Crime

AR-15 Couple Plead Guilty, Immediately Troll Prosecutors For Offering Leniency

'I did it, and I'd do it again.'

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Screenshot via Twitter

Mark McCloskey faced up to 15 days in jail while his wife Patricia faced up to a year. Neither will be going, having entered guilty pleas that amount to less than $3000 in fines and an agreement to surrender their weapons. And they probably shouldn’t have gone to jail. Incarceration is overprescribed in the country and just because the prisons are filled with people who shouldn’t be there is no reason to toss more in when there are sufficient alternative penalties available.

That said, earning that slap on the wrist that goes along with a plea deal requires something from the accused. Guilty pleas require, on some basic level, the defendant to admit that they committed a crime that they should not have. The government is skimping on the penalty in exchange for the defendants making a show of being appropriately chastened by the experience that they won’t show up in court again.

The special prosecutor in the case, former U.S. Attorney Richard G. Callahan, said, “This particular resolution of these two cases represents my best judgment of an appropriate and fair disposition for the parties involved as well as the public good.” The “public good” in this sentence means “we won’t have these people waving guns at marchers again.” Let’s see how that turned out.

From the courthouse steps Mark McCloskey is quoted:

“The prosecutor dropped every charge except for alleging that I purposely placed other people in imminent risk of physical injury, right, and I sure as heck did,” he said.

Well there you go! An admission that his actions were dangerous, demonstrating that he grasps the nature of the charged conduct. This is how guilty pleas are supposed to…. Oh, wait a minute, there’s more:

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“That’s what the guns were there for and I’d do it again any time the mob approaches me. … In other words, I stood out on the porch with my rifle and made them back up. And that’s what I’d do again. If that’s a crime in Missouri, by God I did it, and I’d do it again.”

“I’d do it and I’d do it again”? That’s a witness stand confession on Perry Mason not the statement of someone who just delivered an allocution.

Before the right-wingers rush to his defense, imagine a drunk driver who killed a baby walking out of court having successfully negotiated it all down to probation and proclaiming “I purposely placed other people in imminent risk of physical injury, right, and I sure as heck did… that’s what the BOOZE was there for and I’d do it again any time it’s Two-for-One Tuesdays down at Molly O’Plastered’s… if that’s a crime in Missouri, by God I did it, and I’d do it again.”

And McCloskey can commit the crime again because after being ordered to surrender the weapons used in the incident, he just went out and bought another one. There are a lot of scary political ads about the revolving door criminal justice system. Well, here it is.

It’s not entirely clear how Richard Callahan saves face coming out of this.

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He pushed aside the existing charges brought by the elected prosecutor (who had to be removed from the case for fundraising off the matter… because even though every other local prosecutor uses high profile cases as campaign tools, it’s still not right) and put together a joke punishment for “the public good” and the guy tells the press he’s intending to commit the crime again.

Damn Callahan, this dude didn’t even get 100 yards before publicly calling you a chump.

St. Louis gun-waving couple plead guilty to misdemeanor charges [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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