Kevin Maynard, 59, wants to plead guilty and I can understand why. He is charged with a crime that few jurors would not recoil at. He is a worker at the Rhode Island Veteran’s Memorial Cemetery and is accused of stealing more than 150 granite gravestones to pave the floor of his garage and shed.
Maynard is charged with felony theft of government property — a charge that does not seem to capture the enormity of his crime in dishonoring these veterans and possibly traumatizing family members disturbed by the thought of their loved one’s marker being used as flooring in a garage. However, this offense can come with a maximum of 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and supervised release for three years.
Investigators say that they found the markers serving as flooring in makeshift garages and a shed at Maynard’s Charlestown, Rhode Island home. They also found a box of stolen flags.
Maynard may have justified the act as merely reusing such stones. Cracked or deteriorated stones are also replaced for free, and the damaged ones are stacked in an area at the cemetery until they can be hauled away to be destroyed. However, these grave markers remain government property. That creates an interesting couple of countervailing elements. On one hand, even the use of damaged tombstones for flooring dishonors the memory of these veterans. On the other hand, these stones would have been disposed of by the government. The mix of aggravating and mitigating factors will have to be balanced by the court at sentencing.
His lawyer has indicated that he will change his plea to guilty as soon as he goes before a federal judge.
Source: WTOP
Once in the early hours of the morning I overheard two LA cops in a coffee shop talking about their night. They had been scouring the streets for uncovered manholes. It seems that around midnight a cruiser had pulled over a pick up truck filled with manhole covers. The driver was an old Hispanic guy that could not speak English well enough to explain that he was transporting them from one scrap yard to another. The cops sent out the work that the several dozen manhole covers had left several dozen open holes in the streets for cars and people to fall into. There is a little of this going on here.
So, to intercept the stones on their way to being busted up into aggregate is, what?
Is there a ceremony before they get tossed into the crusher?
Nick
Not your type of American. Of that I am proud.
This took a big set of stones.
These were American Service men that gave their lives for your freedom. This guy has no respect for them give him the MAX.
I think this thread is going to be a true Rorschach test.
bettykath comes here w/ her liberal “sensibilities” regarding veterans. There’s another liberal woman who comments here who has a gut check on this one!!
Isaac continues to show why he is not an American. And, he does so w/o even knowing. I think this guy should have a private party w/ Navy Seals. They will get his mind right.
If everyone who had ever died had a marked grave, the earth would be totally covered with graves, leaving no space for the living. One rarely sees new cemeteries being developed any more. Land is too valuable for other purposes. Fortunately humanity is slowly, very slowly, advancing away from religious fantasy toward practical reality.
Seems the government has two standards: if they ransack your trash, it’s ok b/c you threw it away; if you ransack theirs, it’s theft.
The defense of Estoppel is appropriate here. The government is the so called “victim” of theft. The government is the party bringing the prosecution. The government abandoned the stones and they were in the trash pile. The government is estopped to deny that they abandoned the stones or that they desecrated them by breaking some or discarding sacred stones. One can take things out of a dumpster and not be a thief. In this case I would call the prosecutor himself a dumbster and the defense attorney a dumbster if he pleads the client guilty.
BarkinDog – the general rule on trash is that it has to be off the property in the garbage can. In this case the stones are still on the government property.
I am assuming that he used stones that were to be recycled or ‘disposed of’. He did not take stones from their place at the gravesite.
So, if he had waited he could have recycled these markers as aggregate in a cement mix to pour a garage floor. The government ‘disposes’ of these stones how? Is there a ‘lost marker graveyard’ somewhere? They bust them up for building materials. So, the guy ‘shortcut’ the markers to his garage floor. Sometimes the sacred stuff in this country goes a little too mindlessly far.
He stole some stone markers that were destined to be busted up into aggregate. Aside from a petty theft conviction the guy now has been smeared by this blog and other medias. Enough is enough.
If it was just an old stone to be replaced anyways, I am not sure about the uber-sentimentality here. The only problem I see, even as a trash, the stone was still government property worth some value, and that is the part that bothers me. I also liked that he is recycling.
Someone needs to send my comment directly to the defendant so that he can fire his dumb lawyer and get one who can defend and not just plea bargain. No jury will convict this guy if he demonstrates that he saved the stones from government destruction. The government here is on the eve of destruction when they do such things.
One reason why the stones get removed at the cemetery is that relatives might have a body removed to another cemetery. That happens sometimes.
It is time for the defense lawyer to go find some McNulty family members who will speak up for the rights of their stone which is shown in the photo. Ask not what your government has done for you lately. Ask what you can do to punish some of the chumps in your government.
If I was his lawyer, and him, I would not plead guilty, and let the government put on their case. Then I would call all the witnesses who know what the government does with these same stones when they break them up and throw them in a dump. I would have photos of the stones in the dump and of being broken and disrespected.
I would, as his lawyer, say to the jury that the government which is prosecuting him is disrespectful of the stones; that a stone needs some respect and should not be broken up into little chuncks, particularly after a veteran’s name has been engraved thereon. These comments would be asked of the jurors in voir dire by the way. Then I would show the jurors the stones as they are found in the defendant’s garage, neatly aligned, not trashed.
Who respected the stones?
The defendant will testify that he was offended by the way the government broke them up and discarded them, that he wanted the names to remain intact on the stones. That the prosecutor works for the government and needs to be discarded, as do these insane charges. I would find a relative of one of the names on one of the stones who will testify that he is glad that the defendant saved the stone from destruction and desecration by the government. I would have that witness ask for his uncle’s stone back when the trial was over and the evidence was to be discarded.
When the not guilty verdict is rendered I would immediately, within minutes, show the jury, the press, and the prosecutor, the civil suit I was filing for stealing my stones and falsely accusing me of a crime, for defamation, and for civil rights violation for false arrest, false charges. I would name the prosecutor as a defendant and the local U.S. Attorney. If they get off for prosecutorial immunity, I would appeal that.
Squeeky, it is still that way in Germany and Austria.
If found guilty I believe a few days in jail would be reasonable coupled with the plea bargain listed.
This is the guy that needs 5 years of psychoanalysis.
FWIW: There was a story last week at Pansie’s which had this in it:
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
A jury trial might be close to suicidal, that is for sure, and he better hope the judge is not a veteran.