Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Public humiliation for mail thief. 9th Circuit gets it right for once!


A man who was convicted in 2003 of stealing mail was sentenced to, among other things, 100 hours of standing outside the post office wearing a sandwich board that says “I have stolen mail. This is my punishment.” It doesn’t look like the Supreme Court will be overturning the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on this one.

The Chicago Sun Times is reporting:

The Supreme Court is making sure that Shawn Gementera will be wearing his punishment for stealing mail. Literally.

The high court rejected Gementera's appeal Monday of a lower court's sentence that the San Francisco resident stand outside a post office for 100 hours wearing a sandwich board that reads: ''I have stolen mail. This is my punishment.''

In February 2003, Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco added the sandwich-board penalty to Gementera's sentence of two months in prison and three years of supervised release.

And needless to say Gementera’s attorney petitioned the Supreme Court to throw out the sentence, claiming that it is cruel and unusual. I’ll give him this… It is unusual!

Craig DeLuz

Visit The Home of Uncommon Sense...
www.craigdeluz.com

No comments: