Penalty

Michael Meyden, a 57-year-old father was sentenced to two years in prison for spiking fruit smoothies with a prescription sedative during a sleepover, in an attempt to make his daughter and her three friends go to bed. After Meyden dosed the girls, two of them blacked out, leading the third girl to text her mother in a panic, leading to the discovery of the incident. The girls were taken to Randall Children’s Hospital where they tested positive for benzodiazepine. Meyden pleaded guilty to three counts of causing another person to ingest a controlled substance, a felony.

The three 12-year-old victims and their mothers spoke in court, expressing their deep sense of betrayal and lasting harm.

One girl said, “Adults are not people I can simply trust anymore. They are people who scare me and make me think twice: What if they were to hurt me the same way as Mr. Meyden?”

Another girl, whose best friend is Meyden’s daughter, tearfully stated, “I trusted him because he was my best friend’s dad. He abused that trust.”

The third girl directly addressed Meyden, saying, “I am disgusted by the look of your face and your actions and all that you have done. You are horrible and I will always hate you for what you have done.”

“You played Russian roulette with my child’s life,” one mother told Meyden. She detailed how her daughter, “barely five feet tall and on a good day 70 pounds soaking wet,” had dangerously high levels of the drug in her system.

Another mother condemned Meyden’s behavior, stating, “No decent parent feels the need to drug their own child and her friends. No decent parent puts their hands on drugged and unconscious young girls without nefarious intent.”

Meyden explained he had spiked the smoothies because he wanted the girls to sleep so he could rest, but admitted he was overly fixated on getting them to bed. “My whole life is destroyed,” he lamented. Judge Ann Lininger acknowledged his remorse but emphasized the severe impact of his actions, telling him he had “created some tremendous wreckage through your decisions.” She praised the victims for their bravery and pursuit of justice, describing them as “strong, articulate young women who experienced an unfathomable injustice.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

This is an example of how extreme selfishness can lead to behavior that harms others resulting in a dramatic betrayal of trust that children place in those in authority over them such as parents, teachers, or church leaders.

A man from Georgia found himself in shock after being handed a speeding ticket totaling a staggering $1.4 million. Connor Cato was pulled over in September for driving at 90 mph in a 55-mph zone, resulting in the citation.

Cato says he knew he would be paying a hefty fine for driving so fast, but even taking that into account, the amount seemed excessive. “‘$1.4 million,’ the lady told me on the phone. I said, ‘This might be a typo’ and she said, ‘No sir, you either pay the amount on the ticket or you come to court on Dec. 21 at 1:30 p.m.’”

Eventually, city officials clarified that the amount was not the actual fine but rather a placeholder generated by the e-citation software used by the local court. The official statement from the City of Savannah stated, “The programmers who designed the software used the largest number possible because super speeder tickets are a mandatory court appearance and do not have a fine amount attached to them when issued by police.”

Savannah city spokesperson Joshua Peacock told the Associated Press that the citation’s value was not meant to intimidate or coerce individuals into appearing in court, explaining that the actual fine is subject to a cap of $1,000, along with additional state-mandated costs. Furthermore, Peacock assured the public that the court is actively working on revising the placeholder language to prevent any further confusion or misunderstanding regarding the nature of the citation.

Still, Cato was not the only person riled up by the big-ticket citation. In a recent editorial, The New York Post called it a metaphor for “the absolute state of the social contract we make with our elected officials and their administrative henchmen.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

People don’t always understand the eternal consequences of their behavior, but there is a shocking day of judgment coming. At that time many will face the consequences of violating God’s laws and there will be no mercy. However, God is merciful “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). At the present time, God uses consequences to awaken people to the penalty of disobedience (Heb. 12:4-12).

Tens of millions of people devour true-crime shows on TV, cable, streaming services, radio, podcasts, and in books. This is deeply personal for author Lisa Nikolidakis and her 2022 book No One Crosses the Wolf. She was 27 in 2003, when her father murdered his girlfriend, her teenage daughter, and committed suicide. She experienced the inevitable trauma and "inherited his crime scene of a house." For 17 years she plodded along writing the book about her shock, confusion, and her emotional wounds.

In recent years she "escaped" from her "darkness" by watching endless streaming TV shows that depicted "bizarre murders, cults, kidnappings, rapes, conspiracies. Bodies dismembered and disappeared and defiled, eccentric townsfolk and investigators each with their own secrets.

The upside for this strange choice was that good usually wins, and there are heroes who pay a price. She writes:

I found comfort in following detectives and prosecutors who care. That’s it, really. Someone cared. In real life, we know this often isn’t the case. But fictional characters pursuing The Big Bad are so invested, they pay for it in their personal lives: failed marriages, mental breakdowns, angry children, demotion. They care at their own peril.

She admits: "I can’t stop asking why? When our world news is often so dark, why on earth do we seek out more?" Some of the common reasons:

Voyeurism is a cheap ticket to a thrill-ride – the allure of our own dark sides. There is also the “could I get away with it” curiosity. Would we make better criminals than the ones who are caught? The criminals fascinate us, and we get to peak in their doors from the safety of our triple bolted ones. The world may be dangerous, but there is comfort in our streaming safety. We remain safe.

Evil as entertainment remains deeply problematic, and it raises for me images of families attending public hangings. We look back at that as macabre spectacle, but I am not so sure that what we are doing now is all that different.

Possible Preaching Angles:

The popularity of true crime shows indicates the needs of human nature: 1) Vicarious sin - People delight in imagining themselves breaking the law and getting away with it. 2) Justice; Penalty for sin – People want to see justice done in an increasingly capricious world where criminals go free; 3) Protection and Comfort – We want to feel safe and protected even while entertaining ourselves with the danger of the world.

An inmate caused a mild drama in the Nigerian High Court after a judge acquitted him of all charges against him, but he refused and demanded to go back to prison. Instead of the usual jubilation that follows any ruling of "discharged and acquitted," the inmate in question headed straight back to the prison. He was intercepted by a prison guard who reminded him he was free to go home. To the chagrin of eyewitnesses, he said he was going nowhere, demanding to be allowed re-entry into the prison.

The calm of the court premises was shattered by the freed prisoner's shouts and pleas to be allowed to go back to prison, as he thrashed about and struggled with several prison officials. According to eyewitnesses, it took the effort of over six prison officials, court workers, and policemen to get the freed inmate out of the court premises.

Possible Preaching Angle:

That's a picture of us all. We have been set free in Christ, but we often find ourselves returning to the prison of our old way of life and behavior. Healthy Christians remind themselves of their settled status in God’s courtroom. We have been "approved by God" (1 Thess. 2:4) and “set free” (Rom. 6:18-22).

Via their Twitter account, the St. John Fisher Catholic High School of Peterborough posted a picture of a book that was returned to its library. How long had this book been out of library circulation? At least 32 years, according to the anonymous scofflaw seeking amnesty. An attached note read, “Sorry, just 32 years overdue. Call it Catholic guilt.”

Chief of administration Rosie Roe was the one who opened the package with the long-lost book, and was disappointed that the guilty party remained anonymous. She said, "It was a real surprise when I opened it and saw what was inside, I thought it's a real shame they didn't leave a name because I was at the school at that time and wonder if I know them.”

It’s not clear whether the anonymous former student was motivated more by guilt or by the book’s subject matter. It’s title: Manners Make a Difference. The school will not return the book to library circulation, since its content is quite outdated, and after calculating that the fine would be approximately $1100 dollars, the school announced that “all is forgiven.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

It’s never too late to come to God with your long covered up sins and mistakes. He is always ready to forgive and release you from penalty through the work of Christ on the Cross.

Pastor and author J.D. Greear writes:

I remember a Muslim asking me when I lived in Southeast Asia, why would God need somebody to die in order to forgive our sin? He said, "If you sinned against me, and I wanted to forgive you, I wouldn't make you kill your dog before I forgave you. Why would God require some kind of sacrifice to forgive?"

Here's how I answered him:

Choosing to forgive somebody means that you are agreeing to absorb the cost of the injustice of what they've done. Imagine you stole my car and you wrecked it, and you don't have insurance and or the money to pay for it. What are my choices? I could make you pay. I could haul you before a judge and request a court-mandated payment plan. If you were foolish enough to steal my $1.5 million Ferrari (No, I do not actually own a Ferrari), you might never pay it off, and you'd always be in my debt.

But I have another choice. I could forgive you …. What am I choosing to do if I say, “I forgive you”? I'm choosing to absorb the cost of your wrong. I'll have to pay the price of having the car fixed. ... You have no debt to pay—not because there was nothing to pay, but because I paid it all. Not only that, I'm choosing to absorb the pain of your treatment of me. ... I'm choosing to give you friendship and acceptance even though you deserve the opposite.

This is always how forgiveness works. It comes at a cost. If you forgive someone, you bear the cost rather than insisting that the wrongdoer does. And that is what Jesus, the Mighty God, was doing when he came to earth and lived as a man and died a criminal's death on a wooden cross.

A single mom was heartbroken after her teenaged daughter was sentenced to Juvenile Hall. What was the offense that warranted such a punishment? Failing to finish her homework. ProPublica reported that Charisse and her teenage daughter Grace were given a strict warning from Judge Mary Ellen Brennan of Oakland County after Grace was placed on probation following theft and assault charges.

Brennan said, “I told her she was on thin ice and I told her that I was going to hold her to the letter of the probation.” She required that Grace submit to GPS monitoring, counseling, visits from a case worker, restrictions on phone and internet access, and keep up with her schoolwork.

The problem arose after Grace’s school responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Charisse, Grace’s mood disorder and ADHD required an individualized education plan that mandated extra teacher support to help keep her on track with assignments. Once classes went online, that support went away.

Nevertheless, new caseworker Rachel Giroux heard in a check-in that Grace had fallen asleep during class and failed to turn in an assignment. Giroux filed a violation of probation report on Grace, despite failing to check in with Grace’s teacher to verify her progress. After the violation was filed, Grace’s teacher told Giroux that she was “not out of alignment with most of my other students.” But that failed to change her mind. Giroux asked the judge to place Grace in detention because she “clearly doesn’t want to abide by the rules in the community.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In our effort to train up our young people, our punitive actions should be guided by grace and mercy as acts of restoration, not retribution, lest we sentence punishments that make things worse in the long run.

When an envoy visited the White House to advocate for an inmate serving a life sentence, most of the headlines went toward fashion model and lifestyle icon Kim Kardashian West. However, accompanying her was former federal judge Kevin Sharp. Sharp carried an authoritative tone because of his years on the federal bench. But Sharp also had a specific opinion on the inmate in question because he was the one who sentenced him to prison.

Back in 2013, Christopher Young was sentenced to life in prison under a federal “three strikes” law, even though his drug charges were nonviolent. Sharp says Young should never have received such a harsh sentence, but that during the trial, his hands were tied because of the sentencing statutes.

Sharp vividly remembered that day in court, listening to Young give his formal statement:

If anyone is getting a mandatory sentence, you have to remember these are still people. You need to give them a chance to talk. It was the worst time I've ever had on the bench. I knew it was a mandatory life sentence. He knew it was a mandatory life sentence …

Sharp is notable for having left a lifetime judicial position to advocate for change:

Our criminal justice system is a mess. It's still the best there is, but there is so much we could do to make it better. And one of those things has got to be get rid of mandatory minimums. Let the judges do what you ask them to do. I got to the point where I'm thinking: “Is my role in society better on the bench or off the bench? Am I better off the bench working and advocating for a more fair criminal justice system?"

Possible Preaching Angle:

Those in authority have a responsibility to wield that authority justly. If we find we can make a difference for those without influence, we are obligated to do so. This will result in the honor and glory of Christ.

Two defendants who appeared in Judge Greg Pinksi’s Montana Cascade County District court received unique punishments as part of the sentencing phase of their trial. Their punishments involved wearing signs.

Ryan Patrick Morris and Troy Allen Nelson were in violation of their respective probations related to previous criminal offenses. They both lied to the court about having served in the military as a way of receiving lenient sentences for their previous criminal behavior.

Judge Pinksi sentenced Morris to ten years for felony burglary, and Nelson five years for felony criminal possession of dangerous drugs, both with years suspended. Morris and Nelson will be required to write letters of apology to various veterans’ groups as well as complete 441 hours of community service. This is one hour for each citizen of Montana killed in combat since the Korean war. Then, during the years of their suspended sentence, they’ll be required to spend each Memorial Day and Veterans day visiting the Montana Veterans Memorial. They are required to wear a placard that reads, “I am a liar, I am not a veteran. I stole valor. I have dishonored all veterans.”

Judge Pinski said, “I want to make sure that my message is received loud and clear by these two defendants. You've been nothing but disrespectful in your conduct. You certainly have not respected the Army. You've not respected the veterans. You've not respected the court. And you haven't respected yourselves."

Potential preaching angles: Lying places you into a trap. When you try to lie your way out of that trap, it only makes it bigger and stronger. The only way to be free is to tell the truth.

Brooklyn police were unable to nab the perpetrator of an ongoing string of graffiti vandalism. They knew they had to get inside the mind of their elusive criminal. For several weeks, the tagger had been spray painting political slogans throughout an area subway station. This sparked a flood of complaints from transportation riders and officials alike.

So, they built a fake wall made of plywood, which was to serve as an obvious target for the prolific tagger, with a hidden door that officers could hide behind. Transit Chief Edward Delatorre instructed his officers to take turns hiding behind the wall, lying in wait for hours at a time.

Delatorre said, “Sure enough, a man came back and began spray painting [another opinionated statement]. So they caught him live, writing on a beam.” The suspect, 43-year-old Jamie Montemarano, was charged with criminal mischief.

Potential Preaching Angles: Even when it appears as though we've gotten away, judgment awaits those who continually flaunt God's laws. Often the thrill of breaking said laws is what hastens our own moment of judgment.

In Minersville, Pennsylvania a man cleared his conscience by paying a 44-year-old parking ticket. The Minersville Police Department received a letter with $5 and a note inside. The return address was "Feeling guilty, Wayward Road, Anytown, Ca."

Police Chief Michael Combs told local news the note said, "Dear PD, I've been carrying this ticket around for 40 plus years. Always intending to pay. Forgive me if I don't give you my info. With respect, Dave."

The fine for the 1974 parking ticket in the eastern Pennsylvania town was $2. But the person added $3 for interest. The same ticket today would be $20.

Combs says the ticket was for a car with Ohio license plates, but the department did not have the technology to track out-of-state vehicles.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Repentance—Is it time for someone to come clean on past or present sins? (2) Forgiveness; Guilt—You don't have to keep your sins from the Lord. He is ready and able to forgive you.

When playing the game of Monopoly, one of the best cards to have is the famous "Get Out of Jail Free" card—but when you're playing the game of "real life," the card doesn't work quite so well. At least, that's what a man in Minnesota found out recently.

He was pulled over when an officer saw he wasn't wearing a seatbelt (and also that the car he was driving "was registered to someone who was wanted on a warrant"). Turns out the driver himself was also wanted—and as he was being searched, "the man pulled out the infamous Monopoly card."

The card may have "provided a few laughs for law enforcement, [but] the man still landed himself in jail."

The county sheriff's office posted on social media about the incident, saying, "We appreciate the humor! … 'A' for effort!"

Potential Preaching Angles: Isn't it a relief that we don't have to try card tricks on God to try and receive mercy, that we receive more than an "'A' for effort" when we stumble and fall? As the writer of Hebrews declares, "Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need" (4:16).

When it comes to excuses, law enforcement officers tend to have heard them all. But recently two drivers came up with some novel excuses. When a driver in Western Australia was pulled over for driving 10 miles per hour over the speed limit, he told police, "The wind was pushing me." The comment didn't amuse the officer, or prevent him from writing a $150 ticket.

Then in the Chicago area, a 25-year-old woman was pulled over by police around 4:15 a.m. after officers watched her vehicle cross the center lane and the double yellow line. When officers pulled the vehicle over, the woman told them she was coming from a bar and "was doing nothing wrong," according to authorities. Then she told police she was driving to White Castle so she could "sober up." One of the police officers note, "Numerous avenues are available to those who chose to drink to get home safely such as Uber and Lyft. Driving around to sober up is not one of them."

Two-year-old Harper Westover lives in Washington, D.C.—her parents "insist she's just the tidiest, most polite, and well-behaved toddler in the nation's capital."

In August 2016, however, those "tidiest" and "well-behaved" descriptors were brought into question as a "Notice of Violation" appeared in the Westovers' mail, fining Harper $75 for littering in the alley behind her house.

The evidence? "[A] discarded envelope a city worker had found with a bag of trash in the alley … addressed to [Harper] from Bucky's Buddies, a kids club for fans of the University of Wisconsin at Madison," her mother's alma mater.

Harper's mother, Theresa, "said there's no way anyone in her family littered: Every week, she or her husband leave the trash bin outside their home in the alley for garbage pickup." But when she called to get the ticket rescinded, the solid waste inspector refused to do so.

It was only after an online uproar and local news coverage that a public works official "said he would waive both Harper's and her mother's violations."

Potential Preaching Angles: When faced with the weight of our sin and the seemingly impossible prospect of trying to find God's favor, we might find ourselves in Harper's shoes: feeling like a tiny child charged with paying a heavy fine. Yet "it is by grace [we] have been saved, through faith—and this is not from [ourselves], it is the gift of God" (Eph. 2:8).

David Little was known as a man of strength. This former linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers had an impressive career in the National Football League. During his 12 seasons with the Steelers, Little started 125 of the 179 games and once played in 89 in a row. In 1990 he was voted to the Pro Bowl.

Neither Little nor his wife knew the stellar athlete had an enlarged heart. On March 17, 2005, while bench pressing 250 pounds of weights, the 46-year-old experienced a heart arrhythmia that caused him to drop the 250-pound barbell on his chest. The weights rolled onto his throat and suffocated him.

Even a person of great strength can have a fatal weakness.

Hurrying my 11-year-old daughter to school, I turned right on red where it was prohibited. "Uh, oh," I said, realizing my mistake. "I just made an illegal turn."

"It's all right," my daughter said. "The police car behind us did the same thing."

No one can quantify the risk of transmission [of AIDS] in the population at large. But whether it is one in ten or one in 10,000 for a single encounter, I am tired of people saying that all life is risk....If someone showed you 10,000 guns and said that only one was loaded, would you pick one up and fire it at your temple if the prize were a toaster?