In a recent post, I noted that the prosecutor’s solution to inane application of laws was that they were people of intelligence, good will and sound judgment, who would never prosecute a person for some absurd offense.  Yeah, well, not all prosecutors feel the same way.

Take, for example, the prosecution of a guy who was thought to have burgled his own home.  While they couldn’t make the burglary charge stick, that didn’t stop them from going after him for resisting arrest.

On March 15, 2009, a neighbor reported seeing a black man kick in the front door of the home at 111 Finley Street. When police arrived on scene, they repeatedly told 30-year-old Marco Saucedo, whom they believed to be the burglar, to come out of the home. Saucedo, who doesn’t speak English, did not comply and police entered the home, finding that he had locked himself in the bathroom, according to county prosecutor Gary Taylor. Taylor on Tuesday played dashboard camera video for the jury of five men and a woman in County Court-at-Law No. 2 Judge Derek Flournoy’s courtroom.

“Now you’ve got nine officers here. Come on out,” Lufkin Police officer John Davis says on the video, followed by the sound of knocking.

“Come on out with your hands up,” the officer says.

According to testimony, the officers sprayed pepper spray under the crack in the bathroom door and Saucedo came out of the bathroom and resisted arrest, at which point police shot him multiple times with a pepper ball gun. Police then tackled Saucedo, who was fighting being taken into custody, to the living room floor, Davis said. In the process Saucedo suffered a large gash to the top of his head, according to testimony in his trial Tuesday.

The good news it that they used a “pepper ball gun,” rather than spraying the bathroom door with hollow point rounds.  But isn’t it enough that a guy, in his own home, in his own bathroom, had the cops enter his home, spray him and end up with a gash in his head?  Nope.  Prosecutor Gary Taylor found it critical that he be punished for being uncooperative.

For a bit of balance, it’s worth noting that Judge Flournoy had this to say at sentence :

“I haven’t heard from you and I have no idea why you didn’t speak. That causes me some trouble. I don’t agree with the notion you are a victim in this case,” Flournoy said. “I think your actions put you and the officers in harm’s way. This could have been easily avoided.”

So the homeowner’s actions within his own home put the officer’s in harm’s way?  Something to certainly bear in mind.

And then  there’s the case of two 14-year-old Jersey boys, one of whom stuck his naked butt in two 12-year-old kids’ faces, resulting in their being branded lifetime sex offenders.  The appellate court, upholding this because the law left them no other choice, noted its absurdity but was nonetheless constrained by Megan’s Law.

Call it bullying or call it horseplay. Either way, a state appellate court panel says roughhousing with a sexual connotation by a pair of 14-year-old Somerset County boys was a crime that requires them to register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives.

In a decision handed down Monday, the three-judge panel acknowledged the severity of its decision, but said it was bound to uphold the law. “We are keenly aware that our decision may have profound lifelong ramifications for these two boys as well as others similarly situated,” Judge Jose Fuentes wrote.

One of the boys, whose case went to trial, said he had sat on the faces of a pair of 12-year-old schoolmates with his bare buttocks in November 2008 “cause I thought it was funny and I was trying to get my friends to laugh,” he told a family court judge.

But an act is considered criminal sexual contact if it is done for sexual gratification or to degrade or humiliate the victim, and punishable by lifetime registration — even for juveniles — under Megan’s Law, which requires a person convicted of a sex crime against a child to notify police of changes of address or employment.

The 14-year-old definitely needs a damn good smack for engaging in this conduct, but lifetime sex offender status?  The prosecutor wanted it and got it.  He must have known it would mean they would be subject to Megan’s Law, destroying their lives for this teenage stupidity, but no doubt felt that he was protecting society from their perpetual threat of naked tushies and dumbass schoolboy pranks that would be best fixed behind a woodshed.

We need not fear the unintended consequences of our law-a-day reaction to outlier circumstances, producing absurd and bizarre results, for we have prosecutors who will exercise discretion to not allow this craziness to happen.

Or not.

Why get our panties in a twist over the absurd application of law when we have prosecutorial discretion to save us?  Because of cases like these.