Doofus Of The Day #305

Thanks to reader D. H. for e-mailing the link to today's Doofus, who hails from a town I've visited several times - Cookeville, Tennessee.

It was 3:38 a.m. Jan. 1 when a resident of a West 4th Street apartment called police and reported someone had tried to break into his apartment.

"He said he had seen a shirtless white male with long black hair attempting to get into his apartment," the report says. "He said he saw the subject leaving the front door of the apartment building and when he confronted him, the man ran off." Officer Collier checked the area and spotted a man with long dark hair running toward another apartment complex, and though he lost sight of the fleeing man, Officer Jamey McCurry located a suspect on 3rd Street who was identified as Ponce.

The victim on West 4th identified Ponce as the man he had seen, and as they investigated, the officers found Ponce's probation card, complete with his photo on it, sticking out of one apartment door, the Collier report says. Apparently, that card and other cards had been used in an attempt to jimmy door locks.

Ponce also had a cut on his back "that corresponded with what appeared to be blood" on the door frame of one burglarized apartment, the officer said. Ponce denied having been at the apartments, but he was arrested and taken to jail.

There's more at the link.

While working as a prison chaplain, it never ceased to amaze me that many criminals who were convicted on the basis of solid, irrefutable evidence - such as leaving a probation card at the scene of the crime, not to mention DNA evidence like bloodstains as well! - flatly denied their crimes in court, and even after conviction and imprisonment continued to insist that they weren't guilty. It was always 'the system' or 'the cops' or 'the DA' or 'the judge' that was responsible for their incarceration - never their own actions, which, of course, they denied committing in the first place. It's a very strange mental and ethical blindness, I suppose.

Nevertheless, despite his moral myopia, I suspect Mr. Ponce is bound for durance vile once more. As a preliminary award, he becomes our Doofus for today.

Peter