Sometimes the Law Works

A short time ago, I wrote about a friend of mine whose wife is a handful. Today she did him and me a big favor by showing up for a hearing and getting arrested and put away without bond.

I have known my friend for about 16 years. We met in church, where we served on the security team. I am the godfather of his youngest daughter.

His wife has always been an interesting lady. She is extremely emotional, and she seems to think her emotions are the truth and all the justification she needs for doing whatever they tell her to do.

She has offended a lot of people, and I think she has driven people away from her husband.

It looks like she decided she didn’t want him any more. He showed me a handwritten list of poisons and their effects, and he said it was her handwriting. He says she put fentanyl in his closet and called the cops on him. He says she beat herself up in front of their children, called the police, and tried to get him arrested. He says the kids ratted her out, and she got a DV beef and a protective order.

He says she got herself a Christian rapper boyfriend, and the two of them went to my friend’s house and burglarized it, stealing important papers and my friend’s grandmother’s cremated remains. His grandmother raised him, and he adored her.

The burglary took place while the protective order was in place, and he says she also went to their children’s school and bothered them. He says she failed a diversion program that was intended to keep her out of jail. He tells me she lives near me but she tells the courts she lives in Georgia.

He says she has done a lot of horrible things, like claiming his children as dependents while they lived with him. He says she filed for child support in Florida while they both lived in Georgia. It’s bad not to support your kids, but imagine taking money from the parent who is raising them without your help.

A while back, someone told my local police a black man was going in and out of my house, selling fentanyl. My friend is black. I had to call the police and tell them all about her.

Why she thought they would believe a Georgia resident would drive 6 hours repeatedly to sell drugs is beyond me.

He managed to get her served with divorce papers, and his divorce lawyer seems to have decided to network with a prosecutor. Today the divorce case had what I believe was a scheduling hearing. It was set for 9 a.m., and both parties had to attend. At 9:51, I got a text letting me know she was in jail.

You know what? I just looked it up. It was a custody hearing. As for her domestic violence case, there are 6 counts. She got a couple because her husband said she hit and bit him, and the other 4 are child cruelty counts. If you attack your spouse in front of your children, you get one count per child.

It appears the court’s site has not been updated to reflect today’s events.

My understanding is that because she has behaved so badly, she can’t bond out. If so, she is stuck in jail until her trial, which could be pretty far off, depending on the breaks. The web mentions 7 months as a lower limit.

I thought this was pretty slick. I don’t think her attorney appreciated it, however. Imagine strolling into a hearing, thinking you’re going to get a family law judge to help your client abuse the father of her children, and having the cops haul her off to the pokey to be held without bail.

To be clear, there are two cases: civil and criminal. There is a divorce attorney, and there is a prosecutor. My friend’s divorce lawyer and the prosecutor appear to have used the civil case as a tool to advance the criminal case.

The criminal charges and pretrial detention should be extremely helpful to my friend in his divorce. I don’t think I have to explain.

When I heard about the ashes a few weeks back, I knew she had stepped in it. She probably thinks a person’s remains are worthless, so stealing and throwing them out can’t be a crime. Oh, so wrong. Being a for-real lawyer in spite of how I may come across here, I knew there had to be one or more special statutes crafted for people who did rotten things with other people’s remains. I looked it up. I’m not sure which Georgia statute or statutes apply here. Two look applicable. If either applies, stealing and discarding cremated remains is a felony with a minimum sentence of one year. Prison, not jail.

I told my friend fooling with the ashes was likely a felony, and I told him he needed to let his lawyer know.

Today I was told she had been booked for theft. I thought that was wrong, so I sent my friend a link to what I think is the appropriate statute.

Defendants try to plead down, and the worse the initial charges are, the worse the prosecutor’s offer will be. To get meaningful relief and protection for my friend, the prosecutor needs to aim high.

She made a big mistake, pulling this in Georgia. There was a huge scandal there involving a cemetery dumping bodies that were supposed to be buried or cremated, and some people were given the wrong ashes. The legislature tightened things up to provide real punishments.

I am told she was also charged with aggravated stalking.

This is another crime an ignorant person would not think was illegal. “It’s a free country. I can go where I want. I can talk to whoever I want to.” No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO. You may not. If you drive another person crazy, it’s a misdemeanor. If you keep doing it, it’s a felony. It appears my friend’s wife did not know this.

It’s terrible to say you were relieved to hear that someone was put in jail, but I certainly was. My friend has gone through things I wouldn’t wish on anyone. He was abused for about 20 years. And then she decided to make his problems my family’s problem, for no clear reason.

Although I admit I wish I had been there to see the cops arrest her, because she seems to have been enjoying playing cat-and-mouse with everyone, I am not interested in seeing her suffer. I am interested in seeing someone put an end to the mistreatment of others, and I would like to go the rest of my life without having any involvement with her, as though she were chained in a hole somewhere on Mars. I want my friend to sleep well at night. I want his kids to be at peace. I want him to marry a nice Christian lady. I don’t want to have concerns about the safety of my family.

I don’t think any violence or additional harassment are headed my way, but it’s unsettling to know an unstable person is willing to drag my family into a mess like this, and I have to consider worst-case scenarios so I will remain prepared.

I bought my first pistol because my sister let me know from rehab that she was going to send her junkie male acquaintances after me. The current situation seems a bit like a replay. And I did nothing to deserve being involved in my friend’s domestic issues.

Back then it was one lonely Glock pistol. Now my default self-defense option is a rifle.

I’m also reminded of another event in my sister’s life. She moved in with my elderly aunt, who is a stroke victim, and made herself a parasite. My aunt could not get rid of her. She said my sister was making her drive her around and buy her groceries from Whole Foods. She said her habits had filled the house with roaches. She said she was verbally abusive. This was back in the covid days, and my aunt said my sister taunted her, saying she couldn’t evict her because of the pandemic. My aunt’s daughter wanted to strangle her.

One day my aunt refused to drive my sister to Whole Foods, and my sister decided to walk, fell in a ditch, and broke her leg very badly. She was there for hours before someone found her.

We all felt terrible for her, and we wondered if we had prayed for her enough.

No, we didn’t! We all felt tremendous relief. The joy of being free of her made whatever sympathy we felt imperceptible.

She had to get surgery and move to a physical rehab place. While she was gone, her things were removed from my aunt’s home without her consent, and the cleanup started.

Should I say this wasn’t a huge blessing? I can’t.

Anyway, my hope that this woman is confined is not about punishment or revenge. If she somehow manages to go on and live a wonderful life that in no way involves my friend or my family, fantastic. As long as my family and I never hear from her again, may she win the Powerball lottery and spend the rest of her life on a yacht tied up in Monaco.

If they can confine her for a couple of years, everyone else in the world will get some needed rest, and maybe she will find other things to do upon her release.

I suppose she’ll get more like a year, but I don’t know much about it. I would think the nature of the stalking charge makes a long period of confinement necessary. A person who violates protective orders in order to stalk is clearly likely to do it again as soon as she’s out.

I would guess her alleged choice not to comply with her diversion conditions will motivate the judge to sentence her to more time than she would otherwise get.

I keep telling my friend that every bad thing she does to him helps him in the end, and it’s true. If she has really done all these things, she has done more for him than the lawyers.

It’s terrible to be the kind of person who only makes people happy when something awful happens to you or when you leave. Multiple nice people have said they hope my friend’s wife dies. That’s how bad it is. Years of prayer and patience appear to have gone nowhere. Her arrest was a huge break for her husband and kids. My sister’s broken leg may have saved my aunt’s life. I honestly believe God put her in that ditch. It happened right after I prayed for relief.

Why not be the kind of person people love to be around? Why not be someone other people miss when you’re gone? It’s not that hard. A lot of people pull it off.