On May 20, 1981, Diane Graddick masterminded a plot in which 20-year-old Wally Slayton was lured to a trash dump near New Ellenton, S.C., tied to the steering wheel of his car, and doused with gasoline. The gasoline ignited as Wally tried to free himself. Graddick and a male companion left him lying on the ground.

Hours later, she returned and found him still alive and begging for help. She directed her male companion, John Brooks, to finish him off. Brooks placed a cloth over Wally’s head and clubbed him to death with a two-by-four.

Graddick was found guilty of first-degree murder, and was sentenced to prison for the rest of her natural life. She spent part of that sentence as a housekeeper for prisons director Jon Ozmint, who called her “a model prisoner and a woman of Christian character.” She was paroled last spring at the age of 51.

In 1994, Larry Gibson was accused of firing a gun into an occupied pickup during a beer-joint brawl in Brookside, Ala., just north of Birmingham. He was charged with attempted murder. There was no injury that couldn’t be treated with a Band-Aid, and one could argue that there was no one present who was sober enough to identify the shooter in the pre-midnight darkness. One of Larry’s sons later admitted that it was he, not his father, who fired the gun, and that his father took the rap for him.

Larry Gibson, a poorly educated small-engine repairman, was sentenced to life without parole. He spent a dozen years in a maximum-security prison before being released in 2007. He was dying of cancer.

Wally Slayton was my sister’s son. His “crime” was pinching Graddick in the buttocks and later scuffling with her in the yard of the mobile home where a drugs-and-alcohol party was in progress. He deserved a slap in the face, maybe a kick in the butt, but not an agonizing death.

There was no conclusive evidence that Graddick struck the match that ignited the gasoline. And Wally died from blows to the head, not from the burns he received. But there was no doubt that Diane Graddick was directly responsible for his death.

Larry Gibson blundered into Alabama’s “three-strikes-you’re-out” law. During his youth, he had been convicted of several non-violent offenses, for which he received probation. After the beer-joint brawl, he was given an opportunity to plead guilty to a lesser charge. He spurned the offer, not realizing that if he was convicted it would be his third strike, and the sentence would be life without parole. The law tied the judge’s hands, but even the prosecuting attorney agreed that the sentence was draconian, bordering on cruel and unusual punishment.

I bring up these two cases because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that life without parole is a cruel and unusual punishment when applied to a juvenile in a non-homicide case. I wonder why the ruling applies only to juveniles.

The “three-strikes-you’re-out” laws were passed by legislatures who were high on law-and-order tonic. They believed the legislation would put them squarely in the corner of law enforcement and relieve them of any suggestion that they were “soft on crime.”

Unfortunately, as the cases of Larry and Diane showed, there is no “one-size-fits-all” when it comes to criminal justice.

Under terms of her sentence, Graddick was eligible for parole after 20 years. Wally’s family consistently opposed parole, believing she received adequate leniency when the death penalty was forgone. But a parole board, viewing her offense through the haze of 30 years, concluded that parole would be appropriate for her. Graddick was young and wild when she committed her offense, and she now is middle-aged and, presumably, sedated by 30 years behind bars. She probably is no danger to the public.

The American Law Institute, an organization composed of judges, lawyers and legal scholars, has recommended that life without parole be imposed only “when this sanction is the sole alternative to a death sentence.” This is not the practice at present. In Georgia, for example, 40 percent of those who received the sentence over a 10-year period had been convicted of kidnapping, armed robbery, sex crimes, drug crimes and even shoplifting. It seems to me that a simple life sentence would be adequate punishment for these non-homicidal offenses. The average person sentenced to life has been serving nearly 30 years before being released on parole.

While I have no moral compunction against the death sentence as a punishment for heinous crimes, I have a practical objection to it: If someone is executed by mistake, there is no way to correct the error. If someone is sentenced to life without parole, and exonerating evidence later surfaces, the sentence can be undone.

The judge who sentenced Larry Gibson probably would have handed down a lighter sentence had not the law required him to do what he did.

In the case of Diane Graddick, I’m too close to the situation to render an objective opinion. I believe that the sorrow she caused was disproportionate to the time she served. Wally’s younger brother was profoundly affected by his sibling’s murder and died a premature death of natural causes. His mother had to endure the anguish of losing two of her three children before their time. There’s no parole from her anguish.

If you’re going to impose a sentence of life without parole, I’d say Graddick’s case would appear to meet the American Law Institute’s criterion. Larry Gibson’s would not.

Readers may write Owens at 315 Lakeforest Circle, Anderson SC 29625, or email him at WadesDixieco@AOL.com.