Judges Rule on Poop Violation

The question in a vandalism case before the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston in July was whether Ronald Strong’s messy bowel movement in a federal courthouse men’s room in Portland, Maine, was “willful” or, as Strong claimed, an uncontrollable intestinal event. Three rather genteel judges strained to infer Strong’s state of mind from the condition of the facility. A cleaning lady had described scattered feces as “smeared,” but Judge Juan Torruella took that to mean not “finger smears,” he wrote, but “chunks,” “kind of like chunky peanut butter.” Two other judges, outvoting Torruella, seemed skeptical that feces could have landed two feet up the wall unless Strong had intended it. (Even so, Judge Torruella was unimpressed, implying that if he were intending to smear feces in a men’s room, he surely would sully the mirrors, but that all mirrors were found clean.)