truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

Many inmates file lawsuits over the allegedly poor quality of prison food, but noteworthy was the one recently filed by Missouri inmate Norman Lee Toler (serving 10 years for statutory rape), demanding kosher food as required by his devout Judaism, even though, in a previous prison stint, he was a notorious Adolf Hitler sympathizer with Nazi tattoos and who amassed white supremacist photos and literature. Said a spokesman for the state attorney general, "We have serious factual doubts about . . . his sincerity."

Many inmates file lawsuits over the allegedly poor quality of prison food, but noteworthy was the one recently filed by Missouri inmate Norman Lee Toler (serving 10 years for statutory rape), demanding kosher food as required by his devout Judaism, even though, in a previous prison stint, he was a notorious Adolf Hitler sympathizer with Nazi tattoos who amassed white supremacist photos and literature. Said a spokesman for the state attorney general, "We have serious factual doubts about ... his sincerity."

The Litigious Society: Scott Anthony Gomez, Jr. filed a lawsuit in January against jail officials in Pueblo County, Colo., alleging among other things that they failed to take security precautions to prevent him from escaping. He seriously injured himself last year when he fell 40 feet while scaling a wall in his second escape attempt. He said that, after his first escape, he had told then-sheriff Dan Corsentino how lax security was but that no "improvements" had been made.

Wayne DuMond, who made News of the Weird in 1988, was briefly notable in December 2007 as part of the Republican presidential race. DuMond was an Arkansas rape suspect in 1984 (later convicted) when he said that vigilantes castrated him, and the evidence of that wound up in a jar on the desk of the sheriff of St. Francis County (a prop the sheriff used in law-enforcement speeches). DuMond sued the sheriff, from prison, for intentional infliction of emotional distress and in 1988 won $110,000. His name recently resurfaced because a subsequent Arkansas governor, Mike Huckabee, allegedly persuaded the parole board to release DuMond, supposedly under pressure from evangelical Christians skeptical of his guilt. However, after being paroled, DuMond killed a Missouri woman, was convicted again, and died in prison in 2005.

A Jury Too Fond of "Probation": A Brownsville, Tex., jury in December found Traci Rhode guilty of shooting her husband to death in his sleep but rejected the prosecutor's recommended sentence of 60 years, opting instead for 10 years' probation and a $10,000 fine. (She did serve two days in jail after the guilty verdict was announced, but before sentencing, but Rhode's lawyer was outraged even at that: "Can you imagine the shock," he told the jury, "of being locked up for two days in a 4-by-8 cell with cement walls, in isolation?") Texas subsequently passed a law banning probation as the punishment for murder.

A Jury Fond of Probation: A Brownsville, Texas, jury in December found Traci Rhode guilty of shooting her husband to death in his sleep, but rejected the prosecutor's recommended sentence of 60 years, opting instead for 10 years' probation and a $10,000 fine. (She did serve two days in jail after the guilty verdict was announced, but before sentencing, but Rhode's lawyer was outraged even at that: "Can you imagine the shock," he told the jury, "of being locked up for two days in a 4-by-8 cell with cement walls, in isolation?") Texas subsequently passed a law banning probation as the punishment for murder.