CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
September 5, 2011 | By Jack Leonard, Times Staff Writer
Scott Andrew Hove tucked a spool of welding wire and work gloves inside his waistband and headed for the Home Depot store's exit without paying. As he made his way out of the Lake Elsinore store, employees stopped Hove and found the stolen merchandise hidden under his sweat shirt. "I was stupid," the certified welder told them. The items were worth only $20.94. But the theft cost Hove, 45, a life prison sentence recently, when a Riverside County judge ordered him to spend 29 years to life behind bars under California's three-strikes law. His sentence points to the legal debate that continues to rage 17 years after voters approved the law: whether its tough sentences sometimes far exceed the crimes.