Baudelia Silva leans forward, crying, gesturing, pleading, the words tumbling out one on top of the other, some in English, some in Spanish. She is trying to get someone to understand what she has told so many officials over the years: Her son, Duane, has “a head sickness … loco … he is mentally wrong.” In prison, she says, “what will happen, how are they going to control it … ?” She does not believe he will come out of prison alive. She wants to explain personally to the judge. She is sure that if she can make the judge understand, the judge would not sentence her son to prison for 25 years to life.

But because Duane — by all accounts a nonviolent, even passive young man — has just been convicted of his “third strike,” and because Tulare County prosecutors have been insisting on imposing the “three strikes” penalty, the judge may have little choice.

The “head sickness” is not just Mrs. Silva’s diagnosis. In the more measured and less compelling words of a psychological evaluation performed a year and a half ago, Duane Silva’s test results on a Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale showed “a Full Scale IQ of 71, placing present intellectual functioning within the low borderline range.” The report seconded an earlier diagnosis of “Schizoaffective Disorder, Bipolar; with an Axis II diagnosis of Mild Mental Retardation (IQ 70).”…

Duane Silva’s criminal “career,” all of it nonviolent, betrays the same random senselessness as other inexplicable incidents in his life.