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Judge Michael Cicconetti is a fair, rational upholder of the law. But that doesn’t mean I ever want to be on the wrong side of one of his cases.
Cicconetti’s sentences are...unconventional. He displayed his first example of “creative justice” in the mid-’90s when someone who abandoned 35 kittens in a forest in the dead of winter (I’m sobbing) was given the option to shorten their jail time should he spend a night in the woods themselves.
The judge’s latest defendant, 18-year-old Bayley Toth, was convicted of criminal mischief (which sounds like a fake charge but OK) for spending a night knocking sh*t over. Literally -- he and his friends toppled a port-a-potty.
Cicconetti, who presides over Plainesville, Ohio, told him, “You act like an animal, you’re going to take care of animals,” and thus retracted most of Toth’s 120-day jail sentence to dole out a better different punishment: cleaning up animal waste at the county fairgrounds.
The judge’s inventive disciplinary actions are reserved for first-time offenders, and he asserts that the rate of repeat offenders after one of his sentences is low.
Cicconetti’s punishments have gotten more cunning and more hilarious as the years have gone on.