CAMBRIDGE, OHIO: Jack Blakeslee, a veteran Ohio defense attorney has been suspended after pooping in a Pringles can and flinging it into the parking lot of a crime-victim advocacy center in Cambridge, Ohio.
On Tuesday, November 28, the Ohio Supreme Court declared that Blakeslee's behavior "adversely reflects on his fitness to practice law" and suspended him for a year, with six months stayed, for the gross act.
The court found "clear and convincing evidence" that Blakeslee had targeted the Haven of Hope center, which employed people whom he admitted he’d known for years, and whom he was probably going to see in court just minutes after tossing the Pringles can into the parking lot.
The ruling also disclosed that the attorney, who has been in the legal profession for almost 50 years, was captured on camera during a trial in which he was defending a man accused of killing a child and was likely to get the death penalty, according to the New York Post.
Why did Jack Blakeslee hurl cans at the victim advocacy center?
The ruling stated that Blakeslee "deposited his feces into an empty Pringles can" and "drove approximately 20 minutes from his home... with the open can of feces" before leaving for a hearing in November 2021.
Next, the Vietnam veteran drove to Haven of Hope, where a victim advocate worked on behalf of the family of the child who had died in the case he was working on at the time.
“Surveillance video showed him driving slowly past the parking lot” at least twice — before he “threw the Pringles can containing his feces into the lot,” the ruling stated.
The advocate in his case also saw him and later reported him to the police. He was then ordered to pay $248 in court expenses and fines after entering a guilty plea to misdemeanor disorderly conduct and littering.
“During his disciplinary hearing, Blakeslee testified that he had engaged in similar misconduct on at least 10 other occasions that year,” the ruling stated.
Blakeslee also denied targeting his insults at the victim spokesperson, claiming that “he randomly chose the locations where he deposited the Pringles cans containing his feces.”
What evidence court find against Jack Blakeslee?
Blakeslee attempted to brush it off as a "prank," stating he "got a kick out of" picturing people's "looks of surprise" when they discovered one of his Pringles cans.
“It was kind of like a release” that helped him “blow off steam", the ruling quoted him as saying. Nevertheless, the court discovered ample proof that Blakeslee purposefully selected the advocacy organization's parking lot as his "drop zone."
The court wrote in its opinion that Blakeslee intentionally targeted the victim advocates “to seek an even greater thrill by pulling his prank on someone he knew … just minutes before he would see one of them in court.”
The panel stated that his behavior "reflects adversely on his fitness to practice law," according to the panel. Blakeslee had failed to explain why he pooped in the cans, ruling out PTSD and only telling his hearing that “there has to be something going on that’s related to some of the things I went through in early life.”
