Gal Who Bailed on Cab Fare Ordered to Take Long Walk

Make the punishment fit the crime, right? An Ohio woman accepted that very notion when she agreed to walk 30 miles after stiffing a cabbie who took her on a 30-mile taxi ride, the New York Daily News reports. "What would you do if you didn't have a cab?" Judge Michael Cicconetti asked the defendant, Victoria Bascom, in court last week, per WKYC. "Walk," she said. "So I think it's only appropriate that you walk 30 miles," the judge told her. She began the trek Friday at a fairground in Painesville, Ohio, while wearing a GPS device. She also owes the cabbie $100 and was sentenced to four months' probation. Bascom pleaded guilty to misdemeanor theft, but she did say she wasn't the last to leave the cab and figured other riders would cover her, People reports.

Cicconetti is known for his fit-the-crime punishments, including one to a Painesville woman who admitted to pepper-spraying someone at a Burger King. "He said either 30 days in jail or take a shot of Mace to your face and I said I will just opt for the Mace," the woman, 20-year-old Diamond Gaston, tells WKYC. But when the spray hit her, it was just water: "He's like, 'Oh, it's water,' and I'm like, 'Oh, OK, that's a relief,'" says Gaston. Cicconetti explains, "Nothing illegal. I wouldn't do anything illegal." Cicconetti considers his offbeat sentences successful, because 90% of those defendants don't come back, he says—a better rate than he achieves with jail sentences. (More punishment stories.)