This story is incredible. I was going to just post a link, but there were other things on the page that I did not want to direct people to.
The human spirit yearns to be free. For one Canadian inmate, that spirit seems to have been working in tandem with his stomach.
Michel "Big Mike" Lapointe was released almost three years early from his five-year sentence in a Canadian prison because he was simply too fat for his cell. The 450-pound former drug gang member could not sit down in the chair provided in his Montreal cell, and his body protruded six inches off both sides of the bed.
Authorities said in a letter to Lapointe: "You have been detained for more than 25 months and your prison conditions are difficult because of your health." Two other jails rejected requests to transfer him.
For his part, Lapointe sounded relieved to be sprung: "I'm going to have a proper bed and finally have a chair I can sit in," he said. "I want a normal life. I've done some stupid things and I've paid for them."
Hopefully, the "normal life" Big Mike wants will include fruits and vegetables.
If not, though, he can always find inspiration in our gallery of the world's weirdest bacon products.
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Either the United States will destroy ignorance, or ignorance will destroy the United States. – W.E.B. DuBois
COLUMBUS — A death row inmate scheduled for execution says he's too fat to be put to death, claiming executioners would have trouble finding his veins and that his weight could diminish the effectiveness of one of the lethal injection drugs.
Lawyers for Richard Cooey argue in a federal lawsuit that Cooey — 5-feet-7 and 267 pounds — had poor veins when he faced execution five years ago and the problem has been worsened by weight gain.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court, also says prison officials have had difficulty drawing blood from Cooey for medical procedures.
Cooey, 41, is sentenced to die for raping and murdering two young women in 1986. His execution is scheduled for Oct. 14.
His attorneys say a drug he is taking for migraine headaches could affect the execution process. The drug Topamax, a type of seizure medication, may have created a resistance to thiopental, the drug used to put inmates to sleep before two other lethal drugs are administered, Dr. Mark Heath, a physician hired by the Ohio Public Defender's Office, said in documents filed with the court.
Heath says Cooey's weight, combined with the potential drug resistance, increases the risk he would not be properly anesthetized.
"All of the experts agree if the first drug doesn't work, the execution is going to be excruciating," Cooey's public defender, Kelly Culshaw Schneider, said Monday.
Prison system spokeswoman Andrea Carson and Jim Gravelle, a spokesman for the Ohio Attorney General's Office, both said Monday they hadn't seen the lawsuit and couldn't comment.
Last year, Carson cited the obesity of condemned inmate Christopher Newton as one of the reasons prison officials had difficulty accessing his veins before his execution. Newton was 6 feet tall and weighed 265 pounds.
Two years ago, convicted killer Jeffrey Lundgren was put to death after a federal appeals court rejected his claim that he was at greater risk of experiencing pain and suffering because he was overweight and diabetic.
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