A 345lb man who was jailed for driving with a suspended license was freed nine days early because the judge offered him a ‘lose-a-pound, gain-a-day’ deal.
Spurred on by the the weight-loss challenge, George McCovery, 37, of West Palm Beach, Florida, dropped 25 pounds in 20 days.
He told the Orlando Sentinel: ‘She gave me a chance to prove myself, and I didn’t want to let her down.’
Lake County, Florida, Judge Donna Miller, imposed a 29-day sentence on McCovery and said she would check on his weight after 20 days.
To her surprise, he had already dropped 25 pounds.
She said: ‘It’s not easy to lose weight. I thought he’d lose five, maybe, six pounds – not 25.’
McCovery, who takes medication for high blood pressure, said the poor prison food also helped in his crash diet and he stuck mainly to vegetables.
Judge Miller, whose courtroom proceedings are shown on the TV show Lake Courts, is well known for her sentence deals.
In her 17 years as a judge, she has ordered defendants to start jogging, take a dance class, tutor math and write Christmas cards.
