Saturday, May 23, 1998

Doing crime and time

If you have to shoot your Argentine, polo-playing, playboy lover, estate-studded Fauquier County, Va., is the jurisdiction for you.

Death was the fate of Roberto Villegas at the hands of arms fortune heiress Susan Cummings. That she shot him was not in question. A local jury found the circumstances extenuating enough to condemn her to 60 days in the local jail.

Fearing that inmates serving, say, five years for bad checks might be peeved at the unfairness of it all and take out their pique on Cummings, the local sheriff emptied a six-woman cell for her, where she has the cell telephone all to herself, special food and plenty of visitors.

The sheriff knows the true meaning of the phrase "correctional institution." The rate of recidivism for shooting Argentine, polo-playing, playboy lovers in Fauquier County is nil.