It needed a bit of tidying up

NOT long ago, a bomb blew off the front of the county courthouse in Vallejo, California. The bomber was a man with two felony convictions who, it was said, intended to avoid a third trial by demolishing the courthouse where his trial was to take place. Criminals in California have acquired the habit of thinking in threes. Yet the law that obsesses them—the “three-strikes” law, which mandates a sentence of 25 years or life in prison for anybody convicted of a third felony—may be softening a little. The California Supreme Court has now ruled that judges presiding over such cases may exercise their own judgment in deciding whether the third crime before them, or indeed one of the two crimes committed previously, is a misdemeanour rather than a felony.