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Summarized by Kent Larsen
LDS Student In Trouble Over Jellybeans
Manchester NH Union Leader 30Mar00 D2
By Bernadette Malone Connolly
WEBSTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE -- No one says that Christ Dawe was right to
enter his friend's house while he wasn't home, but the Manchester
Union Leader argues that the punishment should fit the crime. An LDS
high school student, Dawe has been charged with trespassing and
unauthorized taking for entering his friend Michael Weinstein's empty
house on March 1st, using the bathroom and taking a few jellybeans
from a candy dish on his way out. Now he faces a $2,000 fine and a
year in jail.
Neighbors saw Dawe in the Weinstein's house and called the police.
Since the Weinstein's agreed to press charges, the police arrested
Dawe and he now faces the charges, which could, observes the Union
Leader, ruin his future. Dawe hopes to become an Eagle Scout, go to
BYU and serve an LDS mission, and even a misdemeanor conviction like
this could delay or disrupt his plans.
The Union Leader's Connolly argues that this is a simple matter that
should be worked out between neighbors, not by the courts, "I f Dawe
simply acted like an oaf -- as many an 18-year-old boy has been known
to do -- the matter is best left to be worked out neighbor to
neighbor, between the Weinsteins and Dawe's parents," she writes in a
Union Leader editorial. "Perhaps Dawe misunderstood that what is
acceptable behavior when his friend Michael is home is not acceptable
in his absence. This lesson can be driven home quite effectively
without police involvement."
Connolly expresses hope that the issue can be worked out without a
conviction, believing that Dawe has probably learned his lesson,
"It's a lesson Dawe could afford to learn soon, before he decides to
use the bathroom of people he is ministering to as a missionary while
they're not home, and before he spies some potato chips in the
unattended dorm room of one of his buddies at BYU. We just hope he
gets the chance to apply the lesson to such a full and satisfying
life."
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