If you think judges don’t ever get creative with punishments they hand out, then listen
to this.
In 2012 it was reported that a man in Florida made the mistake no man should ever make,
and that was forgetting to wish his wife a happy birthday.
Now, that’s not really a crime and more a marital no no, but things soon escalated.
The unhappy wife and forgetful husband got into a fight, and at some point the man pushed
his wife and raised his hands to her, but he didn’t actually hit her.
It did result, though, in a charge for domestic violence.
The judge, one John “Jay” Hurley, said this to the man.
You’re not going to prison, but what you have to do after you leave this court is dress
smart, buy her some flowers, and take your wife bowling and then to Red Lobster.
That’s strange indeed, but it’s not the first time a judge has looked at a case and
punished a person in a unique way.
Shame on you We might take the case of a 32-year old woman
from Cleveland who broke the law in 2012.
Her crime was reckless driving, and that involved mounting the curb in her car to get around
a school bus while the kids were disembarking.
That could have ended up badly if she’d hit the kids, but no one was hurt.
The woman was arrested though and ended up in front of Judge Pinkey Carr.
She pleaded guilty and had her license suspended and also had to pay $250 in court costs.
That’s not weird in itself, but the judge ordered another kind of punishment closely
related to punishments of the past.
That is public shaming.
She told the woman that she had to stand on a junction at rush hour close to where she
had committed her crime.
She had to stand there for two days during that rush hour holding up a sign that read,
“Only an idiot would drive on the sidewalk to avoid a school bus.”
Facing the music Back in 2008 a student at Urbana University
in Ohio, USA, named Andrew Vactor thought it would be cool to sit in his car blasting
rap music at a volume that annoyed everyone nearby.
Well, that’s called 'disrupting the peace', and the judge first thought about fining the
young man $150.
This was a broke student, and it seems the judge took pity on him and reduced the fine
to just $35.
There was a catch, though, and that was if he paid the reduced fine he also had to spend
20 hours listening to classical music, such as the works of Beethoven, Bach and Chopin.
News reports tell us this man couldn’t even get through more than 15 minutes and instead
paid the higher fine.
He was watched apparently by a probation officer, and he just couldn’t take it.
“I didn't have the time to deal with that,” the man said.
“I just decided to pay the fine.”
Church, a lot of Church This was actually a serious situation and
involved a 17-year old kid who’d been out in his car and had a crash.
In 2012 the Oklahoma resident hit someone in his truck and a 16-year old occupant of
the other vehicle died.
The kid had also had a drink, but he wasn’t over the limit.
The thing was, because he was not old enough to drink at that time he pleaded guilty to
a charge of manslaughter, even though it seemed the crash was an accident and no one was at
fault.
Then the family of the deceased stepped in and did something courageous.
They said it was just an accident and this kid doesn’t need prison time.
The sister of the dead boy told the media, “We don’t need to see two lives wasted
for a mistake.”
The judge then thought about what he was going to do, and came up with a list of punishments
that didn’t involve incarceration.
Some of them were what you might expect, such as wearing a drug and alcohol bracelet, having
urine tests, having to graduate from school, but the strangest thing he was told he must
do was attend church every weekend for no less than 10 years.
Amen.
House arrest This is house arrest with a difference.
So, there was this landlord in Cleveland in the 2000s who had a bunch of properties, only
those properties were what you might call very rundown.
In fact, the landlord was breaking a bunch of building laws.
The people had been living in slums, and this greedy landlord with scores of properties
was put before the judge.
The sentence was not so lenient, with the landlord according to Associated Press being
fined $100,000.
He also had to give all the rental money towards fixtures of the houses until they were good
to live in.
But get this, the judge also said that the man could no longer live in his fancy house
and had to live in one of his own slums for at least six months.
He would be watched, too, to see if he stayed anywhere else.
Like in the last story, the judge also ordered that the man attend church.
An eye for and eye No one likes a person who mistreats animals,
and in 2004 in Houston it was revealed that a 28-year old former stable worker had adopted
two horses she had worked with.
Only the woman discovered that when you actually own horses it’s a lot of hard work and costs
a fair bit of money.
She decided to just leave them outside her trailer and didn’t take care of them at
all.
One horse was so sick it had to be killed and the other was adopted.
She was charged with animal cruelty and did actually go to prison for 30 days, but we
are telling you this because of what the judge said she had to do there.
For her first three days he ordered that she be mistreated, too, and she was only allowed
bread and water for three days.
The judge later said, “She's going to get more than her horses got.”
Sentenced to social media A Cincinnati judge in 2012 found himself in
front of a couple, two people that had once been man and wife but had split up.
The thing is, after the break the man said some nasty things about his ex on Facebook.
This was in contempt of a protective order and the man was looking at 60 days behind
bars.
But the judge said that wasn’t necessary and instead told the man that for 30 days
when you leave this court you have to post something nice about your wife on Facebook.
Apparently, though, on the 26th day of saying nice things the man gave up and said what
he had been made to do was in violation of his free speech.
Sweet child of mine We now head over to the country of Spain.
Most kids have left the family home by the time they are in their early twenties and
have found a job, or they at least have a job and pay something towards the rent.
But a 25-year old in Spain didn’t see it that way.
In fact, in 2011 he took his parents to court in an attempt to sue them for not giving him
an allowance.
He did this after they had said, look kid, it’s time to grow up.
We are stopping your pocket money.
Well, the man was asking for $400 a month so it was hardly pennies.
The man thought he was probably clever because he had a law degree.
You might not be surprised to hear that the judge didn’t see eye-to-eye with the disgruntled
man and instead of demanding the parents start paying his allowance again he told the man
that he had 30 days to get out of the house.
See no evil Apparently there’s a judge in Ohio named
Michael A. Cicconetti who is famous for his unusual sentencing.
In fact, he once told the press, “Can't stone 'em anymore.
If they learn from it, that's what justice is all about.”
Yes, he’s all about teaching people lessons.
Again, the crime happened in Cleveland.
The story goes that an 18-year old had taken it upon himself to steal something from an
adult entertainment store.
He didn’t get away with it and this judge said you have two choices.
Those were either spend 30 days behind bars or do what I tell you to do.
The kid took the second option and was told he had to sit outside that store wearing a
blindfold and holding up a sign saying, “See no evil.”
While this is public shaming again in Cleveland, it seems it’s not the same judge as before.
Poor Kitties But to give you more of a feel as to what
this judge does, there was another strange case this time in 2005.
This time a young woman had decided she didn’t want her kittens.
She had 35 of them, and instead of looking after them she just dumped them all in park.
She didn’t away with it, although in the end 9 of those cute furry things went to kitten
heaven.
Judge Cicconetti wasn’t happy, and again offered the person choices, but this time
three.
She could either do jail time, donate to her Humane Society or spend a night alone in the
woods.
She took the third option.
ABC news reported that this is what the judge had said to the woman, “How would you like
to be dumped off at a metro park late at night, spend the night listening to the coyotes,
listening to the raccoons around you in the dark night, and sit out there in the cold
not knowing where you're going to get your next meal, not knowing when you are going
to be rescued?”
There are many more stories about this judge but we will move on from him, but will tell
you he once ordered a man to wear a chicken suit in public and on another occasion ordered
two young men to walk around Cleveland with a donkey after they vandalized a nativity
scene.
In yet another case this judge ordered that a woman walk 30 miles in 48 hours because
she had not paid a cab fare.
Extreme public shaming This happened in Texas in 2010 and involved
a rather unethical couple who had stolen $255,000 from a fund that had raised money for victims
of crimes.
Judge Kevin Fine rightly saw this as abhorrent, but he didn’t send the couple to jail for
long.
Instead, they had to pay all the money back, had to do community service, but they must
be humiliated too said the judge.
And this was not just a couple of days of public shaming.
This couple had to plant a sign right outside their house that read, “The occupants of
this residence, Daniel and Eloise Mireles, are convicted thieves.”
It had to stay for years.
But get this, for a whopping 6 years the couple had to stand on a busy intersection for 5
hours every weekend holding a sign that read, “I am a thief.”
Now that’s a lot of shaming hours.
Rogue cops If you know anything about Thailand you’ll
know that it has its fair share of rogue police, and that’s an understatement.
They’ve been known to take advantage of tourists and have done much worse.
But in 2007 the higher ups had an idea concerning how to let people know a cop is a bad apple
on the tree.
The transgressions weren’t bad enough to be told to hand in their badge, or in Thailand’s
case, get moved to another city, but these bad cops were forced to walk around for weeks
wearing massive Hello Kitty armbands on their uniform.
They not only looked very silly, but now everyone knew this was a rogue cop.
Can you add any more to this list?
Do you think these people got off easy or was their punishment worse?
Tell us in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other video Most Horrifying Punishments in the History
of Mankind!
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See you next time.