A Shout-Out For Creative Sentencing!

People, whatever you do, do not poach deer in Lawrence County, Missouri, or Judge Robert George may innovate your sentence.

The judge sentenced David Berry, Jr. to one year in prison after Berry, his father, two brothers, and a family friend were caught poaching hundreds of animals, according to Conservation Agent Andy Barnes.  But the judge didn't stop there.  To Berry, Jr.'s sentence he added a special proviso: while he is in prison, Berry must watch the movie Bambi starting no later than today, December 23, 2018, and once a month for the duration of his stay.

Whoa!  Not too shabby, Your Honor!  But...!  May this blogger approach the bench?

If it please the court, Your Honor, may I be so bold as to make a suggestion to augment and supplement your wise and creative ruling?  You see, Your Honor, this blogger was, like you, offended at the egregious amount of senseless killing perpetrated by the party of five, as described in this article.  But I am also quite aggrieved by the idea that these folks went out, night after night, in a spree of poaching so large that it went on for years.  So large that it involved law enforcement agencies at the state and federal level, as well as in Canada.  This group slaughtered mostly for trophies, and, in the words of Prosecuting Attorney Don Trotter, they left "the bodies of the deer to waste."

Your Honor, begging the court's indulgence, may I suggest: Perhaps prisoner Berry, Jr. could also take a field trip to see, or perhaps he could receive as a visitor, a member of a nearby Native American tribe?  A shaman or a tribal elder who could educate David Berry about the purpose of proper hunting, since his father shirked his responsibility to do so, and joined him in the carnage.

And if it does not offend judicial temperament, may I be so audacious as to exhort you to perhaps also have the prisoner watch videos about people starving?  This so that perhaps he could be brought to the understanding that, while many in our culture are opposed to hunting and killing of animals to feed us, and by factory farming, etc., almost everybody is offended by killing that serves merely as a prize when so many people are hungry.  Succinctly, it is a sin to waste food.

Oh, yes, and Your Honor: thank you so much for revoking hunting, fishing, and trapping privileges of these folks.

This blog stands in recess.