Man, 21, jailed for having disorderly house

[BERIGAN]

Jesus!!! Child molesters sometimes get suspended sentences, and this guy gets a month in jail?? WTF???

Man, 21, jailed for having disorderly house

BY LORI PILGER / Lincoln Journal Star

Mike Herchenbach was sure he would get a fine. He’d pay a couple hundred dollars, like his roommates, and go on with his life, even if it wasn’t his party that got out of hand. After all, his name was on the lease.

But what he didn’t expect, and hardly believed, was what Lancaster County Court Judge Gale Pokorny had in mind as his punishment for maintaining a disorderly house last Oct. 2.

Herchenbach remembered his attorney from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln reaching for a work-release form.

He didn’t need it. It’s only a weekend, he remembered saying.

But Pokorny didn’t say three days in jail. He said 30.

Two weeks later, Herchenbach, who is studying business at Southeast Community College, sat at a blue plastic chair in the visiting room at the Lancaster Correctional Facility.

Frustrated and changed by the experience, he talks to people serving 7- to 10-day sentences for driving drunk. He doesn’t think it’s right.

“I think Pokorny wanted to make an example of someone, and I just happened to be in the courtroom on the wrong day I think, which sucks,” Herchenbach said.

On Friday, he said he was at his parents’ home in Lindsay when Lincoln police went to the house he shares with Mike Ternus and Ken Jensen at 1518 S.W.15th St. and found music blaring from the garage and 170 or so people drinking beer. When the cops came, the partygoers dropped their beer cups and ran.

About a month later, police pulled Herchenbach over for speeding and arrested him.

He said his name was on the lease, so he pleaded no contest. One of the charges was dismissed.

His roommates both got fines, and he thought he would, too.

In a 21/2 page sentencing order, Pokorny went through, reason by reason, “why courts need to take a harder look at this type of case and Mr. Herchenbach.”

“There are a number of reasons that a court needs to take a harder look at this type of case and Mister Herchenbach,” he wrote. “Reason #1. People can die at these parties.”

Pokorny said young people who come to college in Lincoln often make bad choices when presented with unlimited beer and liquor. It’s not uncommon for police to find people passed out at parties with near-lethal blood alcohol levels, he said.

“Reason #2. People can die at these parties.”

Pokorny alluded to Jenna Cooper, the young woman shot and killed at a party almost two years ago. Young men cruise neighborhoods looking for college parties and walk in, uninvited, helping themselves to food and drinks and anything else lying around. Asked to leave, they often get violent, he said.

Pokorny said wild parties tear at the fabric of some of Lincoln’s oldest and best neighborhoods “destroying the solid, quiet sense of community that has made our city what it is.”

They’re also an expensive drain on police resources, he said.

Herchenbach said he didn’t disagree with everything the judge said, like the fact that while police are going out to parties they could be doing more productive things.

“I agree with that,” Herchenbach said, “but that’s also why I’m almost 22 and not having parties.”

Police Chief Tom Casady agreed, too. In a press conference this week, he said officers get 1,600 calls a year about parties that are out of control. This weekend, they’ll probably get 35 to 50, he said.

“We’re seeing some real significant sentences meted out,” he said, compared to what he’s seen in the past. “This is the kind of outcome we need.”

Casady fully supported the sentence, which he saw as a serious incentive to make sure a party doen’t get out of control. Parties like the one Oct. 2 are factories for other crimes, like drunken driving and rape, he said.

Herchenbach, on the other hand, said he doesn’t think what he did or didn’t do deserved 30 days. But he hopes other young people throwing parties take note of what happened to him.

Herchenbach said he didn’t think anyone who lives at his house would have a party any time soon for fear that police would be called for sure. And he doesn’t want any more trouble with the law.

“I hope I never see this place again,” Herchenbach said of the jail.

He gets out the 25th.

http://journalstar.com/articles/2006/03/19...bd121728534.txt

[Jazzmoose]

Welcome to America: zero tolerance for sanity!

[BruceH]

Idiocy.

Meanwhile, my neigbors can get away with anything.