To call the outcome of Mark McCleod's criminal prosecution in Savannah a surprise is like calling King Kong a big monkey.
The Chatham County district attorney flopped in his attempt to take the 53-year-old McCleod, an obviously disturbed Appling man, to trial on felony charges of stalking 16-year-old pop starlet Miley Cyrus.
The grand jury declined to indict McCleod, who then later pled guilty to relatively minor misdemeanor charges in state court.
The charges stem from allegations that McCleod basically hung around a little too much when Cyrus was in Tybee Island filming a movie this past summer.
Unlike the many dozens of pre-teens and their parents who did the same thing in an effort to get just a glimpse of the star, though, McCleod kept coming back when he was told to leave. And because the cops thought he might be dangerous, they locked him up.
Creepy? Absolutely. Harmful? Hardly.
The grand jury's refusal to indict McCleod is an out-and-out rebuke to Chatham County District Attorney Larry Chisholm. Remember: Only the prosecution presents evidence to a grand jury, who decide whether a criminal case moves forward and on what charges. That means even without the messy problem of allowing McCleod to tell his side of the story, the DA still was unable to convince the jurors that McCleod was anything other than a misguided weirdo.
A couple of days later, McCleod pled guilty to misdemeanor charges of obstruction of police and disorderly conduct. The judge sentenced him to two years of probation, ordered him to get mental health treatment and banished him from Chatham County.
The latter part of the sentence shouldn't be a problem, since Cyrus' film crew has long since wrapped up and returned to the West Coast. But the judge also banned McCleod from using computers during his probation. That's good, because McCleod's problems with Cyrus centered around his obsession that reportedly was fed by staffers at Cyrus' Web site egging him on to believing he was corresponding directly with the star.
That e-mail correspondence, which dragged on for two years, led the disturbed McCleod to sell valuable belongings and buy expensive jewelry that he sent to the fan site - intending it for Cyrus, but likely instead lining the pockets of Web-site staffers. Where's their prosecution for fraud?
Perhaps the best part of the sentence is that if McCleod has to stay away from the Internet, then maybe the Internet also will stay away from him. It certainly hasn't done him any favors.
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