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

Reynolds’s crusade. It highlighted
everything that was wrong with Three
Strikes. The law could not distinguish
between pizza thieves and murderers.
But Mike Reynolds never understood
why the Williams case provoked so
much public outrage. To him, Williams
had violated a fundamental principle: he
had repeatedly broken society’s rules
and thereby forfeited his right to
freedom. It was as simple as that.
“Look,” Reynolds told me, “those that
are actually going down on third strikes,
they got there the old-fashioned way—
they earned it.” What mattered to him
was that the law made an example of
repeat offenders. “Every time the media
has done a story on some idiot that steals