Tell Trump to Keep His Hands Off The Post Office

Original post on aus.social

Original post on mastodon.social

Against scale

Original post on mastodon.xyz

91/9 How did anti-Trump sign cause 66-year-old to be jailed, held on $400k bond? By Roy S. Johnson | rjohnson@al.com A sign — a sign in Jerry Lee Clarke’s front yard. That’s what started it all. It was a few weeks after Donald Trump’s second inauguration and the self-employed house painter wanted to speak his mind. Speak his mind on a sign firmly planted outside the home he and wife Janet Kay bought last November on about three acres along a well-travelled road just outside Helena in unincorporated Shelby County. “Not my president,” the sign read. “Never.” A large red “X” crossed through “Trump.” The sign did not sit well with some. Their reactions — defacing it, verbal threats, doxing him on social media and blaring horns as they passed his home — did not sit well with Clarke, according to his daughter Katherine Shelton. That’s how it all started. Over the subsequent few weeks, the sign’s message changed a few times, as Clarke grew more belligerent over the vitriol aimed toward him. Toward his home. And his sign. On his property. A later version read: “How do you spell clown? Trump!” Another incarnation supplanted “clown” with “idiot.” It did not sit well. “My dad was harassed by several people,” Shelton said. “One made tons of posts and videos of their home online. He was at the house in the yard telling us to take down the signs if we know what’s good for us.” To protect the sign, Clarke placed razor wire around it and planted explosives (Shelton describes them as “fireworks”) beneath pine straw on the perimeter. If the vandals weren’t deterred by the wire, a small sign tacked to a nearby tree was unequivocal: “Warning. No Trespassing. Loaded Firearms. Keep Out.” Shelton says she reached out to law enforcement in Shelby County and Helena for support, for protection of her parents’ home. Of her father’s right to speak his mind. “They told me, the sign was my father’s First Amendment right,” she says. “Then they said, ‘But you need to make him take that sign down. It’s really making people upset. It’s making our job harder.’ I knew something was coming I just didn’t know what.” The Shelby County sheriff’s office did not respond to multiple messages from AL.com seeking comment on Shelton’s assertions. “We’re familiar with Mr. Clarke’s case,” said Helena Police Chief Mike Wood, “but that’s a Shelby County Case. I was not even aware that he’s still incarcerated.” Today, Clarke languishes in the medical unit at the Shelby County Jail. He’s been there since June 26, his birthday. Sheriff’s deputies arrested Clarke as he was leaving Shelby Baptist Hospital in Alabaster, where he’d undergone six days of mental health testing, according to his daughter. He’s charged with two counts of harassment and one count of reckless endangerment (more on those later). Those are the least of it all. Clarke also faces three charges stemming from those explosives he planted around his sign and other explosive materials that were among his antiques collection, court records state. Two of the charges are for possession, manufacturing, transporting and distribution of a destructive device; one is for the unlawful manufacture of a destructive device or bacteriological or biological weapon. “Everybody kind of zones in on the bacteriological or biological, but the allegation is really the destructive device, possession of a destructive device, not any kind of bacteriological or biological weapon,” Ben Fuller, the chief deputy district attorney in Shelby County, told me. “Just a destructive device, a bomb.” All over a sign. Added Helena’s Chief Wood: “I was not even aware that he’s still incarcerated.” Shelton maintains her father only had fireworks “with the receipt from a TNT firework shop” and a container of “powder that you put on a campfire for kids to make it change to different colors.” If someone got too close to the wire, Clarke could detonate the fireworks from his home, though he never did, Shelton said. “Nobody got injured.” The latter three charges carry cash bonds totaling $400,000. The full amount is needed for Clarke to be released. The family can’t afford the bond, Shelton says. “My parents do not have any money at all.” A judge denied Clarke’s request to have the bond reduced. A home out of the ashes Jerry Lee and Janet bought the home with insurance proceeds from a fire in August 2024 that destroyed their former house in Pelham, said their daughter. Clarke, who’s painted numerous homes in the region, suffered serious injuries in the blaze, his daughter says. “My dad was really badly burnt in the fire,” she told me. “He looked like cheese pizza. He was unable to work. From the time the house burned down until he was arrested, he had only one job because he was too sick to work.” Between them, Shelton and her husband, who owns a cleaning company, have six children. They moved into her parents’ home because her father was her mother’s caretaker. Shelton and her husband pay her parents’ $1,880 monthly mortgage, as well as their own bills. Even if they sold the home, Shelton says, the family would not raise enough cash to get Clarke out of jail. “I really miss my dad,” Shelton shared just before Thanksgiving. “When life gets tough he’s always my first call and after a pep talk and a cup of coffee I always feel better and know what to do.” I asked Fuller in the Shelby County District Attorney’s office if the bond amount might be excessive, given the circumstances — a neighborhood feud that escalated beyond reason. Over a sign. “We don’t have a lot of charges like this, thank goodness, so it’s hard to compare apples to apples,” he said. “We did ask for an enhanced bond based on the evidence as we understood it to exist.” The harassment and reckless endangerment charges stem from allegations that Clarke aimed a laser at motorists and police officers as they cruised by his property, court records state. “The defendant was knowingly pointing a high-powered blue laser at the driver of cars as they passed the front of his residence,” reads the complaint against Clarke. “When Officer Grier passed the residence, the listed defendant set off an audible siren, causing the officer to slow down and look from the roadway. When he did so, the defendant shined a bright blue laser into the officer’s eyes, illuminating the interior of his vehicle and rendering him unable to drive safely. “The defendant stated in an interview over the phone that he intended for this action to warn officers to ‘stay away.’” Shelton asserts the officers were not driving by for protection but to intimidate Clarke into taking down the sign. For several nights, she told me, officers would drive slowly by and shine a bright light into the family’s home. Again, the Shelby County Sheriff’s office did not respond to numerous messages seeking comment. And there’s this: Shelton believes her father suffered a stroke soon after being arrested. She says an attorney, who no longer represents the family, visited Clarke during the summer. “He said dad was slurring his words and not coherent.” A Shelby County Sheriff’s spokesperson would only confirm that Clarke is housed in the jail’s medical unit. Asked about his condition, the spokesperson said: “I’m not sure.” “Even though I am his power of attorney and can get his medical records, the jail will not release them to me,” Shelton says. She’s visited her father about a dozen times since the arrest, but is restricted to seeing him on a screen and speaking into a phone. Shelton only once saw him in person, during a courtroom appearance a few weeks after the arrest. He was a shell of the man who raised her, who provided for their family, she said. “My dad may be 66, but he is a beast and always worked his hands to the bone for his family,” Shelton said. “I was not allowed to speak to him. He was not allowed to speak or look back at me. He was so frail he could barely move across the courtroom. He looked like he’d aged 15 years since being in there.” A Californian moves south Clarke moved to Alabama from his native California almost half a century ago to join his mother here. Since then, his craftsmanship has beautified some of the most expensive homes in the region. He’s also a collector and dealer of antiques, especially military memorabilia. “My dad is the guy people call when they don’t know what it is they have or the history,” says Shelton. During that court appearance, Shelton noticed bruises on Clarke’s face and frame. “He looked like he’d fallen and busted his face open many times,” Shelton said. More recently, she said: “He looked so skinny.” The medical unit does not have a telephone, so her father cannot call home, Shelton says. There’s also no access to a computer or tablet, so he cannot correspond with his family through email. “He’s been complaining about how bad his hands hurt and that they’ve been going numb,” she said recently. “They’re very swollen in appearance over the video, and he said he can’t even open up his own ketchup packet. This is a man who has painted the most beautiful things his entire life and supported our entire family using his hands, and now he can’t even open up a ketchup packet.” Fuller, in the district attorney’s office, says the jail has not expressed any alarm over Clarke’s medical condition. “I can tell you that they’ve not reached out to us with any concern about anything they can’t handle over there,” he shared. “If it’s something that is either very costly or a significant risk of death, the jail is typically not comfortable. They will hold them in a lot of circumstances if it’s serious enough, but a lot of times it’s one that we’ll have to have a conversation about. I have not had any conversations with the jail telling us that there’s anything they can’t handle or that would exceed the allotment for medical allowances.” Shelton’s concern about her father’s condition grows more dire with each visit. “His spirits seemed low,” she said. “He has always been a heavy man. He probably weighed around 215 to 219 when he went in there. He now weighs about 160 pounds. “The beds of his fingernails are blue, which indicates low oxygen levels in his blood. “They could put him on house arrest, and he could just stay in this little yard for the rest of his life, sitting here drinking coffee with my mom. Not hurting anybody. He said he was sorry for all of this.” A jury trial date for Clarke is set for August 17, 2026. “I pray I can get my parents back to one another before one of them passes,” Shelton said, “but I am so afraid my dad is going to die in there for something that…” Her voice trails to silence because of the absurdity of it all. All over a sign. Jerry Lee Clarke’s family has launched a GoFundMe to raise money for his bail and defense. You may contribute here. Roy S. Johnson headshot Roy S. Johnson A Pulitzer Prize finalist in Commentary, opinion journalist Roy S. Johnson is a Columnist for the Alabama Media Group/AL.com, the largest news and information site in Alabama. He shares his perspective on... more rjohnson@al.com

Original post on mastodon.social

Original post on journa.host

Original post on journa.host

Original post on sauropods.win

Original post on sauropods.win

Original post on mastodon.xyz