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Stories of those Affected |
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The following story is taken from an article by Paul Rosenzweig and Trent England from The Heritage Foundation
Palo Alto means “tall tree” in Spanish, but Kay Leibrand knows that tall trees can be a crime in the California city. Leibrand, a 61-year old grandmother, breast cancer survivor and former software engineer, was arrested and nearly went to jail because her hedge of xylosma bushes was more than two feet tall.
As part of a “visibility project,” Palo Alto has a law making it a misdemeanor to have plants more than two feet tall in the strip between the curb and the sidewalk. The city almost never enforces this ordinance. In fact, Leibrand is the only person ever arrested for it, despite the fact that her well-pruned hedge left visibility unimpeded along her street. Meanwhile, numerous wrongful rhododendrons and criminal crabapples can be spotted around the city.
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The following story (2006) is taken from Case Studies at Overcriminalized.com.
Unreasonable zero-tolerance standards make it certain that school officials will not make their disciplinary decisions based on sound judgment – and that some good kids will be punished for no good reason. Miles Rankin is one example of zero-tolerance’s collateral damage.
Twelve-year-old Miles Rankin was a victim of such a policy in Henry County, Georgia. After a student reported to his teacher that Miles had been showing his friends a 2 inch pocket knife in the school bathroom, Miles,a dedicated student with good grades , was handcuffed and taken away in a police vehicle -- in view of his classmates -- to a juvenile detention center.
At a hearing in juvenile court, Miles was shackled and handcuffed as if he were a dangerous criminal. The judge presiding over the hearing, who also happened to be the attorney for the school board, decided that Miles should remain in the detention center. Miles’s parents were only able to pick him up on conditional release the following evening, after he had been imprisoned for over 48 hours.
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The following story (2003) is taken from Case Studies at Overcriminalized.com.
It all began with a supposed anonymous fax to the National Marine Fishery Service (NMFS) on February 3, 1999. The mystery fax alleged that Honduran businessman David McNab had a shipment of “undersized (3 & 4oz) lobster tails” scheduled to arrive in Bayou La Batre, Alabama on February 5, 1999. The fax also said that the lobster should be packed in cardboard boxes, but was in fact packed in clear plastic bags.
Based on this strange, anonymous message, NMFS agents waited for McNab’s ship and captured it on arrival. With no explanation, the federal government held the entire ship for several weeks and then off-loaded and transported McNab’s 70,000 pounds of Caribbean spiny lobster to a government freezer in Florida. There the lobster tails languished for six months while NMFS agents searched Honduran regulations for some reason to keep the lobster meat and prosecute the importers and distributors.
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