Moby Grape – "Murder in My Heart for the Judge" (1968)

That mean old judge wouldn’t budge

I’ve got murder in my heart for the judge

More and more American judges are going beyond jail time and fines and handing out more creative sentences to offenders.

Punishments involving public shaming have become quite common.

For example, a woman was caught on camera driving on a sidewalk to get around a school bus that was dropping off children was ordered to spend two hours standing at a nearby intersection and holding a sign that read, “Only an idiot would drive on the sidewalk to avoid a school bus”:

Public-shaming punishments have been ordered in much more serious cases as well.  In Houston, a judge sentenced a couple that embezzled $265,000 from a fund for crime victims to stand in front of a local mall with a sign reading “I am a thief” for five hours every weekend for six years.  The judge also ordered the couple to post a sign that said “The occupants of this residence are convicted thieves” in front of their home.

That’s some serious public shaming.

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Ohio judge Michael Cicconetti is not averse to ordering a public-shaming punishment when it’s appropriate.  For example, he told an 18-year-old man convicted of stealing from an adult video store that he could either spend 30 days in jail or sit outside the store wearing a blindfold and holding a sign that that read “See no evil.”  (Not surprisingly, the miscreant chose the latter option.) 

Cicconetti also ordered a man found guilty of soliciting a prostitute to wear a chicken suit around town:

The punishment was apparently inspired by the notorious “Chicken Ranch” brothel, which was the subject of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.  

(I suspect that the message that the judge intended to send by means of the chicken suit sentence went right over the heads of most local residents.)

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Cicconetti has handed down some other unusual non-shaming punishments as well.

When a 19-year-old was found guilty of stiffing a cab driver on a $100 fare, Judge Cicconetti gave her the choice of spending 30 days in jail or walking 30 miles – the distance that the cab driver drove her.  She chose to walk the 30 miles.

And a woman who had pepper-sprayed a man at a local Burger King for no good reason agreed to be pepper-sprayed herself by her victim in order to avoid doing any jail time.  But the liquid given to the man to spray in her face was actually a harmless saline solution that local police use in training scenarios – the judge hoped to scare her straight without actually injuring her.

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In one of his most famous cases, Cicconetti sentenced a woman to spend a cold night in the same woods where she had abandoned 35 kittens.

“She was harboring cats and she got overwhelmed and dumped them in the woods,” the judge said. “Her sentence was, ‘You go out in the woods the same way you dumped these kittens off.’”

“How would you like to be dumped off in the Metro Park at night, listening to the coyotes up on you, listening to the raccoons around you?” Cicconetti asked the woman before he sentenced her.

Judge Michael Cicconetti

That night the area was hit by a major snowstorm, and officials went to the park and picked the woman up around midnight. 

But Cicconetti believed the well-publicized punishment worked.  “We used to get abandoned cat cases.  We haven't in a while,” he said.

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To Cicconetti, the unusual punishments are no laughing matter. He contends he's relieving an overcrowded jail system and at the same time sending a stern message.

“So many of these cases have received media attention. The people in this community know that if you come into this court, you never know what's going to happen,” Cicconetti said. “It does deter conduct for our community, and that's who I have to answer to.”

The judge acknowledged that there has been criticism of some of his creative sentences.  “There have been people that don't like [these sentences], that think I'm doing this for publicity,” he told one reporter.  

OF COURSE HE’S DOING IT FOR PUBLICITY!  Isn’t that as plain as the nose on your face?

But Judge Cicconetti scoffs at his critics.  “You get criticism, mostly from people hiding behind fictitious names on a blog,” he said.

(If the shoe fits . . .)

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In the next 2 or 3 lines, I’ll tell you about a very peculiar creative sentence handed down by a judge from just a few miles up the road from my home town. 

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“Murder in my Heart for the Judge,” was written by Moby Grape’s drummer, Don Stevenson, and released on the group’s 1968 album, Wow.

Click here to listen to “Murder in My Heart for the Judge.”

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