Courting Trouble

There is a game that some lawyers and defendants play in court. I like to call it "Just How Stupid Do I Think the Judge and Jury Are?"

My work used to have me in courtrooms all over Baltimore County, and now and then in the City, for additional fun. I saw cases involving everything from a young woman who stuffed a new purse with all sorts of cosmetics and tried to pay for just the purse, to people who left the scene of an auto accident they just caused, to auto hijackings.

But I rarely saw a guilty person take the stand!

Everyone had an excuse or an alibi.  Someone else put all that makeup and hair goo in the purse while she was shopping for bread and peanut butter to make sandwiches for the homeless! 

The driver who slammed into another car and drove on home had to do so because he "suffered an act of involuntary defecation!" 

And the guy who shoved a woman out from the behind the wheel of her car at a gas station did so because he owned the same make/model/color of car, and he thought SHE was stealing HIS car! Even though he was walking down Liberty Road that day and could provide no evidence of ever owning a white Ford Bronco.

If you're keeping score, none of these explanations held any sway with the judge, or in the third case, the jury, although in that carjacking, the felon's attorney told me his client was just as happy to be convicted, because going to prison would enable him to spend more time with his father and his uncle, both of whom were current guests of the State of Maryland.

So it came as no surprise to me that the results of a case we talked about here last May were equally negative. This was the stupid stunt pulled by two young men in Anne Arundel County, who thought that a nice way to spend an evening would be to hang a noose from the flagpole at the Crofton Middle School.

One of these hooligans is one Conner Prout, who was sentenced to 18 months of probation including 120 hours of community service for his role. Prout pleaded guilty to a hate crime in AA County Circuit Court.

The community service will be overseen and organized by the county's NAACP chapter, so the hope is that young Prout will learn a lesson or two about the history of lynchings in this nation.

And it seems like he needs to learn that lesson, because, well, here was his story: He told Judge J. Michael Wachs that he and his co-galoot hung the noose, NOT to threaten or intimidate students and community members of Crofton, but... 

"At the time of the incident, the rope was seen as nothing except representing suicide," Prout said. In court, he said this, after being sworn in and everything.

Not made clear was whether he was talking his own suicide, or was recommending it to others. Just as bad, either way.

He says he didn't find out that there was such a thing as a racial context to a noose until AFTER the whole incident.  

There's not a suitable picture for this story, but
who doesn't like to see a basket of kitties?

"I find it hard to believe the connotation of the noose had to do with suicide. I just don’t believe it," Judge Wachs said. He went on to say that this was a racist act that caused "significant pain to the community."

Then, of course, his attorney, who would want me to mention his name, spoke on his client's behalf. He said Prout is immature, and  that his mother died, and he was seeing a counselor but stopped seeing her "too soon," and he really didn't understand the implications of what he did, but now he does.

On October 19, the other goon involved, John Havermann, 19, of Pasadena, will face a judge. Havermann's lawyer also claims that there was no racial component to the noose, but we'll have to wait until the 19th to see if he pulls the "suicide" angle.

I'm guessing not. It hasn't worked so far.