'McMissile' Moment Lands Mom in Jail

[MountainLaurel]

Two years? For a cup of ice?

To the locals, it's the "McMissile" case.

And like the name, the details of it spill forth like a bad joke: A woman is driving north on Interstate 95. Three kids squirm in the back seat, and her sister, six months pregnant and having early contractions, sits in the front. The stress starts to simmer. Traffic slows, then crawls, then creeps. More stress. A car cuts in front of her, then scoots away. A short time later, it darts in again. She can no longer take it. She veers onto the shoulder and speeds up. Wham! She tosses a large McDonald's cup filled with ice into the other car.

"From my side, I heard a whoomp," recalled the woman's sister, LaJeanna Porter, 27. "I was like, 'I know you didn't throw that cup.' She said, 'Yes I did.' "

snip

No one was injured, but the cup launcher, Jessica Hall, 25, of Jacksonville, N.C., was charged and convicted by a Stafford County jury of maliciously throwing a missile into an occupied vehicle, a felony in Virginia. The instructions given to the jury said that "any physical object can be considered a missile. A missile can be propelled by any force, including throwing."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/17/AR2007021701560.html

[Divernan]

1. Jury & public defender from the shallow end of the gene pool.

The defendant's husband is on his third tour of Iraq. She was unemployed but scheduled to start nursing school. She did something foolish,and potentially dangerous, but no one was injured. Now the state (Virginia?) will pay $28-30,000 a year for two years to keep her in prison. When she gets out, she's a convicted felon, and her opportunities to work and contribute to the support of her family is severly impaired. As even the people she threw the cup at said, she shouldn't have gotten that kind of punishment.

Doesn't sound like her PD took an appeal on this - but he sure as hell should have.

The defendant is black. What was the jury makeup?

[Turbineguy]

2. I wish there really was

a Horace Rumpole.

[ChoralScholar]

6. Well you can shoot at someone and

no one be injured also, but that doesn't make it ok.

I was on the receiving end of a cup thrown into a bus full of band kids by a rival football team. 10 kids and a bus driver went to the hospital with lacerations and glass in their eyes.

[orleans]

9. what was the jury makeup? hum...let's guess.

back in the 1980's i remember reading an article about inmates who were on death row. i was horrified when the statistics regarding each individual were listed--the number of black men accused of committing a crime against a white person and then sentenced to death by an all white jury was mind blowing.

[Poor Richard Lex]

10. I Know the Public Defender in that case

He is a good lawyer with lots of experience and very smart. That case took place in Stafford County, Virginia. In that area of the state the jury sentencing is about 3 times what the judge would give you. In Stafford County, the prosecutors ask for a jury trial for every felony case.

So Terry Patton, her attorney was stuck with having to try the case in front of a red county jury. Oh and the jury pool is the registered voter list. The jury gave her the 2 year sentence.

At sentencing Terry got her sentence reduced to time served, effectively suspending all of the time the jury gave her. That is very rare in Virginia, as judges 'traditionally' follow the jury sentence with no time suspended.

The same day Terry Patton got her sentence reduced, he won another jury trial.

[Solo_in_MD]

3. Duplicate post

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x239035

Note also that it is only the jury reccomendation, the judge is yet to impose sentence.

As a motorcyclist I am glad to see prosecutions for what happens to me damn nearly daily, but a felony conviction is a bit much.

[rocktivity]

4. I think time served, community service, probation and loss of driving privileges

is more appropriate. Is it the best use of taxpayer money to incarcerate her AND have to provide assistance for the care of her children?

:headbang:
rocknation

[Solo_in_MD]

7. I agree, at least with her the point has been made.

But I did ask my wife how one sets ones hair with toliet paper (it was in the story).

[sam sarrha]

5. a guy in California threw a pitbull into a guys car...

[orleans]

8. note to judge: a cup is NOT a missile and neither is an ice cube.

note to virginia: a missile is something that is fired at american troops in iraq. ask any vet and they'll tell you the same damn thing.

but apparently the judge disagrees with my assessment--it was the judge that gave out the instruction that said, in essence, even a molecule can be considered a missile.