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A história do Leandro Andrade:
Leandro Andrade was given not one but two sentences of 25 years-to-life for stealing nine children's videotapes, including "Snow White," "Cinderella" and "Free Willie 2."
“I’m not a killer. I'm not a rapist. I'm really not a bad person once you get to know me,” says Leandro Andrade, a 44-year-old convict who may make legal history. “Do I deserve to be locked up for the rest of my life, because a certain judge feels that's what he deserves?”
Under his sentence, Andrade will be 87 before being eligible for parole.
“I understand what I did was wrong. I knew I had to be punished. Now, you have to pay for that crime, for the mistakes that you make in life," says Andrade. "But I wasn’t aware that for that little mistake I was going to receive a 25-to-life sentence.”
Was it a just sentence? “For a petty theft, it carries, maximum three years,” says Andrade. “That’s what I believe I should be doing for petty theft ... because I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t hurt anybody."
In November 1995, Andrade, a U.S. Army veteran and lifelong heroin addict, says he wanted videotapes as Christmas gifts for his nieces. So he went to a Kmart, and a couple of weeks later, visited another Kmart store down the road. He tried to steal the videos and was caught by security guards at both stores.
“On the way out of the store, they approached me. And they asked me if I had any concealed tapes,” he says. “And I said yes. I didn’t argue with them. I didn’t fight with them or anything else.”