The prosecutor in Willie Nelson's marijuana possession case said the country music legend could get off with just a fine if he agrees to sing one of his songs in court, TMZ reported Monday.
Nelson, 77, was busted at a border patrol checkpoint in Sierra Blanca, Texas, en route to Austin on November 25 last year. He was arrested but released when he posted $2,500 bond at Hudspeth County Jail.
The prosecutor in the case said he was willing to let Nelson off with a $100 fine if Nelson performed his song "Blue Eyes Smiling in the Rain" in the courtroom, TMZ said. The prosecutor reportedly said the song would count as Nelson's community service.
If Nelson chooses not to accept the prosecutor's offer, he could face a maximum of 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine if convicted when he appears in court, at a date yet to be decided.The judge said that's not happening and later characterized the offer as a "joke," but Nelson deserves a mistrial and dismissal of charges over that sort of garbage. I don't often agree with SL&P commenter Bill Otis, but he was spot on when he declared, "I have no idea if the prosecution is frivolous, but I'm sure the prosecutor is." Community service, indeed!
If the prosecutor wants to haul Nelson into court more for his celebrity than his offense, indeed, apparently simply for his own enjoyment, it wouldn't surprise me if the same was true of officers who busted him in the first place. Thanks in part to wasteful border security grants, the Sheriff's department in Hudspeth County has 17 deputies who handled just 24 index crimes in 2009, the Texas Tribune reported in December, so I'm sure this was the most interesting thing to happen on their beat in many a year.
The funniest thing to me about all this is that the prosecutor got the song wrong! Willie's famous tune isn't "Blue Eyes Smiling in the Rain," but "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain," thus completing the picture of an ignorant, star-eyed hick who was just happy to be in the same courtroom as the Red-Headed Stranger. What an embarrassment: Thanks, Mr. Prosecutor, for reinforcing every jerkwad stereotype about Texans and Texas Justice held by the rest of the country. (The story has Doug Berman at SL&P soliciting Texan jokes.)
It could have been worse, I suppose. He could have asked for "Georgia on My Behind."
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15 comments:
You know as much as HATR it Grits.....
I have to agree with you on this one...
If the Judge was such a big fan why couldn't he go to see Willie in concert?
This does make all of us TEXANS look like hillbilly idiots....
Nuff said.
Good grief, Grits. Did you get up on the wrong side of the bed? Lighten' up a little. In the grand scheme of 25 billion dollar budget deficits, a prosecutor's somewhat ill-advised attempt to inject a little levity into a situation that has already been joked about on all the late night talk shows is hardly worth getting all stirred up over. It's not good for your blood pressure! :-)
Sorry anon, but that is the worst excuse I've heard for that behavior. People already perceive justice in Texas to be a joke...do we really need to add more fuel to the fire?
There is nothing funny about our counterproductive war on drugs and the state time and money spent on something as stupid as this. In the grand scheme of 25 billion dollar budget deficits, we should be doing all we can to make our system streamlined and efficient...but hey, I'm glad this prosecutor thinks all of this is a funny situation and is willing to waste valuable state resources in this manner (especially if a mistrial is declared).
Grow up.
I don't know about "stirred up," 8:55 - to any country music fan, the subject became irresistible when he got the song name wrong! ;)
The real story here is that Hudspeth County has 17 deputies who could only rustle up 24 arrests in an entire year. WTF do they do all day? And are they hiring?
"WTF do they do all day?"
Write tickets and think of creative ways to spend millions in border security grant money in a county with roughly the same number of residents as my high school! :)
@ 10:44 Don Dickson said The real story here is that Hudspeth County has 17 deputies who could only rustle up 24 arrests in an entire year. WTF do they do all day? And are they hiring?
@ 11:11 Grits said "WTF do they do all day?"
Write tickets and think of creative ways to spend millions in border security grant money in a county with roughly the same number of residents as my high school! :)
Seriously Grits, do you think the 352 traffic stops HCSO reported for 2010 on their racial profiling report generated $1,115,225 million dollars in revenue reported by justice courts in that county for the same period?
Granted some 2009 filings were disposed of in 2010 but are you for real?
Mr. Dickson, how many troopers are assigned to that county?
Okay, 12:53, I take it back. They don't write many tickets, either.
See how handy that racial profiling data is, though!
Grits said Okay, 12:53, I take it back. They don't write many tickets, either.
See how handy that racial profiling data is, though!
Ditto that brother! It's good stuff and glad you made it available.
Course I will say one thing. That $1.1 million generated revenue in justice courts for the number of people in the county is STAGGERING! Does it have to do with it being a 5000 square mile county? I don't know.
My county here in NE TX has less than 15,000 and the revenue for 2010 in justice courts was just under $300,000.00. Course we are the 5th smallest county in the state with IH 30 cutting thru.
Again, staggering revenue numbers again!
Well, in Houston, if Willie agreed to accept Jesus as his personal savior, he could've gotten out of community service in Judge Clinton's court. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/03/29/houston-judge-stops-christian-book-report-option-critics-blast-practice/?test=latestnews
I have been writing about this on Face Book and see no humor in the situation. It is belittling a man that pays a fortune in taxes. helps farmers, invests in alternative fuels and is giving the proceeds of his new album to save wild horses from being slaughtered. The man does so much and his pot smoking does not interfere with his being a great American. I didn't see it as a joke and don't think Willie should have to break contracts for a judge's idiotic demands. For the price of admission to a dance place in Dallas we heard Willie perform and he interacted with his fans. This judge is wrong and the Border Patrol should have been on the border doing their jobs. The whole thing stinks.
I hear you, Angee. But 30,000 dead Mexicans across the river would probably disagree with you. The demand side of drug economics is actually killing real people. We have a serious problem in this state with drugs.
The latest complete prohibitions of, apparently, relatively popular substances, might have something to do with the murders of those people, too.
"The demand side of drug economics is actually killing real people."
The weapons that our government, our law enforcement officials purposely let be smuggled into Mexico as part of a misbegotten maneuver in a misbegotten "War" are "killing real people", too.
Actually the SUPPLY side is what's killing people in Mexico - suppliers killing other suppliers, mostly. On the demand side, drunks kill far more people than druggies.
Supply and demand are like sunshine - they exist whether you like it or not and don't in and of themselves kill anyone. Making popular products illegal is what caused 30,000 deaths, just like Prohibition caused a crime wave in the United States. There's a reason Miller and Budweiser don't settle their differences with bullets.
This is the funniest post I think I've ever read, I've been LMAO for about ten minutes so far! Thank you Grits!!!
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