John Wesley Ewell, like other addicts, are capable of anything. Thinking otherwise could be hazardous to your life.
“I really didn’t think anybody could pretend to anticipate that…[John Wesley Ewell] would suddenly go from stealing things from Home Depot to murdering old people.”
So said Los Angeles County Head Deputy District Attorney John Lynch in excusing the repeated exceptions under California’s three strikes law allowed by L.A. County prosecutors in failing to seek the maximum sentence for Ewell before he allegedly murdered four people in a series of home invasion robberies. Ewell was quite the con artist. He complained to journalists over the unfairness of the three-strikes law, saying he lived in fear that even a small offense, having had two prior convictions for robbery, would land him back in prison for life. When appearing on “The Montel Williams Show,” a caption flashed on the screen that read “Afraid to leave his house because he has 2 ‘Strikes.’” (The obvious response is, then don’t do anything bad, but I digress.) His wife, Carmen, became state treasurer of Families to Amend California’s Three Strikes, which focuses attention on scores of prisoners serving possible life sentences for minor drug offenses and petty thefts. Ewell was released on three occasions in the year preceding the grisly murders after arrests for stealing from Home Depot stores. Prosecutors said that, at age 53, he hardly fit the profile of a killer and that the “vast majority of [minor] offenders…have not gone on to kill or carry out serious crimes.”
If the vast majority of such offenders went on to murder people, we’d likely all be dead. The problem is, as stated in these pages numerous times and more fully explained in Drunks, Drugs & Debits, we cannot predict how destructive a practicing alcohol or other-drug addict may become, or when. Ewell appears to have been a classic Jekyll and Hyde type and likely was sober for long periods. Neighbors described him as a friendly handyman willing to help others (similar descriptions of the “Grim Sleeper” serial murderer Lonnie Franklin, Jr., are found in the Top Story in the July 2010 edition of TAR at http://preventragedy.com/pages/TAR/056.jul10.html). After narrowly avoiding a third strike conviction in the early 1990s he spent years out of trouble, no doubt while in recovery from his longstanding cocaine addiction. While there are no easy answers, we have the means to enforce sobriety on those who have proven to society they cannot safely use alcohol or other drugs. Since we cannot predict which addicts who commit minor offenses will go on to commit murder, but can predict that some will, the technology for enforcing abstinence—ankle bracelets and regular and random other-drug testing—should be mandatory for all convicts.
Along similar lines, while some alcoholics never drink and drive, most do and often regularly. Due to alcoholically-induced brain damage, one cannot reason with a practicing alcoholic. He may promise never to do it (whatever “it” is) again, but once he’s drunk, anything goes—he thinks he’s God and, therefore, perfect and invincible, so he can (obviously) drive safely. This is the reason advertising, including this very powerful and compelling DUI commercial from Australia making the Internet rounds recently (http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=Z2mf8DtWWd8), is unlikely to have any effect on those who matter most: alcoholics (although the video could easily inspire codependents to intervene). Addicts need consequences, including arrest and coerced abstinence via any and every technology available.