Tyell Morton, 18, from Indianapolis is facing up to eight years in prison for a high school prank.
School officials called a bomb squad after security footage caught Morton putting a blow-up sex doll in a bathroom stall on the last day of school. Morton is facing a felony for what he thought was a harmless prank.
As Reported By The Washington Post:
When 18-year-old Tyell Morton put a blow-up sex doll in a bathroom stall on the last day of school, he didn’t expect school officials to call a bomb squad or that he’d be facing up to eight years in prison and a possible felony record.
The senior prank gone awry has raised questions of race, prosecutorial zeal and the post-Columbine mindset in a small Indiana town and around the country, The Indianapolis Star reported in its Tuesday editions.
A janitor at Rushville Consolidated High School saw Morton run away from the school May 31, and security footage showed a person in a hooded sweatshirt and gloves entering the school with a package and leaving five minutes later without it, according to court documents.
Legal experts question the appropriateness of the charges against Morton, and law professor Jonathan Turley at George Washington University posed a wider question about Morton’s case on his legal blog.
“The question is what type of society we are creating when our children have to fear that a prank (could) lead them to jail for almost a decade. What type of citizens are we creating who fear the arbitrary use of criminal charges by their government?”
Administrators feared explosives, so they locked down the school and called police. K9 dogs and a bomb squad searched the building before finding the sex doll.
