David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

in with the law when he was thirteen
years old for trafficking heroin. He had
recently been given a temporary release
so he could visit his pregnant wife, and
he had never returned. Did that make
sense?
The group put together a proposal. At
Reynolds’s insistence, it was short and
simple, written in laymen’s language. It
became known as the Three Strikes Law.
Anyone convicted of a second serious or
criminal offense in California, it stated,
would have to serve double the sentence
currently on the books. And anyone
convicted of a third offense—and the
definition of a third offense included
every crime imaginable—would run out
of chances entirely and serve a