Painesville, Ohio Municipal Court Judge Michael Cicconetti isn’t your typical judge. He’s the kind of judge who makes people really think about their actions by coming up with creative actions.
He’s made a man wear a chicken suit and sprayed a woman in the face with what she thought was going to be pepper spray.
He also made a woman choose between 30 days in jail or walking 30 miles after not paying a cab driver for a 30-mile trip. You can listen to one of his strange sentencings below.
Cicconetti has gone viral once again for his treatment of a man who was found guilty of animal cruelty. Michael Sutton plead guilty to throwing a puppy out of a sixth-floor apartment window.
The dog’s body was found in a trash compactor by the building’s staff.
They called the police who tracked down Sutton and arrested him. Sutton, 23, told police that he killed his lab-pit bull mix Kno for going to the bathroom in his bed.
“I know what a lot of people would like to do to you,” Cicconetti told Sutton, according to the Washington Post. “You are just vicious. You are revolting. You are cruel. You are inhuman, what you did here.”
Cicconetti will often impose a creative sentence to help first-time offenders avoid jail time. This, however, wasn’t Sutton’s first offense.
Cicconetti says that he sees very few repeat offender after hand out his alternative sentences.
Cicconetti, however, had no choice but to slap Sutton with a six-month jail sentence and five years probation. Sutton is also forbidden from owning animals forever.
I wish I could say you’re not allowed to be around people, ’cause look what you do,” Cicconetti said.“I will guarantee you that after you get out, there’s going to be another offense.”
Sutton also has two domestic violence cases, and plead guilty to misdemeanor charges of criminal damaging or endangering and discharging firearms.
He’s not even allowed in his mother’s home. Sutton claimed to be “Very compassionate to animals” and said he was “very emotional” after the incident.
He said he needed help getting back on an unspecified medication.
“I am sick and tired of people coming in here and blaming this on mental illness,” he said. “Then we have to get you medication. We have to pay for it, and then you don’t take it. Where does that leave a court? I know what I’d like to do.”
Cicconetti argued that Sutton already had enough time to get medication.
“I’d like to give you one of those creative sentences, but that’s for people who can be rehabilitated, people who are first offenders. You are not. You are not one of those people. You are just brutal and savage, and that’s all there is to it,” Cicconetti said.
Cicconetti said he started to hand out his uncommon sentences out of frustration.
“We started small. It was more out of frustration because, after a year or two years, we were seeing the same people come back, with the same offenses. I thought, ‘There has to be a better way to do this,'” the judge told the News-Herald in 2012.
“Some people, let’s face it, you’re never going to deter their conduct. It took me awhile to figure that out, too. I can’t be the savior of all, because some people don’t want to be saved.”
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
