“The more corrupt a state, the more numerous the laws.” -Tacitus
HARVEST, AL – They were already calling him “a legend”, but instead Christian Adamek is dead by hanging. It was a suicide that he committed as a result of the harsh punishment he was threatened to receive for dashing naked across a high school football field.
Sparkman High principal Michael Campbell said, “There’s the legal complications. Public lewdness and court consequences outside of school with the legal system, as well as the school consequences that the school system has set up.”
Adamek was threatened with expulsion and with being put on a sex offender list. While the risks of that were low, they were enough to terrify the young man into killing himself. When the government hyper-criminalizes harmless, non criminal activity, innocents will be harmed. Christian is dead, thanks to the fear of government destroying his life. The Boy Scout who was loved by his many friends, must have been terrified that he would never qualify for employment, and be branded for life.
Our hyper-regulatory state has turned public nudity into a heinous crime, punishing people as sex offenders and putting them on government lists. We should reexamine just how much we want to criminalize simple, non-violent, non-aggressive, non-coercive activities. In a just society “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”
Now many innocents suffer, instead of just one.
John Stossel‘s special on sex offenders and hyper-criminalization
