Given my libertarian views, it’s not suprising that I don’t entirely enjoy reading blogs by prosecutors. Even those who aren’t rabid law-and-order true believers still rub me the wrong way on certain subjects. For example, I’ve been reading Mark Pryor’s D.A. Confidential blog for years. He’s a good writer — see his Holding Hands With Evil series for a taste — and he seems like a genuinely good guy.
A couple of days ago, in what he undoubtedly sees as a lighthearted post, he offered this riddle:
First, a riddle: two men are consuming marijuana when a policeman walks into the room. The man smoking the joint is arrested and charged with a misdemeanor, but the man eating it is charged with a felony. Why?
(I’ll post my answer – hey, there may be more than one correct answer, right? – over the weekend, but it has nothing to do with amounts or weights.)
Ooh! Ooh! I know! I know! Pick me! Pick me!
My answer is: Because self-righteous moral scolds have callously decided to inflict cruel punishment on people whose personal behavior offends their narrowminded sensibilities.
Sigh.
Just to be clear, this is not an attack on Mark Pryor. He’s just using this to point out a quirk in the law, as a commenting prosecutor explains:
Answer: The possession of marijuna is a misdemeanor. The guy eating the marijuana tampered with evidence–a third degree felony…I have discussed the irony of this situation on a number of occasions.
Of course, this is only amusing until someone gets locked in a cage for no good reason. Which is, in a nutshell, my general reaction to a lot of prosecutor blogs.
Leave a Reply