The Strip this week has a heartwarming tale about the power of faith over science.There's been a lot of carping around here lately about how rational thought is getting a raw deal from those of our humble citizens who believe in a higher power. The evolution professors are bellyaching in Kansas, and Missouri scientists are squawking about limits on their embryo research.
It's as if these book-learning types can't get it through their thick heads that sometimes you just have to believe something, no matter what the evidence says to the contrary.
Take the case of Stan Willcutt, for example.
Stan is a 40-year-old Lee's Summit construction worker with the ailments of a man twice his age. Bad ankles. Bad knees. A back so screwed-up that he recently threw out a disk just because he sneezed.
Willcutt has been buried in ditches during two construction accidents. He's been dropped on his head, leaving one eye permanently wacky. And lord knows what happened to his teeth, because he doesn't have any upper choppers, which makes his speech sort of slurred.
Still, he's got to make a living, so he continues to work in heavy construction, digging sewers, but he goes to a chiropractor a couple of times a week to have his back worked on.
On April 7, he was returning from one of those appointments, driving down Douglas Street, when he felt a sneeze coming on.
He tensed up his back, preparing for the damage that might be imminent, and then let go a big kerchoo.
The force of it wasn't enough to throw out his back, but it was so painful that he swerved his car, and his front-left tire clipped the center median.
After correcting his car, Willcutt realized that his collision with the curb had caused a flat tire. So he pulled over, jacked up the car and started to put on the spare.
That's when Lee's Summit police showed up.
Officers told Willcutt that they'd received a report of a drunk driver who had swerved and hit the street's median.
Willcutt explained what had happened and said he hadn't had a drink all day. In fact, Willcutt says, after he was popped for a DUI 20 years ago, he stopped drinking entirely.
Willcutt told police he'd ingested neither alcohol nor drugs, but the officers asked him to take a field sobriety test anyway.
Willcutt says he told the officers that, with his bad knees and back, there'd be no way he could stand steadily on one foot or walk in a tight, straight line.
And just as Willcutt predicted, according to officer Matthew Miller's report, Willcutt performed poorly on the test -- and displayed slurred speech.
At that point, Willcutt could see that his explanations were having no effect on the police officers, so he requested a breathalyzer test.
His police report indicates exactly what he predicted it would: His blood-alcohol content measured 0.00 percent.
Still, the officers arrested Willcutt and took him to jail, where he gave a urine sample.
The sample was tested for amphetamines. The result was negative. It was tested for barbiturates. Also negative. Benzodiazepines. Negative. Cannabinoids. Negative. Cocaine. Negative. Ethanol. Negative. Methadone. Negative. Opiates. Negative. Phencyclidine. Negative. Propoxyphene. Negative.
This meat patty doesn't even know what half of those things are, but it knows enough to see that the Lee's Summit Police Department had a big fat nothing against Willcutt.
Now, this tenderloin believes that if Lee's Summit were a town that fell for the kind of claptrap coming from scientists and other edumacated types, its law enforcers might be tempted to believe that these scientific tests, combined with Willcutt's medical history, established with reasonable certainty that Willcutt wasn't drunk or high. He was just an inarticulate, battered construction worker who couldn't walk a straight line if he wanted to.
But that is not how people of faith think.
And if there's one thing Lee's Summit city prosecutor Rachel Brown has faith in, it's that her office will get its man. Brown has so much faith in the Lee's Summit police, she tells the Strip that a 0.00 breathalyzer and a negative urine test aren't going to keep her from prosecuting Willcutt -- who, with his ancient prior, could be looking at a real penalty.
Brown says she can't comment on Willcutt's case per se, but speaking generally, she says, "If the prosecutor believes there's enough evidence, we go ahead and file a case." And that's just what she's done.
Willcutt is due in court on July 14.
But with all of the cases Brown must handle (aren't we supposed to be in something of a crime wave at the moment?), the Strip wondered why she would bother with a case in which the scientific evidence was so at odds with what police perceived.
"You have people driving under the influence [of substances] that don't show up on the initial panel. We look at each case as a team at the types of impairment -- stimulant, depressant, hallucinogen. Then we ask the lab to test for a specific drug," Brown explains.
In other words, Brown plans to send out Willcutt's urine sample a second, third or more times, whatever it takes until she gets back the result she's looking for -- that Willcutt was fucked-up, just like the police said.
Now that's faith in your police force.
Willcutt estimates that he's already out about $1,000 paying for his legal help in the case, an expense he can ill afford. Meanwhile, a scientific type might accuse Brown of wasting the money and resources of Lee's Summit taxpayers when there must be other cases with better, more objective evidence.
But hey, sometimes you have to ignore the facts and believe in the power of faith.
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