criminal but funny

I read a lot for criminal law this week on causation and group criminality. The topics aren’t that important for the purposes of this entry – what IS important is how random and/or nonsensical some of the details in these cases are. For instance:

In a disturbing rape case from the 1930’s in which the defendant abducted a woman and sexually assaulted her including infliction of severe bite marks (!?!) the woman was somehow able to leave the hotel they were staying at and, accompanied by a random man we are told is named ”Shorty", goes to buy a hat. A HAT. Oh, also, while she is buying the hat she buys 6 tablets of bichloride so that she can try to kill herself and then she returns to the hotel! The issue the case raised was whether the defendant was liable for her later death in part because of her (semi-failed) suicide attempt. The issue that I want to raise is – why the hell did he let her go out with Shorty to buy a hat? Am I missing something here?

In a case that examined the relationship between the liability of parties, a man (we’ll call him A) propositioned another (B) to burglarize a store, not knowing that B was actually a relative of the store owners and wasn’t too psyched about the idea of stealing from them. So B goes along with the plan in an attempt to arrest A and lets the store owners know of his big plan. On the night of the burglary, A and B go to the store together, A opens the window for B to climb in and B “handed out a side of bacon” and that was all they stole.

I reread that sentence a couple of time. “Handed out a side of bacon”???? Was this lingo from 1891 that I was not following? Turns out – nope! They really did steal bacon. It seems to me that if you are going to rob a store, it makes more sense to go for something a little more valuable like say, I don’t know, diamonds or even very nice silverware. But bacon???? I guess people have different interpretations of what breaking the law is worth.