Sometime you read a story and it takes a lot of re-reading and double checking before you can bring yourself to accept it truly is legitimate. This is one of those stories.
The seventh circuit of the United States Court of Appeals has just published a ruling on a case heard last September. Let us peruse the opening line and consider whether this may be the greatest legal ruling in history:
After concluding that the popular role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons (“D&D”) represented a threat to prison security, officials at Wisconsin’s Waupun Correctional Institution took action to eradicate D&D within the prison’s wall.
Yes, you read that right. This is a ruling on whether or not prison officials were justified in confiscating D&D material. It wasn’t a case of officials being concerned that multi-faceted dice could be fashioned into weapons (only “twenty-one books, fourteen magazines” and handwritten notes were confiscated), but an even more serious matter:
Waupun’s long-serving Disruptive Group Coordinator, Captain Bruce Muraski, received an anonymous letter from an inmate. The letter expressed concern that Singer and three other inmates were forming a D&D gang and were trying to recruit others to join by passing around their D&D publications and touting the “rush” they got from playing the game.
The prisoner concerned, Kevin Singer, complained the confiscation was a violation of first amendment rights. He then, in the words of the court, sought “a panoply of relief”, which sadly turned out not to be a D&D spell.
http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2011/01/25/dungeons-dragons-a-threat-to-prison-security/
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