"She made me do it, your honor"

I wrote this last week, so it could be yesterday's news by now.  The jury was going to deliberate the fate of a guy who was hired by the wife of a gas station owner to kill her husband.  The cops have a videotaped confession.  With a video camera in the room, Walter Bishop waived his Miranda rights and sang like Mariah Carey.

He is being defended by public defender Harun Shabazz, who says Bishop was the victim of a "game" played by the police.  Shabazz insists that Bishop didn't know he was on camera, and that he did not know his confession gave prosecutors what they needed to pursue the death penalty.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Walter Bishop, the one man in America who didn't figure that telling the cops he killed a guy in a cheesy murder-for-hire plot could get him in trouble. In the old movies, there was a bright light shining in the murderer's face, and cops like Broderick Crawford wearing snap-brim hats and shoulder holsters would hold a phone book up to his shoulders and smack him around, all the while hollering, "So you killed Thompson, see, and then Cunningham had to go because he knew too much, see, and then DiGregorio got in the way and he wound up wearing cement shoes, see?  We know you did it, so now talk. Talk. Talk talk talk talk talk!"


But in the videotape with our local gendarmes, the guy is just sitting there, with a can of Coke, weaving his tale of murder for money.


Also, his lawyer is complaining that the filling station owner's wife, Karla Porter, put a lot of pressure on Bishop, and that's why he finally did it.  Great defense strategy.  I hope the judge, the honorable Mickey Norman, says, "If everyone else was going to jump off a roof, would your client do it too?"


I'm here to announce that I enjoy my freedom, so no matter how much you cajole, wheedle, beg, urge or exhort, I will not commit any crime for you.  I will sing "Ragg Mopp" for free, though, even though many say that is a crime in itself.