KENDALL COOKE Charge: Petty theft with a prior conviction of theft Value of stolen goods: $1.14 (one can of beer) Kendall Cooke laughs easily. He has an engaging, joking relationship with the sheriff's deputies at the San Diego County Jail, where he is currently incarcerated. He is similarly at ease with a stranger ushered in to interview him, and soon he is relating proudly that he was recently crowned chess champion of his jail unit. But a shadow passes over the face of the handsome, thoughtful 31-year-old when he begins to discuss his old neighborhood and his relationship with his ex-wife. And his eyes shift sadly to the floor when he talks of the heavy legal charges that could keep him behind bars for more than 25 years. As Cooke tells it, he and his "ex," Beverly Lockhart, argued all through the evening of May 3, 1994. The couple's recent reunification was not going well, and it was becoming apparent to Cooke that they would soon break up again. Kendall Cooke had been out of prison since 1990. He initially returned to his boyhood neighborhood of Inglewood. He relates that he was "hanging out" too much with his old "home boys" there, edging closer to the same self-destructive rut he had been in prior to prison. Cooke, who had married and divorced Beverly Lockhart in the mid-1980s, never really expected the couple's relationship to work again because, as he put it, "we'd been split up for six years. Things weren't the same; the same feelings were not there." But he badly wanted to get out of Inglewood. Even though he had been out of prison for 2 1/2 years without getting rearrested, he knew there was only trouble for him in his old neighborhood. Cooke and his mother, Dortha Ashley, literally got down on their knees and prayed, trying to decide what he should do. Ashley urged Cooke to give it another try with Lockhart. Cooke received permission from his parole officer to transfer to San Diego County, where Lockhart lived, for the final months of his parole. He moved in the fall of 1993. Things went well for him at first. He obtained a job with Volt Temporary Services. Vicky Morriman of Volt described the young man as a "super, super nice guy, nothing but polite." He began attending church every Sunday as well. Pastor David Statler said that Kendall first entered the Skyline Wesleyan Church on Easter Sunday morning. "Kendall had lived the tough, L.A. street life all his life. He was seeking a way out -- a better way of life -- through the church," he said. The Rev. Statler reported that Kendall immediately began to attend church services every Sunday. "Kendall was trying to start life with a clean sheet of paper. He was learning to live on the right side of life," he said. Even Cooke's attempted reconciliation with his former wife started out well. But the relationship was souring rapidly, and that night, says Cooke, Lockhart had threatened that if the couple broke up, she would contact his parole officer and have his parole revoked. Cooke left his home in the early morning hours of May 4, sleepless due to his nightlong argument with Lockhart and penniless for having spent his meager paycheck. "I just needed a beer," he said. At approximately 7:30 a.m., he entered the 7-Eleven store at 807 East 8th Street in National City. He left with one, 16-ounce can of Coors Beer, valued at $1.14. Cooke hadn't paid for the beer. Store owner Alvin McKenzie caught up with Cooke in the parking lot and persuaded him to come back into the store. There, Cooke admitted to stealing the beer and calmly waited for the police to arrive to arrest him. After being read his rights by the police, he again confessed to his theft. All told, Cooke's apprehension by McKenzie and his repeat confession to 7-Eleven staff and police took about an hour. But the sentence for that single $1.14 crime could keep keep him behind bars for life. Kendall James Cooke was born to Dortha and pastor James Cooke on Oct. 25, 1962. Cooke's father left Dortha when the boy was 7 and his brother, Darnell, was 5. Dortha worked as a meat wrapper at Boy's Market and tried to raise her two sons as a single mother in Inglewood. When Kendall was 11, she met and married Eddie Ashley, a licensed construction worker. By all accounts, Ashley was an alcoholic who was extremely violent to Dortha and the boys. When Kendall Cooke was 15, Ashley badly beat him with an extension chord and ordered him out of the family's home. Kendall had accidentally damaged his stepfather's car while vacuuming it. Young Kendall was on his own from that day forward. "Kendall was a good child, but he went through a lot with his stepfather," Dortha admitted. "When he got kicked out of the house, that's when he started getting into trouble." "I don't know why my momma married him [Ashley]," Cooke said, "but I think she had to stay with him because he had a good job and she just couldn't make it by herself." At the age of 18, Kendall Cooke found himself surviving in homeless hotels by doing odd jobs and acting as a "runner" -- or go-between -- on drug deals. One day, Cooke reports, he decided to skip out on a drug customer and keep his money without delivering any drugs to the man. To Cooke's surprise, the man turned him in and accused him of stealing the money through "fear and intimidation" -- the legal definition of strong-arm robbery. The man was unharmed, and no weapon was used or brandished. Noting that the alleged victim was uninjured and still wearing several gold chains following the reported robbery, Cooke relates that the police who arrested him were skeptical. Cooke was known in the neighborhood, and robbery was not his "M.O." Still, the police had a complaining witness, and a robbery arrest was made. Cooke's public defender was confident that they would beat the charge of robbery at trial, for it was the alleged victim's word against Cooke's. But the 18-year-old would have to wait in jail for two months until his trial. The district attorney was offering immediate probation in exchange for a guilty plea to robbery. Cooke was, after all, guilty of a misdemeanor theft (although probably not a felony robbery), and an immediate release was better than gambling at a trial two months later. He took the deal. Cooke's second "strike" involved even less forethought than his first. Needing a ride to his girlfriend's house in the San Fernando Valley from his apartment in Inglewood, Cooke spotted a car outside a convenience store. He reports that he impulsively jumped in and drove away as the car's owners were exiting the vehicle. He again pleaded guilty, and for this, his second robbery conviction, he was sentenced to five years in prison. Reactions to Cooke's current prospect of a life sentence are varied. Parole agent Jeffrey Thomas, who had supervised him, considered Cooke "not particularly dangerous" and noted that he would probably have received a four-to-six-month parole violation had he been arrested prior to the effective date of the "three strikes" law. Thomas had some harsh words to say about "three strikes" and the politicians who passed it: I think that the "three strikes" law should have been developed for guys who were violent offenders. Stealing a can of beer is not a violent offense. Most of the people who re-offend aren't violent offenders. The criminal act Cooke committed is de-escalating, not escalating. He hasn't gone from where he was to killing someone or attempting to kill someone. [The "three strikes" law] is not a good way to go. It's a safe way to go, if I was a politician, meaning that I'm covering my ass in showing the public I attempted to do something. Alvin McKenzie, owner of the 7-Eleven Store from which Cooke stole the beer, disagreed. Angry that "these guys take money out of my pocket," McKenzie felt that "there is no maximum sentence a thief should get." He continued that some of the prisons he visited in Spain, in which prisoners had "no toilets and no beds," would be an improvement for California, whose prisons he considers "too cushy." He also volunteered that sanctions such as Singapore's caning would have merit locally. "Horrible, just horrible," says Volt's Vicky Morriman when she contemplates Cooke's threatened life sentence. "I thought it [the "three strikes" law] was only for violent offenders." "Kendall once saw himself as a criminal, and now he sees himself as someone who is loved by Christ," says Rev. Statler. "I'm praying that he is let out of jail so that he has a chance to prove himself." "I think the law is stupid," offers Cooke. "I could see if I murdered someone or hit a lady upside the head, but not for a can of beer." In the meantime, the battle continues to rage inside the courtroom over Cooke's case -- a debate that features arguments repeated in courthouses throughout California. At Cooke's preliminary hearing on June 29, 1994, Deputy Public Defender Jack Hochman asked the court to consider the Legislature's intent in passing the law. He recalled the debate in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where the "three-strikes" bill's sponsor, Assemblyman Bill Jones, "assures all members of the [Senate Judiciary] Committee this law will not be applied in cases such as this, nor in cases of stealing a bicycle, against someone having possession of a gram of cocaine or for forging a check for $10." Hochman continued: They further discussed it would not be used, in general, for thefts over $400. They don't even get to petty thefts. They are saying it is targeted for much more serious felonies. ... [W]hat happens to the defendant before the court is the court's concern now, and I would ask the court to exercise its power. Mr. Cooke has been in jail for 66 days, I believe -- 90 days, with good-time credit. He was doing good in his life. He was working. I have confirmed his job. He was going to church. He had a bad night with his girlfriend and stayed up all night, and when he ran out of money, stole a beer, which I think was an impulsive act, after completing parole and, generally speaking, turned his life around. But in response, San Diego Deputy District Attorney Peter F. Murray argued that the law is quite clear, and that the judge has no choice but to sentence Cooke to life: Let me make clear for the record. Our opposition [to reducing Cooke's punishment] stems from what we read as we go through this law known as "three strikes," the 667 Penal Code section. What we find is that in granting the motion to reduce this charge, the court is, no matter how we look at it, going directly in contravention to the primacy language provided in Penal Code section 667, the "three strikes" law. That "three strikes" law has provided that it is to apply notwithstanding any other law, and we can argue all day long that that may seem inappropriate, but that is, in fact, the language as it currently stands, and as the elected Legislature has passed and made into law earlier this year. For a person like Mr. Cooke, he may have only stolen one can of beer on this day, but Mr. Cooke has been before the courts, and, specifically, as we offered to prove, with P.C. 211 [robbery] convictions in the State of California, Los Angeles County. He is the type of person that, whether we agree or not, is exactly encompassed with the provisions of "three strikes." The People of this State, through their elected representatives, have passed this law. If we don't agree with it, quite frankly, that is irrelevant, because it is the law, and the law says that when you have those kind of priors and you commit a subsequent felony ... he is subject to those enhancements. Murray said the theft of a can of beer may seem de minimus -- of little importance -- but "I don't see anything in 667 [the "three strikes" law] suggesting a relatively de minimus crime will be treated differently." The judge, Roy B. Cazares, ruled that the "three strikes" law is unconstitutional as it applies to Kendall Cooke's case. That decision is currently being appealed by the San Diego County district attorney's office. .