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The Easter Bunny overstayed his welcome in Iowa this week and wreaked havoc on one county’s online criminal case tracking system which likely made a lot of people hopping mad.
The prosecutor for several hundred criminal cases in Polk County was changed to the Easter Bunny in their online system on April 4 according to a report by the Iowa Capital Dispatch.
The change affected mostly misdemeanors and drunk driving cases previously assigned to county prosecutor Kailey Gray and were reassigned to a mythical county lawyer named “Easter Santa Bunny.”
Although it typically take years of studies to become an attorney, one person noted on social media that the Easter Bunny didn’t even have to study for the bar, “He hopped right over the damn thing.”
He didn’t just pass the bar. He hopped right over the damn thing.
— Pellegrino Rocks Twist (@GregPMcIver) April 23, 2022
Although Gray was successfully reassigned to another set of cases, Assistant County Attorney Bret Lucas said Gray’s cases were “transferred” to the fictional placeholder until the electronic records could be properly updated.
“We had contacted the Judicial Branch and they worked with their information technology department to facilitate the mass transfer of case,” Lucas explained. “Apparently, the Judicial Branch and the IT department decided to put that placeholder in there because, obviously, no one else would have that name…So they were all aware of that, and it sounds like they must still be in the middle of that transfer process.”
Although some observers found the mistake hysterical, some-bunny was not amused.
Really … couldn’t they have entered something like “<unassigned>” and avoided all the confusion? There is a lack of second order thinking in the IT department.
— Harrison Pratt (@hwprattii) April 21, 2022
i’m sorry but this is so funny
— Linh Ta (@linhmaita) April 21, 2022
Officials thought they had hidden the Easter Bunny references from the general public and only made them available to judges, lawyers, and clerks, but mistakenly appeared to have done the reverse as the Easter Bunny was visible on the public-facing site.
“This has been a nightmare for me.” Stacy Curtis, a criminal division supervisor in the Polk County Clerk of Court’s Office. “We moved everything from Kaylie to the Easter Bunny, and those should have all been cleaned up so you wouldn’t be able to see that.”
Nearly a week after the Easter holiday, the issue was reportedly fixed as of late Thursday afternoon.
However, the Easter Bunny isn’t the only character to make an appearance in the court’s online systems.
A case from December 1997 reportedly shows that Santa Claus was sentenced to 999 years behind bars due to felony burglary and kidnapping charges. His bail of “one million bucks” was “posted by Rudolph.”
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