Bordelon

A week out on parole after years of incarceration precipitated by an inartful bank robbery, defendant Horace Bordelon returned to the same bank and robbed it again ineptly and was quickly caught allegedly because he wanted to return to prison. That in fact became his defense: Having trouble coping with the pressures of life outside prison, Bordelon robbed the bank to cause himself to be returned to the routine of prison life. His defense was supported by expert testimony on “institutionalization,” a dependence on life in an institutional setting that made living outside the institution akin to adjusting to a new culture. But the jury did not buy it.

Defendant was convicted by the jury of second degree robbery (Pen. Code, § 211), and found by the jury to have previously been convicted of second degree robbery, and of battery by a prisoner on a nonconfined person (Pen. Code, § 4501.5). He was sentenced to 11 years in prison, representing the midterm of three years for the robbery conviction, doubled as a second strike, plus five years for a prior serious felony conviction (Pen. Code, § 667, subd. (a)(1)).

Insofar as we can tell, institutionalization has never before been…