Why Your Son/Brother/Husband is a Criminal

We assume most of our readers have heard the old joke with the punch line "Everyone was out of step but Jim." This seems to be the mantra of many families with sons, brothers, or husbands accused of major crimes. They're all innocent, as they have been every day of their lives, and it's law enforcement or news outlets or (gasp!) bloggers who have conspired to ruin someone's life.

Just how would that work? Do we all get together on a regular basis, including judges and grand juries who issue warrants, to pick some innocent person to persecute? Or is it that criminals have enabling families whose members all wear aluminum foil hats?

Earlier this month, a local online news outlet posted an article on the arrest of Christopher Allen Speegle, a 27 year-old house painter from Tuscumbia. After the story appeared, we received some reader requests to look into this article, which they all assured us wasn't true. We were happy to check out what we could concerning Speegle's two charges. We found this and published it directly to our FB page:

Now we've been contacted by an aunt of Speegle who claims we've made up the charges, Yes, of course, it makes perfect sense that we have access to the Colbert County Sheriff Department's records. Uh, no, not quite. We're trying to ruin the man's life? No. We think he's already done a good job of that.

Apparently now the TimesDaily has joined the plot to besmirch this fine young man's name:

Yes, obviously this man comes from fine upstanding stock; his aunt has taught us some new words. No wonder some universities no longer teach Western Civilization--there's no such thing in 2016.

And Christopher? As of this moment he remains in the Colbert County jail...

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Here's a song about another innocent man. We would dedicate the tune to someone in Limestone Prison, but alas, there's no Internet in that secure facility. Interesting note: When the recording was first released, most radio stations refused to play it:





Shoalanda