June 28, 2015

"I’ll be curious now if he survives to see what he’s going to say, if anything."

Sweat has fallen, and Matt was already down. All that trouble escaping, and now, perhaps, neither will have even the satisfaction of telling the world the story of their fabulous escapade.

I like calling it an escapade. Escapade is a word we usually see in its figurative sense — "A breaking loose from restraint or rules; a flighty piece of conduct." But the older meaning is literal — "An act of escaping from confinement or restraint; a runaway excursion." That's the OED, which has as the oldest appearance of the word this from a translation of Rabelais fro 1653: "I wish your bum-gut [may] fall out and make an escapade."

33 comments:

MadisonMan said...

I wonder how much this cost.

Was it worth it?

Gahrie said...

Wouldn't have been necessary if they had been executed.

Etienne said...

Bad shot. Now the poor people will have to pay for his health care.

I bet they spent $250 million, maybe more if the Governor flys by helicopter to have a news conference where the blood can be seen on the road.

tola'at sfarim said...

Was he shot in the back? Do white lives matter?

Michael K said...

They should have headed for Baltimore. I keep trying to tell them that.

Etienne said...
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madAsHell said...

Incredible escape, but three weeks on the run, and you only made it twenty miles??
It seems their plan fell apart when their accomplice failed to show up with wheels.

Steve M. Galbraith said...

It's OK to shoot white people in the back, but not for colored people. White people expect it, colored people think that to flee is free

Are you an idiot or do you just play one on the internet?

Even trolls have limits. I think.

Diogenes of Sinope said...

Execute evil murders. Some crimes are so heinous they warrant the death penalty.

Skeptical Voter said...

Well if an accomplice with wheels had shown up these guys would have been flying in the wind somewhere. Instead they were left on foot in a densely forested area in the summer time. Hot, humid and lots of chiggers, ticks, mosquitoes and other biting insects. Probably some poison ivy or oak as well. After three weeks or so of nature's torments, these guys might have been thinking nostalgically of three hots and a cot, and an occasional shower back in the prison.

But tough--they busted out. A Federal agent killed one of them; an incompetent New York State gunnery instructor put two shots in the other--and didn't kill him. This is one of the few times where I'll admit that the Feds got it right.

RJ said...

I am really sorry they didn't kill him.

Ron said...

My bum-gut has indeed fallen out, my life is some kinda escapade, but there are no flies on Donald Duck! Got that? Good, now explain it to me....

Fernandinande said...
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David said...

All this time and they couldn't steal a car.

Skeptical Voter said...

Couldn't steal a car. You've got some incompetent crooks these days. Those woods were full of cabins where they could break in and maybe get some food. But I don't think cars were thick on the ground. And these hoodlums couldn't hot wire a car in any case.

Fernandinande said...
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mccullough said...

So the state lets this guy escape from prison and can't even kill an unarmed man. Incompetent.

Perfect metaphor for New York State. Wasting taxpayer money.

Etienne said...

...a mooning escapade from his college days...

Wince said...

He should have just told the cop he was a black woman, not a white man, the latter being the BOLO description, and of course the cop would have to accept that, wouldn't he?

There would have been no justification for shooting... her.

Or is that gender self-determination fantasyland bullshit binding on and limited to intimidating average citizens?

Captain Ned said...

As a resident of the larger area, I'm just glad it's over.

Gabriel said...

Cops shoot a fleeing, unarmed white man. Very different media coverage.

The Godfather said...

When we first heard about the escape, we were all impressed by this amazing accomplishment -- or at least I was. Getting all these tools to tunnel out of a high security prison, and nobody caught on? Like The Great Escape. They must be geniuses!

Then, when nobody could figure out where they were, we were even more impressed. They must be in Canada by now, or Mexico, or at least Vermont! Geniuses! But the damn fool police kept looking in the vicinity of the prison.

Now we say, what turkeys! They didn't have a ride lined up? They couldn't steal a car? They couldn't hop a freight train?

Too bad they couldn't sell the movie rights in the first couple of days after the breakout. The survivor (if there is one) tries to sell it now? Straight to video.

Captain Ned said...

@ Gabriel:

You're trying too hard. Escaped convict serving life/no parole for aggravated murder and you think his color has anything to do with it, especially within sight of the Canadian border? Dude could have been purple and was still going to get shot.

JCC said...

This convict is the poster child for capital punishment. The only persons to pay for his escape and weeks on the loose, the expense, etc, will be the employees of the prison who helped him, or who were lax and complacent in their duties, who were conned by a murdering swine. There really is nothing - other than shooting him of course - that the state will ever do to him despite the inevitable expensive and showy TV trial, since any sanctions they might contemplate will bring accusation from the ACLU of 8A issues. Oh, he'll get transferred to a different prison, I assume, since he can't go back to the same place where the guards must be sitting around even now, thinking of his cellmate-of-the-week schedule. But what will they do really? Add 20 years to his LWOP? Bet he's really shaking in his boots over that....

But he'll hurt a guard or another prisoner next. His original crime was such that the DP would have been appropriate, since his future dangerousness was predictable.

Maybe we can trade him to Taliban with the other GITMO detainees for a future draft choice. .

Ctmom4 said...

They said last week the search was costing a million dollars a day. Now we have to pay for his care and feeding for who knows how long.

Anonymous said...

Coincidence that Shawshank Redemption was on several times this past week?

Lewis Wetzel said...

Wait -- didn't this fellow escape for love? Kennedy will pardon the man. Love? Sweat risked unbelievable danger, and was shot twice. For love. What have you done for love lately?

tim in vermont said...
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tim in vermont said...

As someone who lives closer to the prison than where he was finally caught, and near the Canadian border too, I am happy its over. Very happy.

It's pretty clear though that it was dumb luck, luck weighted by having 1200 cops in the area, but dumb luck, anyway.

If I were the governor, I wouldn't be as mad at this guy as I would be at the prison and its culture and the crimes that happened there committed by people in his employ. He didn't do anything more on the loose than a couple of minor break-ins. Besides, isn't it sort of a prisoner's job to try to escape if they are in there for life? I would give him immunity, and deliver him chef-cooked warm food every day for his life sentence, if he would help me clean out that nest of incompetence and corruption at Dannemora. The prison is still there, and still a threat to the region.

JCC said...

I think people should remember that, especially with violent prisoners in for life or long sentences, managing a prison becomes a kind of co-operative thng between management and inmates. The prison staff cannot be at war with the inmates 100% of the time, and they have to have the implicit assistance of the inmates on at least some issues to run the place. Obviously, at this institution, the staff has lost their perspective and management was seriously failing to supervise. But if the prisoners are not allowed some leeway in daily life, they have no incentives to behave - with no time off sentence available - and become very dangerous to handle.
Just this week, a Federal prisoner doing life for murder who then murdered a Federal corrections officer was allowed to plead guilty for essentially no change in his sentence. His co-defendant - also doing life for murder - earlier pled guilty to the same sentence. When the Bureau of Prison decided to send the first one to the max security prison in the system, his lawyers are now taking the BOP to court because of the harsh conditions in that superman. So 2 lifers in for murder killed a corrections officer and are getting for that 2nd murder done to a prison staffer....nothing.
Prison guards know this and sometimes almost have to bribe prisoners to behave. Sad but true.

Laura said...

Death penalty by police, but good thing Nebraska took it off the books . . .

Rusty said...

MadisonMan said...
I wonder how much this cost.

Was it worth it?


Why do you care?

Bad Lieutenant said...

Is it man splaining to explain that this is like an undiscovered country, that the Adirondack encompassing area greater than the entire state of Vermont, but sidering they were betrayed.. They certainly must have gotten eaten alive.