A veteran Ohio criminal defense attorney has been suspended for defecating in a Pringles can that was then dumped outside a victim’s advocacy center – admitting he regularly performs the foul stunt to “get some energy.”
Jack Blakeslee’s stomach-churning habits surfaced when he was suspended from practicing law for a year, with six months remaining, in a 13-page state Supreme Court opinion shared by Ohio Court News.
The ruling revealed that the lawyer – who has practiced for almost 50 years – was caught on surveillance footage while in a trial representing an accused child killer facing the death penalty.
Before heading to the November 2021 trial, Blakeslee “deposited his feces into an empty Pringles can” — then “drove approximately 20 minutes from his home … with an open can of feces,” the ruling said.
The Vietnam vet then drove to Haven of Hope, where a victim’s advocate representing the families of the children killed in his case was working, the ruling said.
Ohio criminal defense attorney Jack Blakeslee has been suspended from practicing law for a year for leaving a Pringles can filled with his feces outside a victim advocacy center. Giovanni Cancemi – stock.adobe.com
“Surveillance video showed him driving slowly through the parking lot” at least twice — before he “threw a Pringles can containing his feces into the lot,” the ruling said.
The lawyer in his case also saw it and later reported it to the police. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and littering, paying $248 in fines and court costs.
“During his disciplinary hearing, Blakeslee testified that he had engaged in similar misconduct on at least 10 other occasions that year,” the ruling said.
He denied targeting the victim’s advocate, claiming that “he randomly chose the location where he placed the Pringles can containing his excrement.”
He tried to dismiss it as a “joke,” saying he “got a kick out of” imagining the “shocked look” on people’s faces when they found one of his Pringles cans.
The Ohio Supreme Court found that Blakeslee’s conduct called into question his eligibility to practice law. AP
“It was like a release” that helped him “release energy,” the decision quoted him as saying.
However, the court found clear evidence that Blakeslee deliberately chose the advocacy organization’s parking lot as his “drop zone.”
The court wrote in its opinion that Blakeslee deliberately targeted the victim’s advocate “to find greater amusement by pulling his pranks on someone he knew … just minutes before he would see one of them in court.”
The panel found “his conduct adversely affects his fitness to practice law.”
Blakeslee has failed to explain why he defecated in a can, dismissing PTSD and simply telling his hearing that “There must be something going on that has to do with some of the things I went through early in life.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
