Molotov Cocktails on Trial

... to see if they can burn the whole courthouse down. Another gem coming out of the Seventh Circuit today involves John Ewing, a man who's a few stouts short of a six-pack, and his attempt to murder the judge who wouldn't enforce his $25 million consent decree. Maybe because it wasn't a consent decree: It was summary judgment against him. I love Ewing's no-lose attitude.

Ewing has a history of paranoid schizophrenia dating back at least twenty years. During that time, he has intermittently taken medication and resided at various mental health facilities. A recurring symptom of his mental illness is a delusion that society is engaged in an elaborate conspiracy to read his thoughts through the aid of supercomputers. Ewing also persists in believing he was awarded a $25 million judgment by consent decree in a slip-and-fall civil lawsuit he filed in 1988 against a grocery store in Champaign, Illinois. In reality, that lawsuit was dismissed on summary judgment by Judge George Miller of the Champaign County Circuit Court. After numerous unsuccessful written attempts to convince Judge Miller that he was owed $25 million, Ewing decided to attack the judge with a Molotov cocktail. At the time Ewing was living in a nonrestrictive mental health community in Peoria and was off his medication. On April 8, 1997, Ewing traveled by bus to Champaign. Once he arrived, he purchased and filled a gas can at a gas station near the Champaign County courthouse, then purchased a 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor from a nearby liquor store and a knife from a local pawn shop. He next checked into a motel, where he used these materials to prepare a Molotov cocktail. From there he walked to the courthouse, entered Judge Miller’s courtroom with a hood up around his face, threw the device at the judge, and fled. Judge Miller ducked to avoid the firebomb, sustaining a head laceration. The incendiary device fell at the foot of the judge’s bench, the bench caught fire, and the courtroom was engulfed in flames. At the time of the attack, Judge Miller was presiding over a civil trial. The jurors, litigants, and courtroom personnel escaped the burning courtroom in a panic; no one was seriously injured. Firefighters responded and suppressed the fire, but everything in the courtroom was destroyed.

Of course, Ewing's going to jail for awhile. How does that song about fighting the law go again? The real tragedy is what must have happened to the malt liquor in the 40 the dude made his Molotov out of: You don't really think he firebombed the courthouse drunk do you?