Pizza Case Unlikely Focus of ‘3 Strikes’ Debate : Courts: Defense lawyer says suspect doesn’t see how what he allegedly did could send him to prison for 25 years to life. Officials back prosecution of small-time street criminal.

Jerry Dewayne Williams hardly seemed destined to become a well-known figure in the annals of American crime.

A small-time street criminal with an almost ludicrous propensity for getting caught, Williams until recently was simply an anonymous bit player in the vast criminal justice system game, a revolving-door felon who had never done anything that society thought was worth more than a short stretch in jail. None of his four felonies had ever rated even a single line of newspaper ink, or a mention on a news broadcast.

But things have changed for Williams, 27. Now, because of California’s new “three strikes” law mandating long prison terms for repeat felons, Williams is famous--or infamous--as the central figure in the so-called Three Strikes Pizza Case. He’s looking at spending 25 years to life in prison for allegedly stealing a slice of pepperoni pizza from four youngsters in Redondo Beach.

Perhaps because it revolves around something so mundane--pizza--the case has attracted widespread attention. It’s been the subject of numerous local and national newspaper, radio and television news reports. Gov. Pete Wilson and California Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren have said publicly that they support the “three strikes” prosecution in the case. A South Bay-based group called Citizens Against Crime has been formed to monitor court proceedings against Williams.

On the opposite side, the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the “three strikes” law, is looking into the case, although the group has not decided whether to take any action.

In short, Williams and that slice of pepperoni pizza have become focal points in the debate over whether California’s “three strikes” law is too Draconian, or is instead just what the doctor ordered for a society fed up with crime and criminals.

The case also has taken on racial overtones, with some people, including Williams, complaining that it would have been handled differently if not for the fact that he is black and his four young alleged victims are white--a charge the district attorney’s office vehemently denies.

“The whole city . . . sees me as this big black man who’s taken food from four small white children,” Williams, who is 6 feet 4 and weighs about 225 pounds, wrote in a letter from jail. “And it was not like that at all.”

To his friends, and to Williams himself, it seems almost impossible that the crime in question could carry such punishment.

“Life? For a piece of pizza?” says Williams’ girlfriend, Tina White, who shared a house with him in Watts. “That ain’t right. There ain’t no way that’s right.”

“He feels like this just can’t be true,” Williams’ lawyer, veteran Deputy Public Defender Arnold Lester, says of his client, who has pleaded innocent to robbery charges in the case. “He just doesn’t understand how what he allegedly did could send him to prison for 25 years to life.”

But prosecutors and supporters of the law take a different view. They say if Williams goes to prison for life it won’t be just because of the pizza, but because of his seemingly chronic inability to stop committing felonies. And despite all the publicity, prosecutors say the case against Williams actually is routine, simply one of almost 1,000 “three strikes” cases filed in Los Angeles County since the law took effect in March.

Williams, they say, deserves no sympathy.

“This case is about a robbery,” says Deputy Dist. Atty. Ralph Shapiro, who is prosecuting Williams. “It doesn’t matter whether it was pizza or anything else. Because of his past record, I believe he deserves a substantial prison sentence.”

Whether he deserves it or not, it’s clear that Williams’ already troubled life took a potentially disastrous turn for the worse one day early last month, when Shapiro scrawled three Xs at the top of the case work sheet--shorthand for “three strikes.”

According to friends, Williams grew up in Compton, one of five children in a single-parent home. A later probation report said he started smoking marijuana at the age of 16 and at age 19 began using cocaine. He worked briefly as a laborer and as a kitchen helper at a convalescent home. A rap sheet lists arrests in Seattle, where he lived for a time, for vandalism, burglary and carrying an unregistered firearm.

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Williams’ first felony conviction came at the age of 19, when he pleaded guilty to drug possession and was sentenced to three years probation. The strikes started piling up rapidly after that.

In September, 1986, Williams and a friend jumped a Compton man, knocked him down, punched him and stole his wallet with $1,100 in it. Williams--who gave police the alias Kevin Dewayne Williamson, the first of several a.k.a.’s--later said the man had ripped off his friend in a drug deal. The man was not seriously hurt. Williams pleaded guilty to robbery and was sentenced to one year in County Jail and five years probation.

In March, 1989, sheriff’s deputies in Lynwood saw Williams riding a stolen 1988 Honda motorcycle. When they pulled him over, they said Williams told them, “I know the bike is stolen, but I didn’t steal it.” He pleaded guilty to joy riding, a felony, and served 225 days in County Jail, with another three years probation.

In July, 1992, Williams was in trouble again, this time for chasing a 22-year-old man in Compton, knocking him down and trying to pull a gold chain from his neck. In what friends say was a more or less typical Williams maneuver, he did it right in front of a Compton police sergeant, who arrested him.

“He always got caught whatever he did,” says an acquaintance who asked that her name not be used. “It was always just dumb things, dumb, dumb.”

Williams pleaded guilty to attempted robbery, and was sentenced to 16 months in state prison. He served eight months and was paroled from the California Correctional Center in Susanville in April, 1993.

Williams seemed to be getting things together after his prison term. His parole officer later testified that “he was doing good,” reporting to the parole office regularly and testing clean for drugs. He was released from parole early, in April, because of his good behavior.

“He was working every day,” says White, his girlfriend, displaying Williams’ pay stubs from a temporary employment agency. “He was a good guy. We were going to get married on his birthday in October.”

Then on July 30, Williams and five friends, including Tina White and her sister Tynia White, decided to go to the beach.

According to police, shortly before dusk Williams and his friends were walking near the Redondo Beach Pier, in an area of small food shops, when Williams and another man approached four children who were sitting at an outside table in front of Adam’s Pizza. The children, Michael Adkins, 12, his brother Terry, then 15, both of El Segundo, and their out-of-state cousins Kevin and Amy Callahan, ages 10 and 7, were eating an extra large New York-style pepperoni pizza.

At a preliminary hearing last month, Michael testified that Williams’ companion “said they were starving and asked us for a piece of pizza. . . . My brother said, ‘Sorry, no you can’t,’ and they asked again.” Then, Michael testified, “they reached out, grabbed it and said, ‘Thanks.’ ”

“Were you scared?” prosecutor Shapiro asked him.

“Yes . . . because they were much bigger than me,” Michael testified.

Williams’ friends tell a different story.

“They were just fooling around, you know,” Tynia White says. “Jerry asked the boy if he could have a piece of pizza and the kid said yes. Jerry took the pizza, but then he threw it away because he doesn’t eat pork.”

“If he eats pork he faints,” Tina White added.

After the men walked away from the table, the pizza shop manager called police.

“If I knew he (Williams) would go for life, maybe I would have thought twice about calling the police,” the manager, who declined to be identified by name, said later. “I don’t know if he should go for life. But he needs to be taught a lesson not to do this to children. They were small kids, and he’s a big guy. They were scared.”

After police arrived, Michael Adkins pointed out Williams at a nearby video arcade; the other man was not identified. Tynia White says the group offered to pay for the pizza, but the police arrested Williams anyway. According to prosecutor Shapiro, Williams gave police the alias Lafayette Eddie Hicks. Williams is being held in County Jail in lieu of $100,000 bail.

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Defense attorney Lester believes the whole thing was blown out of proportion--perhaps because of race.

“I have a feeling if it had been a white person, or if it was a black guy and black kids in Compton, the police would have treated the matter differently,” Lester says.

Prosecutors are given some leeway in handling “three strikes” cases. For example, in another recent South Bay case a man accused of stealing some underwear for his daughter was charged with breaking the “three strikes” law because he had been convicted of felonies in 1975 and 1979. Because the prior convictions were so old, however, prosecutors dropped one of the strikes in a plea bargain. The man still got 32 months in prison under the “second strike” provision of the law, which defense attorneys say was far more than he would have gotten before “three strikes” was passed.

But that is the exception, Shapiro says. When Redondo Beach police brought the Williams case to his office shortly after the arrest, he says, it was an easy “three strikes” call.

“It has been the district attorney’s position that (‘three strikes’) is the law and we’re going to enforce it,” Shapiro said. “The facts of the case indicated it was a robbery, which is a felony; he had serious priors, he had just gotten off parole. . . . It was almost automatic. . . . I put three Xs at the top of the work sheet.”

After a preliminary hearing, a Torrance judge ordered Williams held for trial on two counts of second-degree robbery and one count of felony petty theft with a prior. A pretrial hearing in the case is scheduled for Thursday.