posted February 23, 2005 08:17 PM            

R E L A T E D C O N T E N T


Mark Jones of Akron was found guilty of felonious assault and sentenced to four years in prison for pounding on Joseph Scarpino.


R E L A T E D L I N K S
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Violent attack truly senseless

You're waiting for the justification.

You watch this videotape of the guy getting the snot beaten out of him in a pizza shop, and you're looking for some sign that maybe he deserved it, or at least did something -- anything -- that would suggest the beating made sense.

Strangely, you realize, you want there to be a reason the 6-foot-4, 320-pound man walked into the pizza shop at his girlfriend's behest and started wailing on a stranger.

That's a very strange thing, you realize -- to want a reason for this brutal act.

But the alternative is worse -- no reason at all.

And that's what it seems to come down to.

Last week, Mark Jones of Akron was found guilty of felonious assault and sentenced to four years in prison for pounding on Joseph Scarpino.

You know that meaningless cliche about ``senseless violence?'' This one sort of gives it meaning.

Look at the video. Scarpino was standing in line at DaVinci's Pizza in downtown Akron last July 31. It was 2:30 a.m. It was crowded. He was waiting for his order.

A woman, Prestina Sims, entered the shop and walked past the line to the counter.

Everyone understandsthat when there's a line, you take your turn. We don't like when this social contract gets broken.

Scarpino, who was on his cell phone with his fiancee, made some comment about this. Sims didn't like that, and unloaded verbally on Scarpino.

Despite her taunting, Scarpino held his tongue. A manager asked her to leave. She did -- and promptly returned with Jones.

She spit on the manager, then began screaming in Scarpino's face.

Most often in cases like this, there are two versions of the story and the truth lies somewhere in between. Not this time. Security camera footage eliminates that middle ground. It is not pretty.

Jones went straight for the face. His first punch appears to have nearly knocked out Scarpino. For the rest of the beating, Jones delivered half a dozen uppercuts to a doubled-over victim.

He broke Scarpino's nose, gave him a concussion, chipped a tooth and dropped him in a heap, where Jones tossed him around like a rag doll while looking for a dropped cell phone.

Scarpino's no small guy -- 6-foot-2, 220 pounds -- but Jones outweighed him by 100 pounds. Scarpino never got a punch in.

Maybe you'd feel better if there was justification. Sims' lawyer tried to create some. She said Scarpino, who is white, made a racial remark about Sims, who is black. But no witnesses -- and there were several -- confirmed this.

Jones tried, too. He said he believed Scarpino was going to hit the young lady. Yet Scarpino withstood Sims' verbal tirade without doing anything to escalate the confrontation.

Sims, in fact, made the first physical contact, repeatedly flicking Scarpino on the cheek before instructing Jones to ``take care of this white mother (expletive).''

So you're still waiting for the justification.

Because as ugly as all this is, there would be some degree of comfort in being able to say Scarpino deserved this.

But no matter how many times you replay the tape, it's just not there.

You've known the rules since you were old enough to understand. You get in line; you wait your turn. You get on the highway; you follow the rules. You sit in a movie theater; you keep quiet.

That's the social contract. You hardly notice when it's being followed, and you don't like when someone breaks it.

The beating of Joseph Scarpino is disturbing specifically because of the way it taunts that understanding. He got in line that night and followed the rules. Someone else broke them. And he got pummeled for it.

In civilized society, there are rules. One brutal violation proves their importance.

Akron Beacon Journal (subscription), OH - Feb 20, 2005

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