The Baumes law was an anti-crime statute adopted by New York State in 1926. Description The laws are two amendments (Chap. 457, Laws 1926, sections 1941 & 1943) to the Laws of New York. Written by and named after Senator Caleb H. Baumes, the chairman of the New York State Crime Commission, the sections called for the automatic life imprisonment of any criminal convicted of more than three separate felonies, without regard to the nature of the offense or any attendant circumstances. It also permitted longer sentences for first-time offenders, denied parole to inmates who had used firearms in the commission of their crimes, and mandated that prisoners could not begin receiving credit for good behavior for parole purposes until they had served the minimum sentence for their offense. By 1930, twenty-three states had adopted similar standards, all of which were commonly referred to as "Baumes laws". The law was made possible by the growing adoption and acceptance of fingerprinting as a method of identification by police departments, which began to replace anthropometry as the technique of choice in the 1920s. Law enforcement officials felt that the new methods enabled them to more efficiently and reliably distinguish recalcitrant criminals from reformed ones. By 1931, two hundred four-time offenders in New York had been given life sentences under the Baumes law. Legal challenges A serious challenge to the Baumes law concerned the case of a shoplifter named Ruth St. Clair, who was arrested for the fourth time after stealing items from a department store in December 1929. St. Clair had three prior convictions of a similar nature in 1920, 1924, and 1926, for stealing items such as coats and dresses from stores. When she was convicted of the 1929 offense, the Baumes law imposed a life sentence, the first given to a woman since its enactment. St. Clair's case attracted much media attention, but the United States Supreme Court upheld her sentence in 1930. St. Clair eventually spent eight years in prison, before her sentence was commuted to time served. Effects of the Baumes law While the Baumes law seemed to remove authority from judges and parole boards by mandating sentences, they gradually began to work around it through the increased use of plea bargains. In cases where a life sentence would have been unjust, prosecutors became more amenable to accused parties' guilty pleas to misdemeanor charges, which would not trigger