In a dissent, Chief Justice Bernette Johnson compared Fair Wayne Bryant's sentence to "Pig Laws" in the years after Reconstruction, which enacted harsh penalties for theft and other petty crimes.
www.npr.org
there isn't a separate legal thread, and while I usually put law stuff in the politics thread, I think this can go here.
to be clear, while this is the cop thread, I'm quite certain the cops that arrested him wouldn't have guessed he'd be up for a life sentence for this, & the term "pig laws" referenced in the article isn't about that kind of pig, but I'm putting it here bc it relates back to the entire legal system being fucked.