Dumb and Dumber

You tell me where the real stupidity lies in this story from Kentucky: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18251472/

Is it on the part of the prisoner who had a buddy fax in fake release papers? Timothy Rouse, charged with a beating an elderly man, had an escape plan. A friend sent a phony fax that "demanded" his release. The fax indicated that it was from the governor of Kentucky and that the prisoner should be released under the orders of the Kentucky Supreme Court. A good plan except that it was not on state letterhead, it was full of grammatical and spelling errors (some places report that "governor" was even misspelled), and it was sent from the grocery down the street. What dumb crook thinks that plan will work?

I hope not too many, because it did. Mr. Rouse was released from prison after the phony fax was received and the error was not caught for nearly two weeks. In order to put the community at ease, though, the prison officials claim that they frequently receive faxes with grammatical and spelling errors and that there is no policy to check the origin of a fax. That's really the position that they are going to take? This news story is going out around the world, and the state of Kentucky is going to defend themselves under the premise that apparently most of the people in government there are borderline illiterate and that checking the origin of a fax that demands the release of a dangerous and violent suspect that is not even on state letterhead doesn't fit with their policy.

I thought it was pretty dumb of the crook to not even try to fake the letterhead, but I wonder who's dumber, the guy that didn't take the time to make a decent forgery or the guy that thought a fax from the grocery store was good enough to release a prisoner?

There's no real good answer, but we could probably sum it up with two words: Hickman, Kentucky.