Good News for Criminals
While Terri Schiavo slowly starves to death without the benefit of the new trial Congress mandated, convicted murderer Lisl Auman got hers because the judge’s instructions to the jury failed to address the theoretical possibilty that jurors are too dumb to know that stealing back your own stuff isn’t “burglary.”
Of course, these cases are nothing alike. For one thing, Auman wasn’t sentenced to death for her crime. For another, Schiavo never committed a crime, while Auman was never sentenced to die for hers. For another, as those annoying John Ziegler ads keep reminding us 24-7, the State of Florida isn’t really “killing” Terri Schiavo, just “not taking extraordinary measures to keep her alive” (along with forcibly preventing anyone else from doing so, by why get bogged down on the details?).
Obligatory irony alert – from a March 18, 2001 Rocky Mountain News article on Auman’s crime:
The letter was dated Jan. 4, 2001, addressed to Hunter S. Thompson in Woody Creek. It came from the women’s prison in Canon City.
“I laughed out loud while reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas during my stay (13 months) at the Denver County Jail,” Lisl Auman wrote on yellow legal-size paper in looping, blue ink. “Thank you for helping to bring a smile to my face. During that time.”
Auman told Thompson that she was in prison for felony murder. She maintained her innocence. She wrote down her Web site.
“I didn’t know what to make of it when I opened the letter,” Thompson says. “My attitude is, `What the f— are you so cheerful about?’ If I were you, I’d slit my wrists.”
Then again, if I were Hunter Thompson, I’d probably shoot myself.
UPDATE: In a comment, Joel Buckingham points out another gem: not guilty by reason of Bible-reading.
