Rerun: they used to call it "necking"

I have nothing against tattoos, in case you were asking.  Adorn your skin as you see fit, but all I ask is that you ignore my guffaw at "TOUCH OF CLASS" tramp stamps. Meanwhile, I've always planned to have "I'm the only hell my mother ever raised" emblazoned on my bicep, so who am I to judge?

However.  Teardrop tattoos just below the eyes generally mean something not-so-great about the wearer.  Either the person has been in jail, or has been involved in a murder, or has lost a loved one in a violent manner: those are the reasons behind most tattletale teardrop tats.

Looks good on you, though!

Add to that the word MURDER in ALL CAPS around your neck, and you have the visual presented by Mr Jeffrey Wade Chapman, who is about to stand trial in Barton County, Kansas for the 2011 murder of Damon Galliart.  Represented by Attorney Kurt Kerns, Chapman is appealing to the court out there to allow the jail where he currently sits in stir to send over a tattoo artist to remove the MURDER word from his neck.

So, there it is: A man on trial for murder who once went to a tattoo guy to have the word MURDER etched into his body now does not want a jury to see the word MURDER on his body, for fear that they will convict him of murder because of it.

The State of Kansas says they don't care what he does about it, knowing full well that local sheriff Brian Bellendir knows a) that under state law, a tattoo artist can only practice at a licensed facility, b) the local hoosegow is not a licensed facility and c) there is no way on God's green earth that the county will take Chapman on a field trip to get his neck cleared up.

No one has been executed in Kansas since 1965, although the state still does maintain a death penalty law, with the prescribed method being lethal injection.  There was a time when all executions in The Sunflower State were by hanging, leading me - a a death penalty opponent but also an opponent of murder and having MURDER tattooed on one's neck - to suggest that if Chapman has any sense of humor, he will have "PLACE ROPE HERE" written on the back of his neck.