Baltimore County Circuit Judge John G. Turnbull II put himself Monday in the shoes of a defendant charged with beating up a young man he had found hiding almost naked in his daughter's bedroom closet. "I'm not sure I wouldn't have done the same thing," Turnbull said. "In some houses he would have been shot." Arlen Turpin, 53, was accused of administering such a severe pistol-whipping to Andrew Taylor, 19 - who admitted to having conducted a "risky" sexual relationship with Turpin's 16-year-old daughter - that he fractured his skull. The judge gave Turpin a suspended five-year jail sentence and 18 months of unsupervised probation, and ordered him to have no contact with Taylor.

- Nick Madigan