A major backer who helped persuade the Legislature to pass the new drug policy was Norm Maleng, a conservative Republican who has been the King County prosecutor in Seattle since 1979 and was a sponsor of a 1980's law that doubled sentences for drug convictions.
All three judges increased the amount of jail time given to striking teachers, in some cases doubling sentences to two weeks.
California's 13-year-old three-strikes law, which doubles sentences for second-time felons, and reserves life sentences for even nonviolent third-felony offenders like Mr. Foroutan, has also increased the prison population by thousands.
So Judge Holman retracted his offer to suspend, then doubled her sentence.
But a federal trial judge in Washington State more than doubled that sentence to 21 years and 10 months under the Armed Career Criminal Act.
In 2007 a Saudi appeal court doubled a sentence of 90 lashes to be given to a teenager because she had been in a car with a male friend when they were abducted and gang-raped by seven men.
"The sums involved are unusually large, and the details are extraordinarily serious, meriting the double sentence," the court said, according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency.
The law, approved by voters in 1994, requires a double sentence for offenders with one previous criminal conviction and 25 years-to-life for those with two previous strikes.
Petty thieves and most drug offenders are presumed to merit a double sentence, the penalty for a second strike, unless their previous record includes a hard-core crime like murder, armed robbery, sexual assault or possession of large quantities of drugs.
This is clearly a double sentence: less money come in, yet we have additional expenditures".
