The 7 Stupidest Alibis in the History of Crime

Batman is spoiled. His criminals might be a cowardly, superstitious lot, but at least he gets to match wits with psychotic geniuses. In the real world he wouldn't last a week before realizing that Dark Vengeance is mainly beating up idiots, and deciding to take off his rubberized animal suit and find something more stimulating for a rich man to do at night. Actually, he might keep the suit on.

"OK, this works. Now for the animal suit and the midget with a stepladder. I'll call Penguin."

For every criminal with a 15-step escape plan there are thousands who didn't think they'd be caught, or just didn't think ever. One minute in the future might as well be Atlantis for these idiots, who approached crime with all the subtlety of a drug dealer in a Just Say No skit, and concocted less believable stories than Kim Jong Il's eulogy.

7 "My cat downloaded all that child pornography."

When police charged Keith Griffin with ten counts of possessing child pornography he explained that his cat did it. So they increased it to a hundred counts, presumably to see if they could possibly make that alibi any less believable. Keith claimed that his felonious feline would sometimes walk across his keyboard and download (over 1,000 highly illegal) things. Which is weird, because even we haven't found any porn called q'wawdsssslnk'ml.It was a more apocalyptically obvious lie than the Enola Gay claiming they were delivering fireworks. Cats might dominate the bit of the Internet which isn't porn, but we're pretty sure they don't know how to work it -- if they did, we'd be working for them right now. Still, it was a nice touch that even his ridiculous excuse required something that couldn't legally give consent.

One cat isn't exactly infinite monkeys.

It was less believable or sympathetic than Rick Perry in assless chaps. He gave up on this defense during the court case. Understand: This man was standing in a room full of professionally judgmental people for owning the most sickening images in existence, and dropped the cat story because that was making him look bad.

6 "The alignment in my car is bad."

Christos Kokkalis claimed that the alignment in his car was bad. That's why it was doing double the speed limit and cut across the opposite lane to hit a pedestrian who made a gesture telling him to slow down. Amazingly, when he missed the pedestrian, the car's bad alignment caused it to pull a U-turn, speed back up to the pedestrian to try again, then forced him to leap out and scream, "Let's settle this right now. Meet me back here at 10." Apparently when he said "alignment" he meant "Evil Chaotic." His car was basically Christine.

Why yes, the insurance is a bitch.

We love how his threat proves he can't even get through two sentences without reversing himself. There's also the almost adorable naivete of a 19-year-old male thinking anyone will believe a driving related offense wasn't his fault. It asshole driving at a level that would make even Michael Schumacher shake his head sadly. Hell, KARR couldn't pull that off without his driver at least noticing.

"I don't think orphanages ARE full of 'speed bumps,' KARR."

Luckily Christos is as good at aiming as he is at thinking on the fly, so his pedestrian target was fine. In fact, with this story and the medical benefits of laughter, they're probably healthier than when they started.

5 "I am a Texas Republican sovereignty."

Justin Wayne Gray was stopped for speeding, rolled down the window and declared "I am Texas Republican sovereignty. I do not recognize this as a legal traffic stop." After double checking that they'd been using the police uniforms and flashing lights that help even the dumbest people recognize them, the cops realized they were dealing with a "sovereign citizen." They think the constitution is a buffet where you can just choose the bits you like, and that the best people to explain this to are armed police officers. Oh, and if you ever want to turn a regular traffic stop into an arrest, now you know what to say.In case anyone might have sympathy about traffic stops or lunatic fringe groups, Gray was going double the speed limit in a school zone on a suspended license just to make sure people knew he was an asshole. And he was just getting started. He argued that the case should be dismissed because court documents referred to him as JUSTIN WAYNE GRAY, when his name is Justin Wayne Gray. At this point, blind justice would have taken a peek to make sure her punch landed in the most painful place possible.

"No, I'm not putting the sword down first. Did you hear that asshole?"

He filed an "Affidavit of Truth" (which isn't a thing that exists) with ten more arguments, each a flimsier and more inaccurate waste of legal time than the last, before finally invoking the war powers clause of the constitution. Basically, he tried to glitch the legal system with an overflow error, submitting an avalanche of idiotic claims then moving to have the charges dismissed because the court didn't respond to all the claims. Luckily the legal system doesn't just let people off because prosecuting them is too much hassle. The final ruling dealt with every single one of his complaints, but you can smell the burning IQ points it cost the prosecutor on each one.

4 "Did you see Law and Order last night? It was exactly like that."

One woman decided civilization wasn't downfalling fast enough and copied a crime she saw on TV. When questioned over the disappearance of her 2-year-old daughter, Julia Biryukova recapped the plot of an episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, a show that it turns out the police watch. And since the episode had only just aired the night before, the case put a whole new spin on the word "special." Maybe her goldfish brain couldn't remember how the episode ended, but the TV show featured a far better actress and, if it's anything like any other episode, ends with the crook getting caught.

"I'm putting all my money in stocks after watching the first half of Wall Street."

The police checked out her story, making a jerking off motion the whole time. She'd claimed her car ran out of gas so she walked away to get more and when she got back the girl was gone. This was challenged by tiny details like the car still having gas in it, her not buying any at the station she went to and the police not being retarded. She then insisted she was too upset to take a polygraph test, the first case of a polygraph working before it was switched on. You could tell this woman was lying with a dowsing rod because you have to be awake to pick one up.

3 "I shot someone six times because I was on a diet."

A lawyer argued that U.S. Army Reserve Sergeant Rashad Valmont was dehydrated, exhausted, delirious and near-catatonic when he killed his master sergeant. But before you start envisioning a soldier being pushed too far by some sort of torturous training regiment, you should know that Valmont spent the day before the crime on his military computer in a reserve office, was overweight for military duty, had multiple poor performance reviews, and the final straw wasn't commies kidnapping his mentor. Rashad was pushed over the edge by denial of a request for a vacation weekend.

Defending the flag, except for weekends and bank holidays.

When you're in the Army you don't even have the right to not be shot at , never mind Saturdays off. The fact this was still enough to trigger a murderous rampage in an office worker means his military training was either a total failure or far too effective. He arrived for work before 7 a.m., and at close of business at 5 p.m. pulled a Glock and shot his master sergeant six times. Outside of a horror movie, there is no non-insane reason for shooting someone six times. Also, anyone who'd let their target suffer through 10 final hours of office work before killing them anyway is a sadist.

2 "I worship the Norse gods!"

A Toronto couple single-handedly disproved every stereotype of Canadians being nice, friendly or sane, by taking God of War as a religion. They marched into a house and decided it was theirs by right of their vast collection of blades. Which, in fairness, did actually work back when people worshiped the Norse gods. But Vikings existed before the invention of firearms and Canadians, two powerful forces for dealing with blade-wielding and extreme rudeness in northern latitudes, and they were arrested within 72 hours.John Morkanus, which we have to admit is a name which sounds like it should dual-wield blades, insisted he had to carry a weapon at all times as an adherent of the Asatru Norse religion. A particularly crazy neopagan religion (where "neo-" means "we live in a world where people know better") which leads to owning ridiculously expensive and impractical weapon collections instead of rent money.

It's nice to know the Norse aren't racist anymore, stockpiling stupid samurai swords and stupid Elven daggers alike.

Luckily anyone who owns more than 10 weapons doesn't really know how to use any of them, including the one between their legs, so he was easily apprehended. He also claimed he needed the weapons to teach a medieval weapons class at the YMCA. The YMCA immediately announced that it offers no such a class, and also what the fuck. Bladed weapons and strict religion aren't angles the YMCA really stress any more, what with the whole "Crusades" fad falling out of fashion.Morkanus and his warrior-maiden Sarah Leroux had also posted a notice proclaiming "When this notice is affixed to property, its contents and all attached thereof is held under claim of right," which also set out ticket prices for visiting "their" land. But the only way you can make people pay to come see your blades is by being a Highlander, and the only way you can make money from blades and a horrifically stupid religion is by being Highlander II .

1 "It was my evil twin!"

When Janell Athalone-Afrika was caught embezzling $15,000 worth of benefits from the Indiana Department of Education, she decided the game of wits had only just begun. A game she was worse prepared for than someone wearing body armor to a triathlon. She claimed that her identity been stolen by her "evil twin," at which point the arresting officer cursed, "Dammit, now I'm even dreaming about arresting idiots. Because if this is real I'm going vigilante."

"Dammit, I don't see how either of us is going to grow a goatee."

Even soap operas don't pull the evil twin until they've run out of ideas, and while it takes them a few seasons it only took Janell a single sentence. Maybe she was trying out to balance how imaginary twins are usually hot and awesome. The closest she came to getting away with it was the judge leaving to write a book entitled The Legal System and Eugenics: No, Seriously, When You Hear About This One You Won't Think It's Such a Bad Idea. Deputy Prosecutor Barb Trathen announced, "It's pretty clear we didn't find any truth in the evil twin sister defense," immediately winning the "greatest understatement by a legal professional" award from "This job sucks" by Harvey Dent.For more legal lunacy check out The 7 Most Retarded Criminal Excuses of All Time and 9 Insane Cases that Prove the US Legal System Is Screwed.

Luke McKinney explains how Beer Built Civilization. He also tumbles and has a website.