A Predator over your backyard - a stupid and sad story in three easy steps

I read this article with growing sense of wonder and some foreboding, till I got to the punchline. Or an unexpected conclusion that kind of negates the sense and the reason of the rest. Here is the abbreviated story.

1. In the first-ever case of a U.S. citizen being convicted and sentenced to prison based in part on evidence gathered by a drone, Lakota, N.D., farmer Rodney Brossart got a three-year sentence for his role in an armed standoff with police that began after he was accused of stealing his neighbors' stray cattle in 2011.

Reading this you will naturally assume that Rodney Brossart was proved to be a rustler with that high-tech gizmo. Wait.

2. Brossart was arrested on June 23, 2011, but his family refused at gunpoint to let authorities armed with a search warrant onto their 3,600-acre property to investigate the neighbors' complaint.

So there are two points in the "authorities'" displeasure with Brossart family: the alleged rustling and their refusal to let the cops on the property. And here comes the grand finale:

3. A jury found Brossart not guilty of stealing the cows, valued at $6,000, but he did get three years - all but six months of which was suspended - for his part in the armed police standoff based in part on video supplied by the drone to court officials...

So let me see: a man was convicted and jailed, with help of a drone, for resisting the cops' attempt to find proof of something that he was innocent of to start with. And this is why this gizmo was needed?

The next coming thing will be to replace the judge, the prosecutor and the defense lawyer each with one of these, methinks.

I hope that the drone at least helped to find the missing cattle. No? Suspected so...