Programming Note
Because I’m a terrible procrastinator, I’ve come dangerously close to blowing the deadlines for two non-blog writing projects. As such, today will be a bit slower than usual as I scramble to whip rough drafts into publishing shape. I’ll be around, though, so if the questionable Manny Ramirez rumor turns out to be true and something actually happens today, I’ll be here to register my outrage and whatnot.
In the meantime, you law students out there answer for me this jurisdictional question: why is the character in the Johnny Cash song doing time in a California prison for shooting a man in Reno, Nevada?
Are you sure he’s in jail because he shot that man in Reno just to watch him die? Perhaps he had an outstanding warrant in California that trumped what he did in Nevada and led to his extradition. Or, somehow it was a federal crime and he’s serving his time in a federal prison in California, though I suppose one could look up whether or not Folsom is a federal prison easily. I’m sure some law student will have the (or a better) answer.
Considering that he ‘rewrote’ the song – I’m going for the simplest of answers and that he didn’t recognize it as a mistake.
His incarceration might have nothing to do with the Reno Incident. Plenty of inmates have committed crimes that they’re never charged for, or even identified as being involved in. I always figured any dude who would shoot a man just to watch him die probably had shot lots of people. The singer’s in Folsom because he just happened to get pinched in California.
The dying dude in Reno staggered over the state line into California, where the singer plugged him again for good measure? And maybe Nevada was at that point just a territory, with skeletal law enforcement?
Minimum contacts?
Maybe he meant to sing, “I shot a man near Reno / just to watch him die.”
Perhaps he meant Reno Junction, California