Update: Tom Mistrot Paroled

April, 1976

Two years ago, with no family or close friends and facing life in the Texas state penitentiary, Tom Mistrot's future looked pretty bleak. His three crimes--two coin-machine burglaries and a marijuana offense--had been reduced to misdemeanors by the state legislature without affecting his 1968 conviction as a habitual criminal or the sentence that went with it. Neither he nor prison attorneys could get more than polite evasions from state officials, if they responded at all. Finally, at the urgin...