The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday on California's Three-Strikes laws. Sasha Abramsky, a Soros Justice Media Fellow and the author of the recently published book, "Hard Time Blues: How Politics Built a Prison Nation," has an excellent op-ed piece in Sunday's Washington Times on the topic:

The Court will be deciding whether a life sentence for shoplifting is a violation of the 8th Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Two inmate's cases are before the court: "One, a repeat-burglar named Leandro Andrade struck out for stealing $153.54 worth of videotapes from two K marts; the other, Gary Ewing, who had prior convictions for robbery and burglary struck out for stealing three golf clubs."

Sasha's opinion (with which we agree):

"Tragically, however, as more and more states moved toward the imposition of catch-all mandatory minimum sentences and Three Strikes laws, so more and more Americans, overwhelmingly from poor backgrounds, disproportionately either African-American or Latino, have been subjected to exactly the kind of double-indemnity punishments, and disproportionately severe sentences, handed down to Ewing and to Andrade. Most of the most than 7,000 men and women now serving life sentences in California prisons on Three Strikes convictions, have been convicted on nonviolent, relatively minor crimes, which in and of themselves would generally warrant at most a few years behind bars. Many of these individuals were convicted of their first two "strikes" before the Three Strikes law was even on the statute books."

"California's Three Strikes law, crafted amidst rising public hysteria about a supposed breakdown in societal mores, ought never to have been passed. That it was, and that California's political leaders have used it to prove their tough-on-crime credentials to fearful electors, is a true stain on our country's history. It is past time for that stain to be removed. The Supreme Court has that chance. Let's see if they have the guts to strike out Three Strikes."