Georgia Man Ordered To Carry Victim’s Photo For 2 Years
The 50-year-old Daniel Crane from Georgia was ordered June 22 to carry around the picture of 18-year-old Summer Lee whom he killed when his tractor-trailer collided with her car on Aug. 20, 2016.
Judge Rusty Carlisle announced his judgment after Crane pleaded guilty to a rear-end collision with the victim's SUV and on the Interstate-70 near Atlanta and crashing it into five other vehicles. He has been slapped with a two-year sentence (60 days in jail and the rest in probation). Also, during the entire time period, he is required to carry around a photograph of the victim.
"I said to myself, 'This fella also needs to be reminded of the fact that she forgave him and of the life that he took,'" Judge Carlisle told Fox News on Friday. "It may stay folded in his pocket and he may never look at it, but if he knows he's got to pick it up every morning and put it in the pocket of whatever clothes he wears, then maybe that will make him think a little bit about what happened," he added.
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In addition to Lee’s picture, Crane is also required to carry a copy of a pre-written statement by her mother, Kimberly Lee.
"I believe in my heart, Summer would want me to forgive you, but please know the difference in forgiving and forgetting," Kimberly told the court, in part, reading from a statement she wrote beforehand. "I know through my faith I must forgive if I plan on seeing her again when my day comes, so I would like to say I forgive you."
This is not the first time criminal courts have doled out odd court sentences to convicts. Judges often hand out bizarre sentences to the accused, which in their opinion, are just the right kind of punishments to make the convicts in question realize what they had done.
In November 2012, a 32-year-old convict named Shena Hardin from Cleveland was handed over a unique punishment by a court. She was ordered to stand at a busy junction in Cleveland, Ohio, for two days holding a signboard that read, "Only an idiot would drive on the sidewalk to avoid a school bus." The punishment was meant to be an eye-opener for Hardin after she pleaded guilty to driving on the sidewalk as school children were getting off the bus, the Christian Science Monitor reported.
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Melissa Dawn Sweeney, a woman from Texas was convicted of starving three horses in 2005. Judge Mike Peters, who heard her case, sentenced Sweeney to a month in jail and ordered the photos of the three horses she starved be posted on the walls of her prison cell. In addition, he also ordered the jail staff to serve her just bread and water for the first three days of her sentence. "She's going to get more than her horses got," Judge Mike Peters said while announcing Sweeney's punishment.
Michael A. Cicconetti, a judge from Ohio's Painesville, Lake County, is known to hand over unusual punishments to the convicts. He is even known for offering defendants the choice between traditional sentences and a creative one, which is to be handpicked by him. Jeremy Sherwood, 18, who was accused of stealing from an adult store, chose traditional sentence for himself, including being jailed for a month. Sherwood was ordered to sit outside the store which he robbed with a blindfold on. He was also made to carry the sign, “See no evil.”
In some cases, the defendants have flagged the decisions of the judges who have handed out innovative punishments. However, the punishments have generally received support from the public. There has been no definitive proof that such punishments end up transforming a convict’s criminal intent.
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