I believe him. I really do. And I think that anyone who has been under so much stress for a long time would probably understand this outstanding citizen turned bank robber. I don’t know if I would actually go and rob a bank but who knows?
In any case, this guy from Detroit has been sentenced to two years in prison for robbing banks. Jimmie Lee Fortune started robbing banks in April of 2008. His reason, as he told the judge, was that he needed money to pay for his mother’s plumbing bills. He also needed money to get his driver’s license reinstated. Without money, he wouldn’t have been able to do these things. As such, he decided to go ahead and rob a bank.
After the first successful attempt, he just kept going. Fortune’s MO was quite simple. He would enter a bank and demand money. His threats ran along the lines of “Large bills or I start shooting!” The funny thing is, he was not even armed when he did this.
Then the inevitable happened – he got caught. U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman was the one assigned to hear Fortune’s case. He said that he received 17 letters of support for Fortune, who asserts that he was very depressed and stressed at that time. He said that he was having difficulty separating reality from fiction. Prior to his bank robbing spree, he was an outstanding citizen. This is what saved him from a worse fate – more years in prison.
