Once again, within six months he broke parole, this time by stealing about $1,000 from a bank machine and lying on a $5,000 bank loan application.
Authorities were looking for Page when he committed his last crime.
He was caught Jan. 13 this year. Wielding a kitchen knife, he kidnapped a lawyer and his secretary, intending to march them to a bank to withdraw a ransom. The secretary escaped and hailed a passing police officer. Page was arrested after a short chase.
On March 3 he pleaded guilty to all of it.
The three-strikes law was tailored for criminals like Page, said King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng. "These are the types of cases that engender fear in the community."
Those scared voters enacted Washington's landmark law mandating life without parole for three serious felonies. Since that ballot initiative passed last November, "three strikes" has been in vogue with lawmakers and others eager to quell widespread anxiety about crime.
Similar laws were adopted this year in California, Virginia and Indiana. Georgia's legislature approved a "two strikes" measure voters will decide in November.
Congress and 24 states are taking up the idea as well.
by CNB