Joseph Britton (J-Brit), currently held in the Broward County jail on one count each of battery, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest, is about to have a fourth charge added to his rap sheet: Ebola-related stupidity.
Britton temporarily cleared the courtroom at his bond hearing when he claimed that he had Ebola.
This was on Friday morning. He’d made the same claim on Thursday night, when he was being arrested in the first place.
At the time, the officers did not note any Ebola-like symptoms, and dismissed Britton’s claim as the ramblings of a desperate man.
Come Friday morning, though, there appeared to be confusion about the chronology of Britton’s last few days.
The confusion came from the fact that Britton alluded to his having been in Fort Lauderdale earlier in the week…the very same Fort Lauderdale where a nurse who had Ebola-like symptoms had also been.
Britton made mention of his earlier Ebola claim, and the judge, who was privy to what had gone down during the arrest, told a man standing near Britton “I’d back up, and I’d back up pretty quick if I were you.”
The judge called for a deputy. The deputy, upon hearing what Britton had said, shouted an expletive and complied with the judge’s request to clear the courtroom.
Here’s really the strangest part of the whole story: according to the Orlando Sun-Sentinel, which streams courtroom proceedings live on its website, Britton was left by himself in the courtroom for a full hour while the authorities decided how to proceed.
On the one hand, kudos to Britton for just hanging out in the courtroom, not fleeing the scene and making his case that much worse. On the other…you’ve got to assume he pretty much just sat there for the hour, trying to come up with some reasonable way of making himself sound like an idiot, and not an idiot with another criminal charge against him.
The moral of the story? When Floridian inmates are using it for purposes of mischief and merriment, we’re all probably hitting the Ebola panic button a little too hard.
