In March, juries in SmithCounty and Matagorda Countysentenced Henry Wooten and Melvin Johnson III to 35 years and 60 years inprison, respectively, for possessing small amounts of drugs. Though small,under Texaslaw the amounts were still large enough to allow jurors to infer intent todistribute. Wooten, 54, had 4.6 ounces of marijuana (which brings the samepenalty as having 5 pounds) and Johnson had 1.3 grams of crack cocaine (abouthalf the weight of a U.S. dime). To top it all off, Wooten's prosecutor hadasked the jury for a sentence of 99 years.
Least Competent Police
- Embarrassing: (1) In March, while on duty during the opening day of thejail at the new Adair County Judicial Center in Columbia, Ky., sheriff's deputyCharles Wright accidentally locked himself in a cell and then tried to shootopen the lock. He was fired. (2) A Collier County, Fla., sheriff's deputysuffered a broken ankle when he and a colleague accidentally locked wheels whilepatrolling in Napleson their Segways.
- It wasn't pretty, but sheriff's deputies in Montcalm County, Mich.,got their man on March 3. Mark McCuaig, in court on an earlier traffic charge,became unruly and escaped from two different sets of officers (despite beingTasered). Another court officer tried to stop him outside, but McCuaig againgot loose (despite being Maced). He locked himself inside a van as officerssurrounded it. Authorities broke a window on the van and Tasered McCuaig again,yet they couldn't stop him from driving off. After a high-speed chase, statetroopers disabled the escape vehicle's tires with "stop sticks" butcouldn't apprehend McCuaig before he reached his home, where he barricadedhimself. Officers surrounded the house, and four of them (plus a police dog)entered, but McCuaig escaped and got into another vehicle. Finally, afteranother chase, he was forced off the road, Tasered a third time and subdued.
Inexplicable
- In February, the entertainment manager at ThorpePark in Surrey, England,announced a contest seeking foul-smelling urine. The park has introduced alive-action horror maze based on scenes from the Saw movie series and decided that it was missing a "signaturestench [to] really push the boundaries" of disgustingness. Manager LauraSinclair suggested that the pungency of submissions could be enhanced byconsuming foods with garlic and/or asparagus and offered a prize of theequivalent of about $750 for the winning sample of urine.
- The Times of London reported in February that at least sixlocal government councils have been so avid about enforcing street-parkingrules that they have issued tickets to vehicles registered to their owngovernments. In at least two recent incidents (involving Islington and Kingston), the councilspursued collection all the way to traffic court (though only in the latter casedid the adjudicator actually require the council to hand over a fine toitself).
- In January, Aretha Brown, 66, who has lived in the same house inCallahan, Fla., (pop. 962) for 30 years, suddenly had her access to the roadblocked by CSX railroad cars. The only way she could leave her yard was tocrawl between railroad cars. Railroad tracks had always been in place, but therailway only began storing train cars on them this year. CSX told The Florida Times-Union that it wouldsoon build Brown an access road to the street.
Sub-“Zero Tolerance”
Seventh-grader Rachael Greer was suspendedfrom River Valley Middle School in Jefferson, Ind., in February, even though itappears that she did exactly what parents and the school would want kids to do(by just saying no to drugs). When a classmate handed her a prescription pillin gym class, she immediately handed it right back. Nonetheless, an assistantprincipal, after investigating the incident, suspended her for five daysbecause she had touched the pill. (The assistant principal expressed regret butsaid it is school policy.)
A News of the Weird Classic
Once an oddity, but now increasingly common,are reports of prisoners storing larger and larger inventories of valuables intheir rectums. However, one accounting from a jail in Amarillo, Texas,might still be a record. A man was arrested in November 2000 with $12,300inside of his body (80 $100 bills, two $50s, and money orders worth $4,200).The cash record before that was believed to be held by a Florida State Prisoninmate who had $2,000 (although he also had room for six handcuff keys and anassortment of razor and hacksaw blades in a pouch).
© 2010 Chuck Shepherd
