The man in this story, “Cruel and Unusual Punishment” at http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/304-justice/16673-focus-cruel-and-unusual-punishment, reminds me of a defendant in Los Angeles when I worked for the courts there.
He stood trial and was convicted for the crime of stealing a couple slices of pizza, and, like Curtis Wilkerson, fell victim to California’s 3-Strikes law that sent him to prison for 25 years to life.
For stealing some pizza.
And we wonder why this country’s prisons are busting at the seams, how the private-prison system has become so obscenely profitable and why states are going broke as they lay out $20,000-$30,000 a year to house and another $12,000 a year to provide healthcare for each and every one of the thousands of miscreants like Curtis Wilkerson and L.A.’s pizza pie thief.
Anatomy of a Trial blog 