“Please, just go away.”
Some people are so tiresome that there’s no other way to respond to them. No matter how many times you assert that you’re not interested in them or what they’re selling, they just keep coming back and trying again.
It could be salesmen, it could be Saturday morning evangelists, or it could be would-be paramours the very sight of whom makes you retch. You try to be polite, to let them down easily, but you soon find that courtesy and subtle hints are lost on them. You have to be blunt and emphatic, and even that may not work.
That’s when you walk away or shut the door or get a restraining order.
And that’s what it’s come to with Allen Loughry.
The guy’s insufferable. He was a state Supreme Court Justice, for Pete’s sake. Well-paid, well-respected. Wasn’t that good enough?
Apparently not. In 2018, Loughry was convicted on 10 federal counts of wire fraud, mail fraud, and lying to federal agents. He served a two-year sentence.
Loughry wrote the book on corruption in West Virginia politics, literally. It’s called Don’t Buy Another Vote, I Won’t Pay For A Landslide: The Sordid and Continuing History of Political Corruption in West Virginia. It is continuing, too, thanks to him.
You can’t make this stuff up.
You’d think that Loughry – after being convicted of, and serving time for, corruption – would have the decency to disappear, keep his head down, and labor in obscurity from now on. But that’s not how people with no manners and no self-awareness operate.
Loughry requested a new trial or an evidentiary hearing based on evidence that a juror had read information about his case on social media. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals denied his request, so he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which, late last month, declined to review his case.
The question of jurors having access to social media during the course of a trial might be something to address. Thanks for suggesting that, Allen. Now, please, just go away.