A Look at Judge Michael Cicconetti
COOPER: Welcome back to Sunday's live edition of AMERICAN STORIES. I am Anderson Cooper. Now, given their penchant for outrageousness, the "Jackass" wannabes in Colorado in that last story, they might like to appear before an Ohio judge we want to tell you about. Judge Michael Cicconetti is gaining a national reputation for the strange sentences he imposes on criminals. The question is, do the sentences work? We'll going to explore that in just a few minutes. But first, meet the judge.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It looks like you went from first base to a home run.</s>PAUL ORLOVSKY, WOIO TELEVISION, (voice-over): A man going too far with his girlfriend on a public beach was sentenced to apologize, with a newspaper ad. A man who ran from police was forced to train for a road race and could lower his sentence by doing well. A man who called police pigs spent an afternoon with a pig in a poke on the Paynesville's town square. All at the orders of Judge Michael Cicconetti, who says handing out justice is a lot like raising kids.</s>MICHAEL CICCONETTI, PAYNESVILLE MUNICIPAL JUDGE: You can yell at them. You can spank them. Some people do this, put them in their rooms. The best way to do it is make them go back, correct what they did wrong, and then they understand.</s>ORLOVSKY: For when a nativity scene case came to his court, no one thought much about the offenders being sentenced to walk through down with a donkey. That is, with the possible exception of Nick Cindric. He is Paynesville chief probation officer, the man who has to execute the judge's sentences.</s>NICK CINDRIC, CHIEF PROBATION OFFICER: The toughest one, probably the pig. I wanted to make sure it was confined properly.</s>ORLOVSKY: Of the 2,000 or so probationers the officer sees every year, Nick says, most are creatively sentenced. But not all are photo ops.</s>CINDRIC: The point is for the defendants to learn from their mistakes.</s>ORLOVSKY (on camera): There's an economic side to the creative sentences that Judge Cicconetti hands out as well. By handing out fewer days in jail, the judge is actually saving tax dollars for government in what are tough economic times. In Paynesville, Paul Orlovsky, Action News.</s>COOPER: Well, the question is, do all these wacky sentences really work? Joining us to talk about sentencing insanity, Los Angeles trial attorney and CNN contributor Michael Smerconish. Michael, thanks for being with us. What about it? Do you think these kind of things work?</s>MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, the defendants who have been interviewed and subjected to those wacky sentences all say that it was a learning experience, and as far as we can determine, they've kept their noses clean ever since. Anderson, I remember getting yanked out of a high school dance by the scruff of my collar by my mother because there was smoking going on. I was so embarrassed in that dance, I would never go back to a dance where there was smoking. And you know what? There's a lot of truth in what this guy is doing.</s>COOPER: You know, the probation guy said -- or reporter indicated maybe they're saving the state or county some money. But it looks like it also costs money. You have a police car following the kids with the donkeys. Is it a money saver, really, you think?</s>SMERCONISH: I think it probably is a money saver. We're talking about misdemeanors. I think it's important to point out nobody got hurt in any of the crimes that we're talking about. It's a couple making love on a beach. It's somebody who refers to a police officer as a pig. I don't condone that, but there was no physical activity there. These are not the sort of people who are going to do hard time anyway, nor should they do hard time. So, embarrass them a little, teach them a lesson, and hopefully they stay clear of the juvenile and adult system ever thereafter.</s>COOPER: All right. Let's move along to probably some more serious topics in the law right now. Just this week, Supreme Court gave, what some people call, some wacky sentencing of their own, sentencing two men to basically life imprisonment on the three-strikes-you're-out. They basically upheld the three-strikes-you're-out ruling. You disagree with that ruling. What exactly happened.</s>SMERCONISH: Well, you know what is interesting. I will tell you what happened, and there was a rally in Los angels yesterday about one of those cases. On the surface, here's what you hear. You hear that a guy gets 25 to life because he steals three golf clubs. And you say, my God, that's not right, three golf clubs? They were worth a couple hundred bucks and now he's going to do 25 to life? But it turns out, he's a career criminal. And if you ask the District Attorney's Association here in California, they say they've been able to outpace the national drop in crime. And the reason they think they've done it is that three-strikes-you're-out finally removes from the street individuals who are recidivists committing all those crimes. So the crime where you finally get them, Anderson, may not be a barn burner, but their point is, we're removing them from the street and that's a good thing. I mean, there's another guy who stole videotapes from a K-Mart and everybody is anxious to say, well, one of the tapes was Peter Pan. Are we really going to send a guy to the big house for 50 years because he stole Peter Pan? Well, you look into his rap sheet and it's volumes. So, maybe not the surface impression is the accurate one. This could be a good thing after all.</s>COOPER: All right. Well, I hope the person who stole the tapes wasn't Michael Jackson, because we know he likes Peter Pan, but...</s>SMERCONISH: Don't get me started on that. There's a guy who should be doing some time.</s>COOPER: Well, I'm not going to pursue that line of questioning with you. Michael Smerconish, thanks very much for joining us. Appreciate it.</s>SMERCONISH: Right. Thank you.</s>COOPER: Always good to talk with you. Well, so how old is too old to have a baby? One woman has decided, hey, it's never too late. Her story is coming up in just a few minutes. You are watching CNN's Sunday AMERICAN STORIES.