Had Mark Plants known the outcome of the Mark Bramble case here in Kanawha County, he could have simply stated that he was eating Unisoms like Chiclets the day he used a belt on his boy. After making that defense, he could have then hoped to get Carrie Webster as his judge. Had he done so, he would have gotten off scot-free and we could have been done with all this. The Plants and Bramble cases intersecting in the same week show the complete absurdity our court system has become and also pointedly shows the outrageous discrepancies that abound here. For those of you who may have missed it, Mark Bramble is a lawyer in town who lives in Sherwood Forest in South Hills. Well, Doctor of Jurisprudence Bramble went berserk one day not long ago and shot up his house and the neighborhood. When the Charleston Police Department showed up, he banged out a window and opened fire on CPD. Somehow he ended up without being shot to death by CPD (most cops don’t normally take too kindly to being target practice for a nutcase). So, the dude survives and gets charged with about, oh, 170 or so felonies. His defense? He took a lot of Unisom and lost his mind. No, seriously, that was his defense. Now mind you, if this was some poor white kid up Campbell’s Creek or some black dude on the West Side and he used this defense, he literally would have been laughed out of the courtroom. But, this wasn’t a poor white or black kid. This was a lawyer from South Hills. Bramble was also lucky enough to land Carrie Webster as his trial judge. For someone facing felony charges, landing Webster as your Judge is like pulling a royal flush on the draw from a fifty-two card deck. You just can’t beat it. Webster lets him off without even a slap on the wrist and has provided the USA’s first “Insanity by Unisom” dismissal of all 170 or so felony charges. Now, if you remember, Carrie ran as “The Hangin’ Judge” during her campaign. The fact that the people of the county actually bought it is still hard to get my head around. The odd coincidence is who lives right beside Bramble? Mark Plants. Again, you just can’t make this stuff up. For those of you hiding in the warren of tunnels under Gaza for the past six months, Mark Plants used a belt on his boy (as tens of thousands of other parents have) and caused a 5” bruise on his son’s leg. The powers that be want him drug through the streets Mussolini-style for it. (you are now up to speed) His planned punishment? Guillotine. Oh, wait, Plants did see his boys sitting alone in the parking lot of a drug store and waited beside it until someone showed up (which I’m guessing 99.999% of parents would do, DVP or not). His new planned punishment? Quartering, with the head mounted on the South Side Bridge. Unbelievable, really. A guy literally tries to kill multiple Charleston police officers and he walks. Plants uses a belt on his boy and the world has crumbled, he’s headed to a 32 week “batterers” program and now has the County Commission trying to lop off his head in the court system. What in the world is going on? Imagine if you are a person in need of a car. When you look at the budget, you can afford a ’91 Corolla. But, instead, you decide to buy a 2014 Jaguar. Would anyone listen to you as you complain that your car payment is too high? Well, that’s where the County Commission finds themselves. Let’s face it, they overbought when they decided to shell out $200/hour for a special prosecutor when they likely could have landed one for half that amount. So, now they are stuck shelling out $30,000 per month for someone who never made more than $10,000 per month when he was working FULL-TIME at the prosecutor’s office. MEMO TO COUNTY COMMISSION: Put out a sign on the courthouse door advertising a special prosecutor position for $15,000 per month. The result would look like a Great Depression-era soup kitchen line stretching around the block, only instead of 1930s style clothing, you’ll see a lot of silk suits filled with lawyers wanting that job. Or, maybe just go to Don Morris and ask him to try to scratch out a meager living on $15,000 per month on top of his already lucrative pension? I’m guessing he’ll gladly take $15,000 per month and do his best to make ends meet. I mean, outside of buying golden cages for the falcons, what do you do with $30,000 per month in Charleston, West Virginia? It’s an outrageous amount to pay any one individual working in government. Ah, but where would the outcry come from if the amount of money Plants has taken from his budget to offset the costs of the special prosecutor actually matched the amount being spent. There would be no room to complain and while the situation wouldn’t be ideal, it would certainly make more sense that complaining that you are paying too much for someone to whom you are paying too much. (not sure if that was a sentence or not, but you get my drift) Didn’t Plants’ office just give the special prosecutor another special prosecutor to lessen the workload and cost? Why am I guessing that he could give the new special prosecutor five special prosecutors and the bills would keep coming back at $30,000/month? I don’t blame Don Morris. If someone said, hey, I’m going to give you $30,000/month, even though I can’t afford it, I’m not one to turn down free cash. But, continuing to complain about it is silly. Stop overpaying or stop complaining. With this ongoing battle between Plants and the Commission now almost reaching comedic status, the County Commission plans to shell out even more dollars trying to go to court to remove Plants for using a belt on his boy. Before even going to court, they readily admit they likely will lose. And, they likely will have to pay Plants legal fees. Good grief. This new action against Plants is even more silly (and certainly more costly) than the Commission sending lawyers into the catacombs under the Capitol to dust off an 1863 law about the Tax Commissioner and the convoluted thought process that it was now the Tax Commissioners responsibility to remove Plants. Yes, they claimed that it was the Tax Comissioners job to get involved in a county political dispute and kick Mark Plants out of the seat the county voters chose for him. Yes, the state Tax Commissioner. Again, if you missed this, Im not making this up. The state Tax Commissioner let the county know (Im sure after they all got a good laugh out of it) that something found in the catacombs and written back when sacrificing virgins to appease the gods was still in vogue, may not apply in todays political structure. Look, Plants used a belt on his boy. That whipping has become the Mona Lisa of tempests in a teapot. They are sending Plants one day a week for 32 weeks as part of a batterers program. 32 weeks. Batterer’s Program. No, those are not misprints. For using a belt. If this were the 40s, 50s or 60s, or for centuries before then, we’d have to begin building interment camps the size of Central Park all across the country to hold all the people we were sending to jail for using belts. Most people don’t think the punishment for using a belt should be total and complete destruction of a person’s life and livelihood. Especially when in the same week, the “Hangin’ Judge” let’s Plants own neighbor walk for trying to kill Charleston police and terrorizing his neighborhood. Ah, you have to love our justice system.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 14:10:52 +0000
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