Judges are supposed to be wise and learned people who are experts at making smart decisions on tough matters. Will you agree with this description after reading about the strangest court sentences ever handed out?
The Idiot Sign
Shena Hardin is a self-proclaimed idiot. She was driving in Cleveland when she decided to go up onto the sidewalk in order to avoid stopping for a school bus. The judge told her to make a sign telling the world how stupid she is and then stand outside during rush hour for two days holding it up. I bet she will think twice about being that stupid again.
The Wal-Mart Thief?
An unusual court sentence in Alabama saw a couple of convicted shoplifters forced to stand outside the store they stole from with big signs explaining what they did.
The Not So Easy Listening Sentence
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If you like some heavy metal, R&B, rock or rap then you don’t want to be up in front of Judge Paul Sacco in Colorado. In fact, most people with some sort of musical taste will want to avoid him. This guy has a strange sentence for anyone who is convicted of annoying others with loud music: he forces them to listen to easy listening classics. This means that they need to listen to music they don’t like. Yes, this does indeed having hours of Barry Manilow’s nonsense forced on you. Less serious offenders get Dolly Parton or maybe some classical music to listen to.
The Tweet Apology?
I have severely insulted Jean-Francois Cope and Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet. I regret and apologize. It’s not the most interesting tweet in the world but some poor person was convicted to send it 466 times in a month. An internet critic of the 2 politicians was given this weird court sentence by a French judge.
The Court Haircut?
Who knew that going to McDonald’s could cause such a problem? A 13 year old called Kaytlen Lopan and a younger friend cut off the hair of a 3 year old in the play area of a restaurant in Utah. The judge took a pragmatic approach and ordered that the initial sentence of 30 days detention and 276 hours of community service would be reduced if the teenager’s mother cut the perpetrator’s hair. The victim’s mother got to say how short the cut had to be.
The Bread and Water Diet
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When Melissa Dawn Sweeney neglected her horse she didn’t expect it to lead to a strange court sentence of jail with bread and water for her. Her horse had to get put to sleep and the wise judge decided that the offender should suffer a similar sort of level of neglect to the horse while in jail.
Plenty of Church?
When 17 year old Tyler Alred was found guilty of manslaughter following a traffic accident he probably didn’t expect to end up sentenced to church. His friend who was a passenger at the time was killed in the accident but family members didn’t want to see Alred locked up in jail because of a mistake he had made. Judge Mike Norman told the accused that he has to graduate from high school and from welding school, take regular drug and alcohol tests and go to church for the next couple of decades.
