By Sarah Pye
Staff Writer
I recently encountered an amusing article in the weekend edition of USA Today while searching for the crossword puzzle (blast that boring news stuff, give me a game) and attempting to choke down one of those hard little airline rolls that they call “breakfast” but were really manufactured sometime during the Eisenhower administration.
The article entitled “Texas man sentenced to 30 nights in a doghouse” caught my eye because 1) Texans are just generally amusing, especially when they are not heavily armed, and 2) frankly, I’m no good at the crossword anyhow, and the overwhelming sense of defeat is really starting to get to me. (Or perhaps that was the roll, one can never really tell.)
The ingenious sentencing of Curtis Robin Jr., accused of forcing his 11-year-old stepson to sleep in a doghouse, really caught my eye. (It also got my mind off trying to think of a six-letter word meaning “Fonz friend” — if you can think of one, please e-mail me).
Apparently, the good folks in Orange, Texas, have instituted a “let the punishment fit the crime” style of justice, wherein they, at least in the case of Robin, tailor sentences that let criminals really get a taste of their own medicine.
Robin reportedly accepted a plea bargain wherein he traded 30 days in jail for 30 nights in the (very literal) doghouse, a state-supplied 2-by-3-foot structure placed (no doubt to the utter delight of his neighbors) in Robin’s own front yard.
Also, according to the article, in honor of Robin’s first night in his new home, “rain was forecast.”
Sadly, the article did not say how authorities in Orange planned to monitor Robin’s sleeping habits, though I should think that it might involve some sort of shock collar.
This style of criminal justice is just the sort of thing we need to start instituting world-wide.
You may have heard other reports of cities with strict noise ordinances forcing offenders to sit nightly in a small room listening to really bad, really loud music. We’re talking bagpipes and accordions, or possibly even –– horrors –– Neil Diamond. No, no. Anything but that!
It’s an excellent crime-fighting theory, and by no means should it stop there.
For instance, those individuals, and you know who you are, who insist on spitting your chewing gum onto the sidewalk, where I will inevitably step on it if it is anywhere within a 50-mile radius of my intended path — for you I propose this:
For each wad of gum you carelessly discard, you should have to scrape a minimum of 20 wads off of my personal footwear, because, trust me, this is how often I manage to step in the stuff. It’s like a talent.
Oh, and I am also in favor of the death penalty for couples who insist on making out with each other on public forms of transportation. But that is another story entirely.
And the people who think up these blasted crossword puzzles, well, they should just be shot. Or perhaps they should just be forced to supply me with the name of Sally Field’s 1992 Oscar-winning role.
— Support the death penalty for Ralph the Lounge Mouse?E-mail Sarah Pye at sarah.pye@pepperdine.edu.
March 27, 2003
