This is so strange. A lawyer in a murder trial has asked for a day off to compete in a look-alike contest. Click below to find out more!
A Tampa attorney had an “Ernest†request for a judge: Suspend a murder trial for a day so the Hemingway-loving lawyer could attend a Papa lookalike contest in Key West.
The attorney, Frank Louderback, represents a man being tried in a murder-for-hire scheme. He wants Friday, July 20 off to fly down to Key West and try for first place.
Hemingway, author of famous titles like “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and “The Old Man and the Sea,” lived in Key West in the 1930s. Each year about 125 bearded, stocky men gather there to drink booze, smoke cigars, form friendships, and wait to see who is crowned best doppelganger, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
But while feasts may be movable in Hemingway’s literary world, trial dates aren’t.U.S. District Court Judge Steven Merryday wasn’t so keen on the idea. He answered the counselor’s motion to take the day off with a written response quoting poet Dorothy Parker and a line from Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises,” the Miami Herald reported.
“Between a murder-for-hire trial and an annual look-alike contest, surely Hemingway, a perfervid admirer of grace under pressure, would choose the trial,” the judge wrote. “Best of luck to counsel in next year’s contest. The motion is denied.”
Louderback told MSNBC he thought there was a chance the judge would grant his motion, “but instead he came with his literary gem.”
The bearded lawyer has participated in the contest three times before, but didn’t win. This year, he’d already booked non-refundable hotel rooms for friends and family who planned to cheer him on, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
He’s decided to keep his name in the contest in the hopes he can make it there in time if he dashes down after court.
If not, he told the paper, “It’ll give me another year to get older, fatter and grayer.”
