You Have the Right To Remain Silent

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Last time here I wrote about a couple of stupid laws in Florida. Turns out there are even more stupid laws in Texas, which is a shame because my mother was a Texan. If I really put my mind to it, I could probably do nothing but write about stupid laws in all the 50 states and all the countries of the world. I could call the blog “Stupid Laws in All the 50 States and All the Countries of the World.”

These Texas laws are particularly stupid because they are directed at schoolchildren, some of them really, really young schoolchildren. According to The Daily, a newspaper you can only read on the iPad and so I won’t link it here, Texas police have issued hundreds of thousands of criminal citations to kids as young as 6, for such awful things as talking in class, jumping up and down on your seat on the school bus, and launching paper airplanes to sail over the heads of teachers writing on the blackboard. These aren’t mere disciplinary actions, either, like getting a certificate for “Caught Being Bad.” These are real tickets that create a criminal record. For 6-year-olds.

One kid — let’s call him Billy — was cited for the criminal violation of…wait for it…farting in class.

C’mon, Texas.