January 23, 2019 - Blog a Day #23
Have I ever been in trouble with the law?
I have by and large stayed out of trouble with the law. Apart from occasional traffic tickets (and one instance where I had to appear in court because I didn't have my proof of insurance in the car -- I showed I had it in force at the time but they still stuck me with a hefty fine!) I have pretty much kept a clean record.
There was one time I got in just a little legal trouble. But first a little background.
It was just over ten years ago that Wichita made national news (if not exactly headlines) over the "Kaweah Indian Nation". This was a scam in which the bishop of a small church in town was selling memberships to the Kaweah tribe to people, mostly Mexican immigrants. The story he told was that members of the Kaweah tribe had dual citizenship in both the United States and Mexico, and any Mexican who was a Kaweah was also automatically a citizen of the USA. He apparently sold quite a number of these memberships, complete with a professional-looking membership card, with the promise that showing that card would get them a Social Security Card without having to go through the naturalization process.
As I said, the guy who did this was a (self-proclaimed, I later learned) Bishop in a local church... and I was a member of that church. In fact, I was an Assistant Pastor of it! As the truth started to come out, we learned a lot of things, including the following:
The only Nation American tribe that has joint nationality in the United States and Mexico is the Kickapoo tribe
No one may "buy" their way into any Native American tribe. A person who marries a member of the tribe will have Spousal membership, but if you weren't born a member you can't purchase membership
Pretty much everything our dear Bishop told us (including that he was a Native American, or a Bishop for that matter) was a lie
The Justice Department spent a long time building its case, and a lot of people who trusted the man responsible wound up serving prison time. I, and my ex-wife, were involved in the church but took no part in the Kaweah shenanigans. I never found out for sure, but I believe we were the two people closest to the scandal who were determined to be not sufficiently involved to build a case against.
I took some time off from the hotel to be in court most days of the trial. I have to admit, even as the sordid details of the "bishop" came out, I (and most of the rest of the church) were hoping he would show that he was telling the truth and would be exonerated.
The trial lasted several days, and frankly a lot of it was legal this-and-that. One day the proceedings were so boring that I fell asleep in the courtroom! When the break for lunch was called, the person next to me nudged me awake and told me I'd been snoring so loudly hat members of the jury were looking my way to see where the noise was coming from! And as might be expected, a man (the bailiff?) came up to me and sternly warned me that if I disrupted the proceedings again I would be escorted out and barred form the rest of the trial.
I suppose that qualifies as being in trouble with the law.
