Judge Sentences, Penalises Rear Tyre

He’s a judge – but when it comes to tyres, he also stands in as jury and executioner. An astounding number of US news sources, including the Washington Post and the NBC network, have picked up on the tale of Charles County, Maryland jurist Robert Nalley. The circuit judge has admitted deflating the tyre of a car parked near his courthouse. One newspaper, the Daily Record, reports that Nalley went to work on the tyre’s valve because he claimed “notes on the windshield did not work.”

The car at the centre of the kangaroo court tyre deflation belongs to Jean Washington, a courthouse cleaner whose shift ends after dark. As she arrived for her shift on the afternoon of August 10, a sheriff’s deputy apparently warned her that judge Nalley would let the air out of her tyre if she didn’t move her car. She returned to reposition her 2004 Toyota Corolla, but was too late. The right rear tyre was already flat.

According to the Washington Post – a newspaper that is, despite the name similarity, not wholly or partially owned by the modestly paid part-time cleaner – two prison officers claim to have witnessed Nalley deflate the tyre because the Toyota was “parked in his space”, and one of the officers used a mobile phone camera to capture the incident. The officers have requested anonymity while the investigation continues.

The deflation has weighed heavily upon Ms Washington. “When I actually saw that my tyre was flat, I was almost in tears, and not because of the fact that the air was out of my tyre,” she told an NBC news reporter. “It was because of who did it.” According to the United Press International news service, Washington says the spot she parked in had no markers indicating it was reserved for Judge Nalley and no one ever told her she couldn’t park in that area.

La Plata Police chief Cassin Gittings has not publicly revealed the identity of the ‘deflation suspect’ as nobody has been charged, the Washington Post notes. He told the NBC that “we’re investigating an incident where the air was let out of a lady’s tyres, and where the investigation is going I’m not at liberty to discuss right now because it’s ongoing.”

The final word, however, goes to Judge Robert C. Nalley himself. The Washington Post prints that he told his superior, William D. Missouri, chief administrative judge for Maryland’s 7th Circuit, that he didn’t think the tyre deflation was a “big deal.”