Juror Balks at ‘Strike-Three’ Conviction

In her anguished essay about sending an admitted armed robber and heroin addict to life imprisonment (“A Juror Balks at Calling ‘Strike Three,’ ” Commentary, March 28), Katrina Dewey ignores the anguish of the criminal’s victims--and those he most likely would have victimized in the future, were he not in jail.

Those victims she cannot look in the eye, as she did the accused. Nor will she ever meet the citizens saved from crime by the deterrent effect of “three strikes.” Justice is imperfect in this country, but it is also many-sided.

DAVID S. WILSON

Los Angeles

* Is Dewey pulling our leg or what?

I cannot believe that she feels guilty for finding Victor Pacheco guilty of his third strike, thus sentencing him to life in prison. She even adds that he was guilty of two additional strikes and she still doesn’t get it.

The three-strikes law was made for criminals like Pacheco. It protects society from harm by habitual criminals. Would Dewey have felt more justified if Pacheco had killed someone with the weapons he used in previous robberies? Why does it have to come to that?

Pacheco had his chance. He knew about the law, knew he had two strikes (as well as two “freebies”) and chose to commit another crime. He ended up where he belongs.

MARTHA HARTLEY

Irvine

* I agree with Dewey that the three-strikes law is immoral, in meting out a punishment that is grossly disproportionate to the crime that was committed. What I do not understand is why, feeling as she did, Dewey “cast the 12th vote” to send a man away for life.

Was she unaware that a juror always has the right to vote his or her conscience, regardless of the judge’s instructions? This tradition of “jury nullification” is an appropriate response to an immoral law. Just as antislavery Northerners refused to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act in the 1800s, jurors, judges and prosecutors who believe in justice should refuse to enforce the three-strikes law today.

DAVID HERSHEY-WEBB

Los Angeles