Court overturns life sentence for stealing $15

A prison in California
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

A Louisiana appeals court this week tossed out a sentence of life without parole given to a man named Walter Johnson for stealing $15 from a bait vehicle set up by police to catch petty thieves.

Johnson was given a life sentence because of a "three strikes" sentencing law in his state. He has three prior convictions for nonviolent crimes — two drug charges and one burglary — so his fourth conviction escalated what would otherwise have been a minor punishment to a mandatory minimum of life in prison.

The "sentence imposed on Mr. Johnson is 'legal' in the sense that it falls within the statutory range," wrote Judge Paul Bonin in the appeals decision. "Despite its legality, however, we find the life-without-parole sentence imposed upon Mr. Johnson unconstitutionally excessive" given the "triviality" of Johnson's crime and the lack of violence in his criminal history.

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Johnson's successful appeal did not overturn the habitual offender law which mandated his life sentence, meaning it may still be applied to others in similar circumstances.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.