The California high court has eased on its implementation of the "three strikes" law. The criminal sentencing law requires the doubling of a sentence if the defendant had a prior conviction and the person was given life if there were two such convictions.

The Sacramento Bee reported the court made its ruling in the case of Darlene Vargas, who was sentence to 25-years to life for burglary on the basis of two prior felony convictions.
 
The two felonies -- robbery and carjacking -- stemmed from the same act of taking the car by force. The judges unanimously decided that two felony convictions from a single act couldn't be counted as separate strikes under the law.

KPCC reported that the ruling threw out Vargas' original sentence of 25 years to life, and her case was sent back for resentencing.

"The voting public would reasonably have understood the 'Three Strikes' baseball metaphor to mean that a person would have three chances -- three swings of the bat if you will -- before the harshest penalty could be imposed," Associate Justice Kathryn Werdegar wrote in the court's opinion. "The public also would have understood that no one can be called for two strikes on just one swing."

In 2012 there was a ballot initiative that amended the law requiring the third strike to be a violent felony. Prior to that the third strike could have been as small as a misdemeanor, which meant people could be sentenced to life for crimes like shoplifting.

Supporters of the measure argued that it is a waste of money to fill prisons with people who are not a threat to society, and it is expensive for tax payers and often works against helping felons rehabilitate.

The law was enacted in 1994 as part of a wave of tough on crime laws across the country to help combat high crime rates and returning inmates.

Reuters reported that Melanie Dorian, the criminal defense lawyer in the Vargas case, said that the ruling could lead to the release of numerous inmates who had been convicted of more than one felony for the same act.

"This is a great case because it clarifies what the 'Three Strikes' law means," Dorian said. "A single criminal act that can technically violate two statutes of the penal code cannot later be used as two strikes."