Prisoner Prefers Not to Lighten Up

Broderick Lloyd Laswell, a 308-lb. inmate in the Benton County (AR) Jail, recently filed a lawsuit in federal court, charging that the county was starving him. Laswell had been in the jail for eight months awaiting trial on a murder charge, and wasting away all the while, he claims.

One might reasonably wonder how a 300-lb. individual can be starving on the 3,000-calorie-a-day diet the county by law must offer prisoners.

Laswell says he has already dropped over a hundred pounds from the robust 413-lbs. he weighed before being locked up. On the bright side, witnesses might have trouble identifying him, given his new svelte profile.