You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy!™
Going to jail for life for stealing cigarettes.
talk about going smokeless.
Dateline: WACO, Texas
A central Texas jury has sentenced a man to 99 years in prison for stealing a carton of cigarettes from a smoke shop.
So he must have stolen the cigarettes and then killed the clerk to get life in prison, right?
Nope. This three time loser simply swiped a pack of smokes and it was off to the grey bar hotel, forever. That’s one way to kick the habit.
The McLennan County jury sentenced 55-year-old Leon Willis Wilkerson in Waco Thursday after finding him guilty of robbery Wednesday.
Wilkerson will be 154 years old when he gets out on this charge.
He’ll look like laundry hanging on the line after a nuclear blast when he finally sees sunshine on his sorry ass face.
So how does Wilkerson get life in prison for a pack of smokes?
Well as they say: You don’t mess with Texas. That goes double for Texas juries. They’d just assume electrocute you for a parking ticket as rehabilitate you.
So Wilkerson was charged as a habitual criminal. He had a record of eight previous felony convictions and 12 misdemeanors.
So it’s not like he’s a stranger to the inside of a jail cell, but life in prison?
Whew!According to court documents, Wilkerson stole the cigarettes in July 2008, tucked them in his jacket, then shoved to the ground a man who tried to stop him. The fallen man was injured, allowing prosecutors to upgrade the charge against Wilkerson from theft to robbery.
You know, American Criminals are so stupid, it’s doubtful that Mr. Wilkerson’s situation will dissuade another criminal from committing multiple acts of stupidity.
So here’s my answer to law enforcement, incarceration and rehabilitation.
3 words: CHOP CHOP SQUARE
When I was young and dumb and full of crazy; I traveled with the U.S. Air Force to Saudi Arabia. We flew into Riyad.
It was 1991 and American forces were surging along the border in a campaign known as Operation Desert Shield.
It was December, just weeks before American might would roll across the desert and whoop some Iraqi ass.
So we go over to Saudi Arabia on a KC 10 refueling plane.
Before we exit the plane on the tarmac in country, our handler stands up and he has the look of solemn death on his face.
“OK, this is serious. Listen up.”
We are all punchy and want to deplane and get our feet in the sand.
But he laid some truth on me that will last me the rest of my days.
“This isn’t America,” he said. “This is Saudi Arabia. The laws here are simple. You steal something, they drag your ass to chop chop square and,”
BANG
He slammed the top of the seat. It was sobering.
“And they chop off your hand. They invite the whole town to watch. It’s a circus. They don’t have much TV here, so this is the entertainment. You screw your neighbor’s wife, they cut off your dick,” he says, his face as serious as a heart attack.
“I know he has my attention at this point.
“So here’s the deal. If you do something against the law, we cannot help you. Saudi Laws don’t care that you are a U.S. citizen. They will chop off whatever body part they choose.”
“and if you commit a crime that doesn’t involve taking a body part,” he says. “They throw you in jail. But the state doesn’t have any responsibility to feed you or take care of you in Saudi jails. That is up to the friends and family of the criminal. If you have friends and family, you’ll get fed. If you don’t, you’ll die. The Saudis don’t care.”
Wow, I think to myself. Saudi justice is freaking old west serious as a heart attack, final as a whip crack.
We exit the plane, a squadron of Dudley Doo-rights.
I would not have time to think about Saudi Law until a few days later when we travel to the other side of the country.
We are in Jeddah, on the Red Sea. It is a clean and modern city.
The people are friendly and if people weren’t wearing the traditional garb of the Middle East, you might think you were in downtown Portland.
One night, we are in the bustling town square. We’re eating lamb kabobs and chilling out.
I am at a gold kiosk haggling with the clerk. Saudis love to barter.
I negotiate a price I want to pay for a gold necklace. I say 100 dollars and he says 200 dollars. And so it goes. I leave my AmEx card on the counter and walk away and finish my dinner.
I know that nobody will steal the card because of threat of Chop Chop Square.
I’m 100 feet away and I watch the shop keeper as I eat. He smiles at me and picks up my card and shouts out “one seventy five?”
I get up and pick up my American Express Card acting more
interested.
“One twenty five.” I shout back.
He smiles obviously loving the sport of negotiation.
Then, out of nowhere the square is alive with a religious chant emanating from speakers seemingly affixed to every building and lamp post.
Muslims pray several times a day. When they pray is very precise. It’s not like let me make this sandwich then I’ll pray. In Saudi Arabia, when the siren sounds, you run a hundred yard dash to pray to Allah. That’s just the way it is.
The sirens sound and that means you have a certain amount of minutes to get to the nearest mosque. Make it and you get virgins in the after life. Late and no telling what kind of wrath you are going to suffer.
Anyway, my salesman is going for multiple virgins, and hops over the counter like a leopard chasing down a gazelle. He sprints in open toed sandals away from his shop. I watch as similar shop keepers do the same. It looks like a running of the bulls only with men with beards and long white dresses.
One by one, the sprinting shop keepers disappear into the darkness.
Suddenly the square is empty, except for foreigners.
I look at a French tourist beside me at the gold counter. We smile awkwardly.
I look at the empty shop and laugh to myself.
I am staring at tens of thousands of dollars worth of gold within 3 feet of me. Display racks are draped with gold necklaces and gold bracelets and chains of shimmering gold so thick, you’d think you were at a gangsta-rapper convention.
In America, this is a thief’s wet dream. In 30 seconds I could have taken hundreds of pounds of gold and high tailed it out of there.
I mean there was not a soul in site.
But this is not Cleveland. This is Saudi Arabia, and the fear that someone might even think I stole something was suddenly so overwhelming I had to step back from the kiosk. Suddenly the thought of blowing my nose without hands filled my thoughts.
I smile at the French guy and we both take slow and deliberate steps away from the gold kiosk. We make no sudden moves and make sure that anyone or any camera watching can surely see we have stolen no gold.
I walk backward like I am the hostage in a bank robbery. My arms are extended away from my body, and my hands are in plain site.
I go and sit down with my lamb kabob.
“You’d never see that in New York City,” I say to the other guys.
“That’s because we don’t have Chop Chop Square,” a fellow reporter retorts, lamb spilling out of his mouth.
And that’s my point.
Maybe we should have a chop chop square.
It would make all of us think twice before acting immorally and acting illegally. The thought of Saudi citizens gathering with pop corn and cracker jacks on a Saturday night to watch me get my hands cut off was such a deterrent, that the image of it over whelmed me. I suddenly wanted to be not only honest, but really really, aggressively honest.
What if we had Chop Chop Square in every town in America?
If you knew that you would lose a body part if you were caught stealing from your neighbor, would that cut down on crime?
If you knew that all your friends and neighbors would gather on a Saturday night to watch you bleed, would that deter you from committing acts of heinousness?
Back to cigarette thief Wilkerson. He got a life sentence, but all the other home boys in cell block six could care less. They weren’t paying attention to his sentence because they were too busy masterminding their own next armed robbery.
But you take Wilkerson down to Waco’s Chop Chop Square and watch as that big old guillotine comes down and his hand falls into a basket: I bet that gets their attention.
All those homeboys are circling the want ads instead of plotting to knock somebody in the head with a glock.
So here’s the moral of this story.
Maybe the bible has it right. An eye for an eye.
Maybe the Muslims have it right. Chop Chop Square.
Maybe we have it wrong, giving criminals three strikes and reduced sentences.
Maybe one strike and your out would get your attention.
Especially when you look over at the basket by your head and the bloody hand clutching the carton of smokes is your hand.
Now that would be crazy!