1. WEIRD CASES
In The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Bracknell says indignantly that “strange
coincidences are not supposed to occur”. Mindy Lynn Neugebauer, from Mangum,
Oklahoma, might have thought the same thing recently when she was caught by police in
possession of drugs.
Ms Neugebauer had texted an acquaintance with a message that said “if you want a hit of this
stuff before it’s all gone you better get over here”. What Ms Neugebauer didn’t realise was
that when she sent the message she had not keyed in the number she’d intended so it did not
go to her acquaintance but to another man altogether. The random recipient happened to be
Chris Counts - an agent at District III Drug Task Force. You can imagine his reaction when
he opened the text.
Agent Counts texted back immediately to ask her for the address and she replied with the
information. He then checked the sender’s phone registration and identified Ms Neugebauer.
Officers turned up at her home and asked her about the text. She said it was just a reference
to some marijuana she had wrapped up in a cigar paper. However, she allowed the officers to
search her home and under her mattress they found a plastic bag containing suspected
cocaine. She was issued with a felony warrant on charges of possession of a controlled
substance and unlawful possession of a controlled drug with intent to distribute. Her case will
be heard later this year.
People accidentally bringing the police to their door, and paying a high-price for it, have
triggered some unusual cases. Ranking high in the league of such odd convictions is the case
of Brian McGacken in Farmingdale, New Jersey. A neighbour who heard a woman screaming
loudly inside McGacken’s house called the police. Officers arrived and McGacken opened the
front door dressed only in a bathrobe. Asked about the loud screaming he said it was his
girlfriend expressing rapture during “loud sex”. The officers asked to see the girlfriend and
she came downstairs wearing only a towel and confirmed that she had indeed been enjoying
the company of Mr McGracken.
Then, when McGracken went upstairs to get his ID as requested, one of the officers followed
him up and “smelled the odour of raw marijuana”. They found 15 marijuana plants, several
bagged quantities of the drug, and distribution paraphernalia. The case, which went all the
way to the appeal court, turned on whether the officers were allowed to enter the house under
an “emergency aid” exception to the general rule which requires a search warrant. The state
argued the officers acted lawfully when, responding to the 911 call about the loud scream,
they entered the house to check there was no-one else apart from the towelled girlfriend who
might have been in distress. The appeal court upheld McGracken’s conviction. The loud sex
led to a long sentence: McGracken was given ten years.
Gary Slapper is Professor of Law at The Open University. His new book Weird Cases is
published by Wildy, Simmonds & Hill.
These articles were published by The Times Online as part of the weekly column written by
Gary Slapper