Just yesterday, someone was telling me about this dude who held up a liquor store. He pulled a gun on the clerk, told her to give him all the money. Then he asked her for a bottle of liquor. She said, "I'm sorry, but I don't believe you're 21 yet."

So to prove to her that he was of legal age, he showed her his driver's license. When the police arrived, the clerk was able to provide them with the robber's name and address.

A few years back there was a flurry of interest in the theory that men with an extra Y chromosome (XYY) were more likely to be criminals because it exaggerated their maleness. Apparently they are 'overrepresented' in prison.

Someone pointed out that having the extra chromosome knocks an average of 10 points off your IQ, and men with IQs in the 85-95 range are far more likely to be criminals than those who are smarter or (for that matter) dumber. The fact that the extra chromosome is associated with maleness apparently has nothing to do with it.

Or so I recall the long-ago journalism . . . . too lazy to look it up. I may have an extra Sloth chromosome.

I have often remarked durin' my years as a criminal defense attorney that if absolute stupidity was a defense to criminal charges, I could get 85% of my clients off. I am seldom surprised at some to the stupidity shown by those who are arrested for various activities. Oh, I know of no imperical data to prove this thesis, but a friend of mine and I did notice that a large percentage of all criminals have a variant of Wayne (ie. Wayne, Lawayne, Lewain, Dwaine, Dewayne, etc.) within their name.

Then there was the guy who knocked off the day's cash receipts at Boston's Logan airport. He wore a ski mask and his employee photo ID badge.

Alot of the criminals who don't get caught are probably smart enough, but the cops don't know about those ones...

My favorite: A guy breaks out of prison. He makes a beeline for his girlfriend.

But that's not the stupid part! He goes with girlfriend to her court date.

No, no wait! He dissapears; girlfriend has him paged...

It gets better: a cop recognizes the name, so they wait for him to show up at the court house.

He does show up, in a car that he had just stolen...

Court TV is a source of great entertainment for just that reason. Fictional criminals have at least half a brain; they've got to provide some sort of challenge for Our Heroes as they try to figure out whodunit.

In reality, as shown by recent episodes of Forensic Files...

Guy picks up two different women on two different nights, takes them to an apartment he'd broken into (residents were away on vacation), puts the moves on them and when they resist, kills them. Then he decides to set fire to the place to conceal the evidence, so he shows up with a gas can, lights his cigarette, and smokes it while he's pouring gasoline all over the place! When it blows up in his face (literally), his glasses and his cigarette get knocked to the ground and he leaves them behind and runs for his life.

Then he takes items he'd stolen from that very apartment to the pawn shop and presents his own genuine, unadulterated ID as part of the transaction.

Another case has a homicide detective telling his fellow investigators that his wife, who works as a prison guard and is well trained in the use of firearms, playfully pointed a gun to her head and pulled the trigger thinking the gun was unloaded! Also, he lied about how long her body was on the bed before he moved it to the floor to "try to revive her"; apparently, this homicide detective had never heard of CSI's.

Oh yeah, and he has a girlfriend and had recently taken out a large insurance policy on his wife, somehow not realizing that this might look suspicious to a homicide detective.