Bizarre, Criminal law

Judge Sentences Teen To Avoid Saying “Bingo” For Six Months

SampleBingoCardFor the white-topped, Dauber-clutching Bingo set, Austin Whaley, 18, was a notorious outlaw and brigand. During a game of Bingo in Covington, Kentucky, Whaley was arrested for the prank of calling out Bingo . . . and he was not even playing. Yes, thrill crimes had come to Covington and this roaming gang of youths left a room in shock and disgust. Fortunately, Park Hills Police Sgt. Richard Webster was present and arrested the Bingo Bandit. Kenton District Judge Douglas Grothaus then handed down a sentence that left the boy speechless, well partially speechless.

Whaley was charged with second-degree disorderly conduct for crying out Bingo. One could easily fashion a defense that yelling out such a word does not even fit disorderly conduct and was merely a joke. The law itself is written in an ambiguous fashion that characterizes this type of charge:

525.060 Disorderly conduct in the second degree.
(1) A person is guilty of disorderly conduct in the second degree when in a public place and with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm, or wantonly creating a risk thereof, he:
(a) Engages in fighting or in violent, tumultuous, or threatening behavior;
(b) Makes unreasonable noise;
(c) Refuses to obey an official order to disperse issued to maintain public safety in dangerous proximity to a fire, hazard, or other emergency; or
(d) Creates a hazardous or physically offensive condition by any act that serves no legitimate purpose.

Presumably, this fell under making “unreasonable noise” even though words are not generally construed as “noise.” I would hope that it is not creating an “hazardous or phyiscally offensive condition” among the Bingoists. I am not sure how bad the organized youth crime is in Covington, but I would have thought that a call to their parents would have sufficed in most cases. He is lucky he was not found in an alley covered in scooter tire marks and little red dots.

Yet, Whaley was either found guilty or pleaded guilty and Grothaus ordered Whaley not to say the word Bingo for six months.

I am afraid that I am unsure of the basis for the arrest. Webster was working security that night and seems to have a vague notion of Oliver Wendell Holmes’ decision in Schenck v. United States: “Just like you can’t run into a theater and yell ‘fire’ when it’s not on fire, you can’t run into a crowded bingo hall and yell ‘bingo’ when there isn’t one.”

I supposed yelling Bingo in a room of geriatrics in a hall can be analogized but generally does not produce stampeding deaths or public panic. Beyond a case of vapors or swearing about “kids today,” it is a fairly harmless prank that even Webster admitted only delayed the game by a couple minutes.

As for Grothaus’ sentence, it is another case of a novel sentencing, though it is harmless in comparison to some that we have discussed. I have previously written about the dangers of such “novel” sentencing in judges using their courtrooms for entertainment or self-aggrandizement. In this case, Grothaus’s ability to banish words from the lexicon of citizens is doubtful, but I doubt any one will object.

Source: CBS

37 thoughts on “Judge Sentences Teen To Avoid Saying “Bingo” For Six Months”

  1. Hi mates, how is the whole thing, and what you would like to say concerning this paragraph, in my view its truly amazing designed for me.

  2. Bettykath, I had the same fleeting thought. That was a propaganda segment to convey the message that if you exert your rights you get punished, actually, that you don’t really have the right to not comply even when the ‘just cause’ for the demand is not apparent or non-existent. That was a really disturbing video. Good catch and yea, she was just too happy about it. Poor training.

  3. What’s so disgusting in the video, apart from the actions themselves, is the obvious delight the officer has in the retelling. Since it’s for a tv show, it’s possible the whole thing was staged, maybe to dumb us down and make us more compliant for when the real cops show up.

  4. Thanks Darren.

    “Essentially it is enforced properly when defendants actually prevent LEOs from performing their jobs” as opposed to demanding a waiver of rights, one would hope. That kid needs a lawyer.

  5. Lottakatz

    Generally “obstructing” refers to a law in many states where a person is charged with interfering with the duties of a LEO. Here is an example of such a law:

    RCW 9A.76.020
    Obstructing a law enforcement officer.

    (1) A person is guilty of obstructing a law enforcement officer if the person willfully hinders, delays, or obstructs any law enforcement officer in the discharge of his or her official powers or duties.

    As you can read this law has quite broad applicability. Essentially it is enforced properly when defendants actually prevent LEOs from performing their jobs. For the brother seeing his brother pulled over for a traffic violation and he interferes with the deputy writing out a ticket.

    Unfortunately there have been times when LEOs have in my view abused this which I would say the video above shows. While the courts have allowed prosecutions of obstructing charges based upon persons putting officers at risk and that delays them in enforcing their duties, it clearly is not the case here.

    Asserting a civil right is not sufficient to merit an obstructing charge.

  6. Question, in the above linked vid by Bettykath a person is arrested for ‘obstructing’ because he refused to open his door so the police could make a visual search. I was not aware that that was a legal request. How can that be different from being asked to allow any other warrantless search of someones domicile? That looks entirely bogus to me but the law has become so parced that a right to privacy and due process is virtually nonexistant and I question the correctness of my reaction.

    The law and its enforcement seems to be increasingly petty toward the untermenchen as the two stories in today’s postings (this one about Bingo and the vid Bettykath posted) illustrate while the ubermenchen, even when caught red-handed, suffer few if any consequences.

  8. The officer in that video should be terminated. She is more qualified to be a stripper than a police officer

  11. And from the same link:

    “The profit motive drives
    private prison operators to
    pay as little of their fair share
    of state and federal taxes as
    possible, and they often get
    away with shifting the costs
    of their prisons’ failures
    directly onto the backs of
    taxpayers. In 2002, the IRS
    had to sue CCA to get it to
    pay $54 million in back
    taxes.”

  12. Thanks, Blouise.

    =======

    “In 2011, the ACLU of Ohio released a report entitled Prisons For Profit: A Look at Prison Privatization. The report details the history of private prisons in America and concludes that they create many long-term problems for state and local governments. In 2012, Ohio became the first state in the nation to sell a state facility to a private prison company when it sold the Lake Erie Correctional Facility to CCA.” -from the link supplied above, by Blouise

    http://www.acluohio.org/assets/issues/CriminalJustice/PrisonsForProfit2011_04.pdf

  14. bettykath, Blouise and Malisha,

    “The arc of the moral universe is long but bends towards justice.” -MLK (and others)

    Good people working for justice will help to bring it around.

    http://youtu.be/NaNzxniXxYE

  15. Why has no one made the connection between this and the other item today (the public masturbator banned from a library)?

    There’s an easy solution for the judge. Instead of banning Whaley from saying a specific word or giving him jail time: ban Whaley from entering bingo parlours, since that’s where he’s causing the problem. Saying “bingo” on a bus isn’t going to annoy anyone unless he’s shouting it.

  16. “anonymously posted, did you see that it’s an ad for a new tv show? ”

    bettykath,

    Yes, I didn. Just what America needs, right?

    =====

    OT, and not a surprise:

    Lake Erie Prison Plagued By Violence And Drugs After Corporate Takeover

    Posted: 03/22/2013

    “A new report detailing a state inspection of a private prison in Ohio describes gang-related violence so commonplace and drug use so rampant that many guards are afraid to intervene — instead, they are leaving their jobs at an alarming rate.

    The harrowing report released last month on conditions inside the 1,700-bed Lake Erie Correctional Institution describes a tableau of dysfunction, lending confirmation to two previous audits that identified widespread problems at the facility.

    In interviews with The Huffington Post, current and former correctional officers at the Lake Erie prison confirmed the findings in the state report while describing their own fears about going to work at the institution.

    “It was common for us to speak about who was going to die first,” Paul Reynolds, a former correctional officer at Lake Erie who says he was released last year because of disagreements with CCA management, told HuffPost. “They were afraid to get sued for any little thing, so management basically tied our hands on everything. Within three months, we lost that prison to those inmates.”

    The report’s findings offer ammunition for those decrying the trend toward privatizing prisons — not only in Ohio, but across much of the country — as strapped communities seek to raise revenue and minimize costs by handing control of inmates to profit-making entities. …and the article continues…

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