Honor among thieves is one thing, but turning yourself in just to nail someone who is guilty of a greater sin is something quite different.
Sure, there are stories of the Robin Hoods of this world that do bad to do good, so to speak. And there are definitely cases of bad guys who ‘help the poor” by providing some of their ill-gotten gains to keep the down trodden going.
But it’s a rare case indeed when a couple burglars will risk fessing up to a burglary because the guy they burgled is a worse criminal than themselves. But sure enough, that’s apparently what happened on September 12th in Delhi, California, according to an Internet news source.
It seems these to ne’er-do-wells were foraging about in someone else’s barn in Delhi looking for odds and ends and whatever they could find to make a buck or save themselves some money. They came across a stash of about 50 CDs and thought, ‘hey I can use these CDs to pirate some music.’ So, off they go with the CDs in hand. Later, when they got back to their hideaway, they started to check out their newly acquired property.
Did they find music? No. What they found instead was 30 discs full of child porn. In my mind, I see the two burglars stuck in a dilemma. Child porn is bad and burglary is bad, but child porn is worse than burglarizing someone. We should turn ourselves in, in order to turn in the person who owned the CDs in the first place.
I’m not sure what kind of convoluted logic went into the process, but the answer turned out to be the right thing. Turns out, the porn owner reported the break in and when the kids called it was a dead match. Merced County Sheriff’s Deputy Tom McKenzie was quoted by Fox 40 that he was “kind of surprised that he wanted to draw attention to himself, knowing what was taken.”
Well, one thing led to another and the Sheriff’s department served a search warrant at Kraig Stockard’s house. There they found three desktop computers and three laptops. It hasn’t been reported what those computers contain, but authorities believe Stockard had been downloading images and movies since 2004.
Turns out, the Sheriff’s department hasn’t arrested either of the burglars. Whether they will or not remains to be seen, but for now they are not being pursued. Stockard, on the other hand, has been hauled in.
A “family member convinced the two suspects to come forward, and they contacted law enforcement," McKenzie said.
Stockard was booked into jail for possession of child pornography and posted $25,000 bail.
"We did not actually go out and arrest the suspects for the burglary. They were obviously the lesser of two evils," McKenzie told Fox40.
They are not totally in the clear yet. The burglars' case has been turned over to the Merced County District Attorney’s Office for review. In my way of thinking, they should probably be arrested for the burglary and let go for providing a community service.
No comments:
Post a Comment