http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...unhappy_robber
Robber Upset He Didn't Get Life Sentence
Fri May 7, 6:26 PM ET Add Strange News - AP to My Yahoo!
YAKIMA, Wash. - Ruben Ramirez, 45, was disappointed when he got an 8 1/2-year sentence for bank robbery.
Ramirez told a teller at the Wells Fargo Bank he had a gun, then sat by the front door and waited for police to arrive Aug. 23. He carried out his plan in order to be assured of a life prison term under the state's "three strikes" law.
He invited the teller to sound the alarm after showing her he didn't have a gun after all, and later said that to police and lawyers.
He also said he was broke, unable to find work and had recently moved to Yakima from California after his wife divorced him. As it turned out, he had been away from California for 17 years.
On Thursday, it turned out his prison term calculations were off, too.
Shortly before he was set to be sentenced in Yakima County Superior Court, lawyers in the case learned that because of a legal quirk, his three armed robbery convictions in California in the early 1980s counted for only one strike in Washington state.
It seems Ramirez was convicted of the second and third offenses in California before he was found guilty in the first. To trigger Washington's "three strikes" provision, an offender must be convicted of violent crimes on separate occasions before a new strike is counted.
So he still has one to go, and that bothered Judge Susan L. Hahn, who sentenced him to the top of the standard range.
"If you want to go prison this bad, what will you do in the future?" Hahn asked.
Ramirez did not reply.