Judges gone crazy: Bizarre, hilarious court sentences

While it is the norm for the litigants to cause drama in court, some crazy judges have offered peculiar sentences A judge once ordered the entire courtroom arrested after a cell phone rang and the culprit refused to come forward In another bizarre judgement, two men were sentenced to either 60 days in jail or walking for an hour in town while dressed as women

Following the dramatic antics in the Raila Odinga vs President Uhuru Kenyatta presidential election petition and the landmark ruling that nullified the latter’s re-election, a huge chunk of Kenyans are currently preoccupied with courts and sentences.

A wise man once said that if you want justice you’ll have to wait for the next world because in this one, you have the law. And the law can be an unpredictable force, particularly if the judge has a few crazy ideas of his own when it comes to meting out punishment.

Unlike in Kenya where it’s litigants who only treat courts to drama and all kinds of antics, in some countries it’s the judges and magistrates who seem to be crazy, that is, if some of the judgements they make is anything to go by.

From subjecting litigants to tit for tat treatment, like an American judge who asked a man who had been pepper-sprayed in the eyes by an assailant to give her a similar treatment in court, to asking criminals to listen to boring music for days, crazy judges around the world have put their peculiar stamp on sentencing over the years.

Vasectomy for serial offender with 7 children from 6 women

A Virginia man who has fathered children with several women has agreed to get a vasectomy to reduce his prison term by up to five years in a child endangerment case that has evoked the country’s dark history of forced sterilisation.

When Jessie Lee Herald fled the scene of a car crash with his injured three-year-old son, authorities reached a breaking point with a man who had been in and out of jail and fathered seven children with six women.

A Shenandoah County prosecutor proposed a plea deal that would not only send the 27-year-old to prison, but would also require him to do something to ensure he would not have another child: Get a vasectomy.

Herald agreed to the punishment in exchange for some charges being dropped, touching off a debate about whether the novel punishment is appropriate or has set a dubious precedent that echoes Virginia’s dark history of 1920s, which led to forcible sterilisation of mentally ill and mentally handicapped people.

Shenandoah County Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Ilona White said she came up with the idea after looking at Herald’s criminal past, which included numerous child upkeep lawsuits.

Boring, irritating music as punishment

Tired of doling out ineffective punishments for people playing their music too loudly, a judge in the small town of Fort Lupton in the US decided to fight fire with fire.

Instead of the usual fine, Judge Paul Sacco now orders repeat offenders to listen to his music selections. Sacco’s eclectic collection included easy-listening maestro Barry Manilow and nursery rhymes.

He gives people who blast their car stereos too loud a taste of their own medicine by forcing them to listen to blaring music for an hour.

The music is designed to be as annoying and boring as possible to the offenders, whose music of choice tends to be hip-hop and rock ‘n roll: Barry Manilow, Dolly Parton, classical music, nursery rhymes, TV theme songs and maybe a show tune or two.

Crooks asked to dress like women

Still in the US, an Ohio Judge, David Hostetler gave Jason Householder, 23, and John Stockum, 21, two options of punishment for throwing beer bottles at a woman in a car: 60 days in jail or an hour of walking through a local town in dresses, wigs and make up.

They chose the dresses. The punishment was meant to teach the young men to respect women, but it may have just taught them how to walk in heels.

Judge orders entire courtroom arrested over noise

Later claiming to have been under stress in his personal life, Judge Robert Restaino from Niagara Falls, New York went ballistic one day in 2005 when he heard a cell phone ring in his courtroom.

When the offender didn’t step forward to confess, Restaino pulled the equivalent of a grade school teacher making the class put their heads on their desks and arrested the entire courtroom.

Forty-six people were thrown in jail. Thirty-two of them posted bail and the rest were shackled and bused to another facility. Restaino ordered them released later that day, but the damage had been done; the judge was relieved of his position.

If you thought that was crazy, a Judge made headlines in Canada after he forbid a crook from having a girlfriend. Arrested for attacking his ex-girlfriend, Steven Cranley, 24, from Ontario in Canada was declared by doctors to have difficulty coping with rejection and was thus ordered by Judge Rhys Morgan to refrain from “a romantic relationship of an intimate nature with a female person” for three years.

During that time, he received counselling, but half-way through his sentence, he again assaulted a female acquaintance (a different one) and was sentenced to two years in jail.

Man sentenced to mandatory church attendance

Running out of patience with long-time criminal Pachino Hill, 29, Judge Christine Dalton of Iowa, US sentenced the crook to eight weeks of church in 2008, along with counselling and probation.

This, however, didn’t seem to have worked because within 10 months, he was on trial again, this time for manslaughter in relation to a home invasion, not to mention his involvement in a separate stabbing incident.

This, however, is not the first time an American Judge has handed out such a crazy sentence. Last December, while driving under the influence of alcohol, Tyler Alfred caused an accident, killing his 16-year-old friend with whom he was joyriding.

Alfred, then a teen, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the first degree. The sentence was four years to life in prison, with parole.

But Alfred never served any time in jail. He had the alternative, which he chose, of going to church every Sunday for the next 10 years.

The responsible judge, Mike Norman received national attention and widespread criticism, which enabled Alfred to avoid serving any hard time, as long as he fulfilled certain probation terms like, among other things, graduating from high school, taking regular drug and alcohol tests, speaking about the dangers of drinking and driving, and, yes, going to church every week for the next decade.

The boy will only go to jail if he fails to abide by the terms.

Man ordered to wear ‘sex offender’ T-shirt at work

Newark, Delaware: Convicted of exposing himself to 10-year-old girl in 2007, 69-year-old Russell Teeter was sentenced to 60 days in jail, with the unusual stipulation that upon his release, he must wear a t-shirt reading “I am a registered sex offender” at work for 22 straight months.

As for a certain Sweeney, she was sentenced to eat bread and water only. Convicted of animal neglect that led to death of one of her horses, 28-year-old Melissa Dawn Sweeney from Houston, Texas was sentenced to 30 days in jail, the first three with nothing to eat but bread and water — which was “more than her horses got,” according to Judge Mike Peters.

Meanwhile, a couple from Ohio was sentenced to playing in the kiddie pool for their careless swimming in 2011. The young couple decided it would be fun to ride a flood-swollen river on a raft, prompting an hours-long search by emergency workers.

The couple did not wear life preservers, and the pair were found guilty of misconduct during an emergency. Their punishment? Playing in a kiddie pool at a town festival, and later wear life jackets and handed out water safety brochures.

Woman asked to read the Bible and do a summary as punishment

After South Carolina resident Cassandra Tolley was tried for seriously injuring two people while driving drunk, she was sentenced to eight years in the slammer. But the judge also assigned some jail time homework for Tolley, requiring her to read the Old Testament and write him a summary report as part of her punishment.

Meanwhile, in France, a social media mobilizer was found guilty of maligning two politicians in May and asked to tweet an apology 466 times. The two politicians won the novel conviction against the critic who had been calling them names on Twitter.

In addition to paying a fine and court costs, the critic was ordered to tweet the same message 466 times over 30 days: “I have severely insulted Jean-Francois Cope and Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet. I regret and apologise.”

Public confessions are normally associated with the Spanish Inquisition and Communist Party purges, but Daniel Mireles of Texas is now intimately familiar with the punishment. After stealing $250,000 (Sh25.7 million) from a crime victim’s fund, Judge Kevin Fine in 2010 ordered Mireles to stand on a busy city street holding a sign proclaiming his crime, every weekend for six years.

Mireles claims that while some passers-by heckle him, others express sympathy for his humiliating ritual.

Compiled from Internet sources.