San Francisco resentencing files: bat-attack three-striker seeks path to freedom after stabbing inmate behind bars
A three-strike felon, 27 years into a 40-years-to-life sentence imposed after he beat his girlfriend unconscious with a bat while screaming he was going to kill her, will appear in a San Francisco courtroom this month as part of an enterprising bid to secure ‘resentencing’ to a lower term.
Jesse Shavers, 65, told his victim during the July 1997 attack that he had nothing to lose because he would go to prison for life. The woman’s head, shoulder, leg and arm were repeatedly struck.
A San Francisco jury found him guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, inflicting corporal injury on a cohabitant, making threats, false imprisonment and other offenses after a 1999 trial.
Jurors could not reach a verdict on a charge of attempted murder.
Because Shavers had already amassed two strikes, this offense – his third strike – led Judge Anne Bouliane to impose a 40-years-to-life term. His earlier strikes were incurred as a result of a double robbery of women outside a city nightclub in August 1984.
Deputy public defender Evan Franzel says Shavers should be freed because his brain was not fully developed when he committed his earlier strike offenses at 23, and he was unfairly treated because he is black and blacks are vastly overrepresented among those serving three-strike sentences.
In any event, he says, his earlier two strikes were unjust because they arose from a single crime.
“Shavers’ commitment offense was serious and violent and warranted a corresponding sentence,” wrote Franzel in his request to the court for resentencing. “At the same time, the two strike priors from a single event at age 23 years with only a drug possession offense in the 14 intervening years deserve appropriate consideration.”
He is also in poor health, the attorney says.
Franzel went on to showcase his client’s “recent positive prison record,” despite Shavers having received an additional four-year sentence for stabbing a fellow prisoner in 2020, and pointed to the anger management course he was taking.
“There is nothing to indicate that Shavers’ age and time in custody have reduced his risk of future violence,” wrote San Francisco prosecutor James Thompson in an opposition submitted to the court.
He also drew attention to the inmate’s disciplinary record in prison.
“On August 25 2020 at about 7:41am,” Thompson wrote, “Shavers was captured on video attacking another inmate with a makeshift stabbing weapon in the dayroom.”
“The video showed Shavers approach another inmate and pull a weapon from his pocket. Shavers then stabbed the other inmate in the torso with his weapon.”
He had also been found with a prison shank in 2019.
Because Shavers still poses an unreasonable risk of future violence, recalling his sentence is not in the interests of justice, he concluded.
Shavers will appear September 24 before Judge Brendan Conroy at San Francisco’s Hall of Justice for further proceedings in the resentencing exercise that has rumbled on since January.
Conroy’s 2024 resentencing of Edward Kennedy – given life without parole for the 1996 torture killing of 15-year-old Sergio Crockett – was branded a “travesty” by district attorney Brooke Jenkins. The new sentence of life with parole made Kennedy eligible for compassionate release, and he left prison earlier this year.
Please support our work by making a donation
To be notified of new stories enter your email or follow us on X
