Those who applaud the indictment of the Oklahoma Three are often astonishingly blithe about the penalty that awaits Paul Jacob, Susan Johnson and Rick Carpenter for promoting a Taxpayer Bill of Rights initiative in Oklahoma.

If Attorney General Drew Edmondson’s fictitious indictment results in conviction, these three good persons could suffer up to ten years in prison. “Oh good,” the Edmondsonians sometimes say. “It’s about time” that “this kind of thing [i.e., participation in democracy]” were “properly punished.” Because if it isn’t, then—what? Voters in Oklahoma and other citizen initiative states might be able to vote on ballot questions of wide interest without fear of political repression?

Ten years in prison.

The case should be dismissed immediately. But suppose it isn’t? Suppose there’s a conviction?

In that event we must hope that the phrase “up to” in “up to ten years” has some relevance and that Jacob, Johnson and Carpenter escape with a much more lenient sentence than could be imposed. But suppose these three do get socked with the full ten years for their “crime” of supporting a citizen initiative in Oklahoma?

Ten years is a long time. What kind of crime might get you that kind of time?

Well, violent assault often does the trick. In 1883, Isaac Bryan was convicted in Goldsborough, North Carolina of the murder of Thomas Saunders and sentenced to ten years in prison. A century later Darnell Collins was sentenced to twenty years for armed robbery and ended up serving ten years; after which he went on a killing spree and was himself killed by police. On July 29, 2006, a judge added ten years to a Alejandro Santiago’s sentence for an unrelated drug conviction, after hearing prosecutors argue that Santiago had been involved in the killing of a Chicago store owner named Jesus Colon. In May of 2007, Keith Diamond and Miguel Gonzalez were sentenced to ten years for kidnapping Derek Johnson. In October of this year, a 17-year-old Winnipeg boy was convicted to six years in prison and four years probation for his role in the killing of Roxanne Fernando. Last week, Virgil Lee Jackson, a Missouri bail bondsman, was sentenced to ten years for plotting to murder a business rival.

Armed robbery. Kidnapping. Conspiracy to commit murder. Actual murder. And then there’s…organizing a citizen initiative drive while failing to anticipate how the state government would retroactively re-interpret its own unconstitutional regulations governing petition circulators.

As they say in the “Sesame Street” song, one of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn’t belong.

Ten years in prison. For fostering democracy. In America. Some enemies of citizen initiative rights seem to be quite sanguine, even gleeful, about the prospect of such an outcome for the Oklahoma Three. Why?