Monkey spanking and butt slapping: your government at work
Pardon the pun, but this is nuts:
A Broward County jail inmate accused of masturbating in his cell while a female deputy saw him from another room was convicted of indecent exposure Wednesday.
[…]
[Terry Lee] Alexander, 20, was sitting on his bunk alone in his cell masturbating in November when a female deputy, monitoring his cell from a nearby control room, took offense. [Emphasis added.]
For his “crime,” the judge sentenced Mr. Alexander to 60 days in the county jail. No word yet on whether the jurors face prosecution:
The case drew snickers in the courtroom, especially during jury selection, when prospective jurors were quizzed about their own habits.
Defense attorney Kathleen McHugh faced 17 prospective jurors and asked point-blank who among them had never done that particular sex act.
No hands went up.
Well, imagine that.
Meanwhile, two boys in Oregon face prosecution for the admittedly crude and juvenile, but hardly felonious, act of butt slapping:
The two boys tore down the hall of Patton Middle School after lunch, swatting the bottoms of girls as they ran — what some kids later said was a common form of greeting.
But bottom-slapping is against policy in McMinnville Public Schools. So a teacher’s aide sent the gawky seventh-graders to the office, where the vice principal and a police officer stationed at the school soon interrogated them.
After hours of interviews with students the day of the February incident, the officer read the boys their Miranda rights and hauled them off in handcuffs to juvenile jail, where they spent the next five days.
Now, Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison, both 13, face the prospect of 10 years in juvenile detention and a lifetime on the sex offender registry in a case that poses a fundamental question: When is horseplay a crime?
Here’s a better question: How is it that the adults in this case — a teacher’s aide, a vice principal, a police officer and a prosecutor — remain in positions of authority following the loss of their minds?
Incidentally, “[t]wo of the girls identified as victims have recanted, saying they felt pressured and gave false statements to interrogators.”
(HT: Volokh Conspiracy and Opinion Journal)