• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Though Taylor looked nothing at all like Woods (but, hey, they all look alike, don’t they?), he was able to use a fake driver’s license and credit cards identifying him as Tiger Woods to purchase a 70-inch TV, a few stereos, and a used luxury car.

Then somebody finally figured out he wasn’t Tiger Woods, and he was arrested and tried for theft and perjury.

His sentence? TWO HUNDRED YEARS TO LIFE!

You read it right. Two hundred years to life, thanks to California’s “three-strikes” law, which says that upon a third criminal conviction, you’re put away for life. To date, no corporate executive has been sent away for life after being caught three times polluting a river or ripping off its customers. In America, we reserve that special treatment for those who happen to be poor or African-American or fail to contribute to one of our fine political parties.

Of course, sometimes the justice system, ever the steamroller, is so hell-bent on punishing the havenots it doesn’t care who it locks up, guilty or not.

Kerry Sanders, the youngest child of nine, suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. By the age of twenty-seven he had fought the demons in his mind for over seven years and had been in and out of mental institutions for much of that time. Sometimes, when he went off his medication, he would end up on the streets of Los Angeles, as he did one day in October 1993.

While sleeping on a bench outside the USC Medical Center, Kerry was arrested for trespassing. But Kerry’s luck turned worse when a routine warrant check showed that one Robert Sanders, a career criminal, had escaped five weeks earlier from a New York State prison, where he was serving time for attempting to kill a man over cocaine in 1990.

Of course, Kerry Sanders of California wasn’t Robert Sanders of New York. But I guess “Kerry” and “Robert” are close enough, and California and New York ... well, um, they’re both BIG STATES, after all....

Unfortunately for Kerry, what he did share with Robert was a birthday.

That was enough for the L.A. cop, even though the same computerized warrant search showed that Kerry Sanders had been stopped for jaywalking on a Los Angeles street in July 1993—while Robert Sanders was still in his New York prison.

No matter: Kerry Sanders was sent to New York to serve out

Robert Sanders’s sentence. He remained in the New York penitentiary for two years, while his mother searched all over Los Angeles for him. Somehow the L.A. cops failed to compare the two records—which would have revealed that their guy had the wrong fingerprints.

Kerry had only one person in the whole process who was supposed to help him—the public defender appointed to protect his interests. But this thirty-year veteran PD encouraged him not to fight extradition. The PD explained to Kerry that fighting back would only prolong his stay in the L.A. county jail before being returned to New York anyway. Apparently the PD didn’t even notice that Kerry was “slow,” much less suffering from severe mental illness. Or would it have even mattered?

The PD failed to ask basic questions. He failed to spend more than a brief few minutes with a helpless client. He never looked into whether Kerry had any family who might be contacted to assist in his defense.

The PD also failed to check the system for any pending cases, or a prior record, or his client’s financial status. He didn’t even take the time to match the description on the warrant with Kerry, much less demand a fingerprint or booking photo comparison. So what, you say? After all, both men were black; they were both the same age—they even shared a birthdate! Isn’t that good enough?

It gets worse. During the hearing to waive Kerry Sanders’ right to fight the New York extradition, he was asked to sign a form. The form read: “I, Robert Sanders, do hereby freely and voluntarily state that I am the identical Robert Sanders“—and then Kerry signed it “Kerry Sanders.”

He also drew doodles all over one copy of the waiver.

No bells? No red flags? Not for this public defender!

Finally given his chance to appear before