Court shoots down man's joke (Man imprisoned for practical joke)

Charlotte Observer ^ | 5/4/02 | nichole monroe bell

[visagoth]

I bet this guy will show up on the yearly Darwin list pretty soon.

[Rodney King]

What an idiot.

[hellinahandcart]

Yes, wives find it endearing when husbands try to scare the crap out of them, and the cops just love it when they're called to a murder scene and the ketchup-covered corpse leaps up and says "I was kidding!"

This guy's too stupid for anything but jail.

[camle]

what a CLymer! what a .. a ..DEMOCRAT!

[Own Drummer]

"I bet this guy will show up on the yearly Darwin list pretty soon."

Not soon enough, unfortunately. The time to jump up and say "Surprise!" would have been right before she dialed 911... but not for this moron.

[11th Earl of Mar]

The closest I ever came to doing something like this was when I was working on the roof one winter day. My wife left for the store and I put my coat, hat, gloves and boots in the snow, face down, and went inside to watch a football game.

My wife was not amused.

[Preech1]

Tha wife should have finished the job when she found him...

[LarryLied]

Bet the homies in the joint are going to be very amused by this story.

Poor guy, most everyone else can make some pretense of innocence but he seems to be stuck. Why could his excuse be? I was eating a burger, cleaning my gun, ketchup spilled on my shirt and when I reach down to clean it up, the gun, which I didn't know was loaded, went off. In shock, I fell to the floor.

[hellinahandcart]

The only way I can see him getting out of this was if he'd set off a firecracker instead of firing the rifle. Then he wouldn't have "possessed" the rifle. He had felony convictions, he should have known better.

Not too bright...

[Anamensis]

My wife was not amused.

Would it make you feel any better to know that you just amused the heck out of me?! I just keep imagining this Wiley-E.-Coyote-flattened-by-boulder look that you must have created, and laughing my head off.

[hellinahandcart]

Now THAT was mean. LOL.

[DoughtyOne]

Look, this guy isn't the sharpest tack in the tool box, but fifteen years sounds a wee bit much to me. Fifteen years? Five more years of supervised parole?

This is double what the average person serves for murder.

[DonQ]

Oh yeah, that's a million laughs.

[ZinGirl]

He must be a hoot at parties.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

There is justice after all. What a maroon.

[hellinahandcart]

I'm guessing it was a "three-strikes" situation, since they mention that his previous felony convictions led to mandatory sentencing this time around.

[Pagey]

"Because previous felony convictions for violent crimes prohibited him from having a gun..."

Some people, continually get out of the wrong side of the bed......others do things like this.He must've really wanted to be locked up.Imagine,here was an ex-con,who had his freedom,and now has to go to Prison for 15 years!
And to think that I thought Mike Tyson was stupid! LOL

[Steve0113]

Man imprisoned for practical joke

That headline is grossly misleading. He was imprisoned for illegal firearm possession, which happened to be his third felony conviction, hence the long sentence. The practical joke was a freebie.

[coloradan]

This is double what the average person serves for murder.

This was a Project Exile prosecution - felons in possession of a firearm. Another common-sense, just do it for the children, reasonable, modest, feel-good gun law doing its thing: 15 years mandatory no parole sentence for firearms possession. If you think the sentence is harsh for the crime - thank the NRA, they support Project Exile, which hands down sentences like this all the time. (Very few Exile convictions are of violent criminals having actually committed violent crimes with guns.)

[chiefqc]

I bet he got all A,s when he was in school.