I’m starting a new feature here on my little slice of the blogosphere. Life is too damn serious most of the time and the headlines are enough to make you want to weld your doors and windows shut.  So, in this segment, we will feature the criminal equivalent of David Letterman’s Stupid Human Tricks.  Let’s call it Felony Stupid Criminals.

How is this supposed to make me feel better when a home invasion crew kicks in my front door, you ask?  In the remote chance that it does happen to you, I hope you may be able to get some comfort from the fact that most criminals aren’t that bright and will screw it up.  If that doesn’t help, well then, the robbers probably took your computer so you can’t read this anyway.

For every Charles Manson, or Jeffery Dahlmer, there are a hundred who couldn’t pull off the “perfect crime” if their lives depended on a clean getaway.  We could spend hours analyzing the “why” they do the things they do to get caught, but more often than you’d think, it boils down to felony stupid.

Prisons are bursting at the seams with men and women who made bad choices. Stupid, flawed choices that put them behind bars.

I recall interviewing a prisoner to prepare a report for a parole board hearing. The man was serving a seven-years to life term for kidnapping, a nasty, power-hungry crime when you think about it.  Controlling another person for robbery and rape, in this case.  Our felon, carjacked single woman at gunpoint, forced her to drive to through city streets towards somewhere isolated, where he planned to steal her car, her possessions and have his way with her.

He sat in the passenger seat, left arm extended across the seat back,  a pistol held to the back of her head as she drove.  Our kidnapper, groped his victim with his free hand and directed her with turn by turn directions.  She tried slowing down, in the hope that someone would see what was happening.  Our gun toting carjacker figured out what she was doing and ordered her to speed up and take the next right turn.  The gun pressed at the back of her head told her he was serious.

She complied and stepped on the gas, taking the next corner a bit faster than than expected.  The turn startled the kidnapper, who lost his grip on the gun and the weapon sailed out the driver’s open window, skittering out onto the pavement.  The woman realized the gun was gone, most likely from the gunman’s sudden onset of curse words worthy of a Tourette’s patient.  She slammed on the brakes at an intersection and bailed from the car.  The kidnapper couldn’t purse her because he was busy howling in pain, holding his ribs from the impact on the dashboard.

At this intersection, a County Sheriff’s Deputy in his patrol car watched the woman run from the car.  She pointed back to her vehicle screamed, “He carjacked me!”  Our would-be kidnapper was arrested without any resistance.

When asked to explain how he let the gun slip out the window, all he could tell me is, “It happens sometimes.”

Our weak gripped gunman continues to serve his seven-years to life term in prison and it comes down to one thing, he was a Felony Stupid Criminal.

In the interest of justice, I will continue to share the ill-fated exploits of failed criminals from the archives.  If you have a story, you think others would appreciate, send me an e-mail.  Please include the details (no names, to protect the stupid), including a link to the news outlet reporting the story, and I’ll post it here, giving you credit for the collar of a Felony Stupid Criminal.

Happy hunting.