Don't do the crime if you can't do the time

My better nature thinks it's bad form to be happy when someone sees no way out but suicide. But in this case, I'll make an exception:

A federal prosecutor who was arrested in an Internet sex sting after he allegedly traveled to Michigan from Florida to have sex with a 5-year-old girl hanged himself in a Michigan federal prison Friday morning, Detroit television station WDIV-TV reported.

John D.R. Atchison, 53, was put on suicide watch after he used a bed sheet in an attempted suicide in September.

Detroit police confirmed Atchison's suicide death at 10:14 a.m. Friday. They have not released any details.

Atchison was a married father of three and a respected figure who coached girls' softball and basketball in a park a few blocks from his home in a well-to-do Florida beach community.

Atchison had been communicating with an undercover sheriff's detective from Macomb County, Mich., who was posing online as the fictitious girl's mother and arranged for him to have sex with the child, police said.

He was arrested carrying presents for her, including a doll and earrings, and sexual materials, officials said.

"There were no red flags. He was normal. He went to work at the courthouse Monday through Friday. It's not like he carried dolls to the ballpark," said police Lt. Rick Hawthorne, who knew Atchison for more than 10 years.

I first wrote about this piece of human excrement here.

Good riddance, asshole.

Side note: I really wish that news coverage of cases like this didn't refer to "having sex" with the child. One does not "have sex" with children. It's called rape.