French Fry Girl

Good to hear from Melinda Burns. I don’t know how it works that the DC appeals court is so conservative, but it is.  Some years back, there was a young high school-age African-American woman who was arrested for eating while on the Metro in DC.  Arrested and then convicted for a criminal misdemeanor.  The crime was actually eating one french fry.  She became known as French Fry Girl.  Anyway, she turned away from a life of crime and was an A student, got accepted to a good college with a scholarship, but was then turned down for the federal scholarship (I think it as a Pell grant) because of her criminal record.  The ACLU took her case pro-bono to the same DC appeals court, asking them to void her conviction so she could get the scholarship. The requisite judge in the case turned down the appeal, stating that while it it would help in her case that it was important that rules be followed to deter crime in others, so French Fry Girl remained a criminal.  So who was that judge?  A guy named John Roberts, now Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.