Posted on 05/06/2002 11:48:11 AM PDT by visagoth
Charlotte Observer
A macabre practical joke has landed a Chester County man 15 years in federal prison without parole.
In May 2000, Jeffrey Price Barber, 44, tried to play a joke on his wife by firing a round from a .22-caliber rifle, smearing ketchup on his face and body, then lying on the floor in a bedroom of his house, according to a statement released Friday by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Columbia.
His wife, after hearing the shot and seeing her husband covered in what she thought was blood, called 911. A sheriff's deputy who arrived at the scene found Barber and the rifle with one spent round of ammunition. Investigators later found several other guns and ammunition at Barber's home, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Because previous felony convictions for violent crimes prohibited him from having a gun, Barber was charged with illegally possessing the .22-caliber rifle, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. The previous convictions also meant Barber faced a mandatory sentence of 15 years to life. Barber was sentenced in federal court in Columbia on Thursday.
Barber, who pleaded guilty to the offense, must serve five years of supervised release after getting out of jail.
This guy's too stupid for anything but jail.
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.
My wife was not amused.
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.
Not too bright...
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.
This is double what the average person serves for murder.
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
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.
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.)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.