YURI WAINWRIGHT & TOSIN ODUWOLE

Today makes the 14th Wednesday since Yuri Wainwright was locked in jail for supposedly threatening someone online. He's been held on $1 million bond. We still haven't been told what it was Wainwright wrote that got him arrested.

Compare Yuri's case to that of a similar case that made the news today:

EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. (AP) — A college fraternity president and aspiring rapper who was accused of threatening a "murderous rampage" similar to April's deadly shooting spree at Virginia Tech pleaded not guilty Wednesday.

A gun dealer had alerted federal authorities about Olutosin Oduwole, saying he had seemed overly anxious to get an online shipment of semiautomatic weapons, according to an affidavit filed in court by a police detective.

The Southern Illinois University student was arrested Friday after police said they found a handwritten note in his car demanding payment to a PayPal account, threatening that "if this account doesn't reach $50,000 in the next 7 days then a murderous rampage similar to the VT shooting will occur at another highly populated university. THIS IS NOT A JOKE!"

-Unlike Wainwright, this student had recently ordered semiautomatic weapons online.

-Unlike Bob Hopkins, the police in this case revealed what the student had written that got him locked up. In Wainwright's publicly available writings, he's never said anything remotely like that, nor has Bob Hopkins ever alleged that Wainwright said anything close to that.

-Unlike Wainwright, police found a loaded gun in this student's dorm room.

-Like Wainwright, this student is in jail on $1 million bond.


This new Illinois case is an example of the police and the courts responding appropriately (at least based on what we know so far). The Wainwright case is an example of the police and the courts overreacting and almost certainly violating Wainwright's civil liberties. Again, we can't know that for sure because Bob Hopkins STILL won't tell us what Wainwright wrote that was so bad and the DA ain't talking either.