Tennessee Woman Sentenced to Jail for Not Mowing Her Lawn

Screen Shot 2014-10-21 at 4.16.59 PMThe trend of average U.S. citizens being incarcerated by overzealous judges and prosecutors within the police state formerly known as America continues with reckless abandon. In fact, these sorts of cases are becoming so commonplace I simply cannot keep up with all of them. The following story is a perfect followup to my piece earlier today, which shows how American public school students are being arrested or harassed by police for the most minor of infractions, such as wearing too much perfume, sharing a classmates’ chicken nuggets, throwing an eraser or chewing gum.

If you are an adult American slave, you can add not mowing your lawn to the list of prison-worthy crimes in the police state.

From Yahoo News:

If you are a resident of Lenoir City, Tennessee, you might want to remember to mow your lawn — otherwise, you will be spending the night in jail.

Karen Holloway just spent six hours in a jail cell for failing to maintain her yard in accordance with the standards set by the city.

The saga began last summer, when Holloway was sent a citation for her overgrown grass and shrubbery. Holloway, who works a full-time job and has two children living at home, a husband in school, and one family vehicle, admits the yard needed some attention but that it just wasn’t feasible to do the work.

“The bushes and trees were overgrown. But that’s certainly not a criminal offense,” she says.

Last week, Judge Terry Vann handed down a five-day jail sentence to Holloway for refusing to comply with the city ordinances regarding yard maintenance, specifically the lack thereof. Holloway feels this was all just too much, saying, “It’s not right. Why would you put me in jail with child molesters and people who’ve done real crimes, because I haven’t maintained my yard.”

In addition to the severity of the sentencing, Holloway say she also feels that she was bullied during the process because she was never read her rights or told that she could have a lawyer present.

And you wonder why so many Americans feel the country is on the wrong track. As the Wall Street Journal noted yesterday:

The only time the public has felt worse was in October 2008, during the first, deep spasms of the recession. Then, 78% said the nation was on the wrong track, and only 12% felt good about the country’s direction. The last time “right direction” beat out “wrong track” was in January 2004 — and the last election cycle where that was the case was 2002.

For related storied about serfs being arrested for minor incidents, while the rich and powerful get away with enormous criminality, see:

Connecticut Man Arrested for “Passive Aggressive” Behavior to a Watermelon

New Jersey Threatens to Take 13-Year-Old Student From His Father Due to “Non-Conforming Behavior”

Hyper-Sensitive Illinois Mayor Orders Police Raid Over Parody Twitter Account

Charleston Man Receives $525 Federal Fine for Failing to Pay for a $0.89 Refill

The “War on Street Artists” – Puppeteer Unlawfully Arrested and Harassed in NYC Subway

Video of the Day – Thuggish Militarized Police Terrorize and SWAT Team Iowa Family

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger


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17 thoughts on “Tennessee Woman Sentenced to Jail for Not Mowing Her Lawn”

  1. She has a free pass, now; because she has already done her time for “shitty yard” they can’t ever hassle her again – Double Jeopardy is approximately an automatic dismissal.

    The Institute for Justice has had a lot of success crushing such bullshit ordinances based on, basically, zoning, but they don’t take on tiny cases for obvious reasons.

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  2. Nope, they’ll consider future “offenses” as new. If she does not comply, she will go back to jail – probably longer! Sad but true 🙁

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    • That depends on the city, and appealing that bullshit up to the county level often ends it because the regional judges care more about the law and less about pleasing city hall (or it’s accountants.)

  3. Talk about a victim-less crime! So the problem was that her busy schedule did not afford her the time to maintain her lawn. Solution: put her in prison so that she has even less time to do it.

    What ever happened to compassion and common sense? Assuming that she wasn’t simply being belligerent about it, couldn’t the police and judge work with her to help her find a solution to get the job done? Seems to me that the money spent to incarcerate her would have been better spent hiring someone to do the work for a reasonable price (which she would then need to pay back). I am sure there are many unemployed people who would do the work for a song.

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    • In most (rational) municipalities, the justification is avoiding wildlife in the city limits (Detroit’s pheasant and rodent problems are good examples), but the most common ‘fine’ is that they send over the local park service to mow it for you and charge you $500 or so.

      (The theory being that next time you’ll be proactive and hire a neighbor for $25 of a service for $50 because both are cheaper.)

      To got to court without arming yourself with the many examples of refuted Eminent Domain abuses means planning for failure.

  4. Part of this issue is that American judges have great power to send people to jail for saying the wrong thing in court, for not “respecting” them etc. properly, which I suspect may have happened here. The French got rid of this crap during the French revolution by cutting the heads off of judges and changing their legal system so that judges would not have such absolute power again.

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  5. I first saw this story when it came out last week and followed links to local coverage, as I am located very close to Lenoir City. Another case of a small town exhibiting big government control, whether it be at the city or county level, sadly this is all too common. What got to me was something(s) that did not make sense after following links to the local coverage out of Knoxville news sites. Both parents are busy, working, school, kids, I got it. The point of having only 1 car being mentioned surprised me, as how does that relate to lawn maintenance, as one’s lawn is usually within walking distance, like out the front door. Also, local coverage stated that when given jail time she asked if she could perform community service for either 5 or 6 hours, I do not remember the exact quote from the article. If you can offer up 5 or 6 hours, where you may have to drive to perform the service, but still did not have a couple hours to mow the lawn and such, it made me wonder that there may be more to the story. Finally, the Yahoo story states that “she’s enlisted an army of friends and family to help keep her lawn shipshape.” Guessing her Lenoir City neighbors have not been willing or able to offer a bit of help, or no neighbor kids in need of making a few dollars? Let’s hope the issue gets resolved before we read about this story again next year, with the citation being served by a SWAT team performing big government lawn maintenance patrol duties.

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  6. “Why would you put me in jail with child molesters and people who’ve done real crimes, because I haven’t maintained my yard.””

    The moron obviously believes that everyone else in prison is getting what they deserve.

    Fuck her.

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  7. How about multiple attempts to Kill me using medically diagnosed doping with drugs and an Incarceration.

    I would like to send you a copy of a short summary I created.

    Please Respond.
    Judge in Washington County, Oregon.
    Thomas Clark

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  8. I would move and let the city become a ghost town, this is sick, that poor lady didn’t deserve to GO TO JAIL take those ta dollars used to arrest her and put it towards local lawn care instead of incarcerating people.

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  9. I live in Lenoir city and do my best to be a good neighbor and property owner. Their are many others in the city that don’t take care of their property which makes others suffer. If you dont choose to follow code in the city please move to the country .

    Reply

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