Long Arm of the Law Has Man by the Ankle

Md. Probationer Identifies With Stewart, Sort Of

Johnnie Whichard uses a device called the Sobrietor, which checks for alcohol on his breath. He also undergoes drug tests and mental health counseling.

The electronic leash is always on, fastened 24-7 to Johnnie Whichard's left ankle, a little waterproof black box with a transmitter inside, helping authorities to keep track of him. Whichard did the crime, a minor one, and now he's doing the time -- and so what if he's not behind bars? He's an inmate just the same, confined to a rented four-room duplex most hours when he's not at work painting houses. And even then, on the job, he's a prisoner.

Can't do this, can't do that -- a straitjacket of rules.

In fact, said Whichard, 32, he gets so frustrated at times that he thinks the jail terms he served over the years were easier in some ways than the electronically monitored probation he's on now. Not that he'd prefer a cell over the ankle transmitter that he has been wearing for the past seven weeks. But it can be stressful, he said, being out in the free world most days, seeing it up close, and not being able to live in it.

Which is something Martha Stewart may realize soon, Whichard said, if she hasn't already. She's out of federal prison after five months and wearing an ankle transmitter 24-7, commuting from her country estate to her office in New York City, then straight home in the evenings, about 100 miles round trip.

Her days, like Whichard's, are governed by rigid itineraries preapproved by authorities, each day purposeful and all but devoid of whim and spontaneity, with the ankle gadget, phone calls and on-site spot-checks helping to keep her in line.

"Man, I wouldn't wish this on nobody," Whichard said the other night, plopped on the sofa in his cramped living room in Prince George's County in front of his 48-inch TV. He bought it last year, not knowing what a useful investment it would turn out to be.

"What I mean is, you don't get to see nothing in jail except jail."

In jail, a man doesn't drive from one painting job to the next past restaurants he can't stop at, movie theaters he can't go to, woods he can't hunt in. In jail, a man doesn't stare out a front window of his home on Route 301 and see cars whisking toward Annapolis, toward the nightlife he used to enjoy there, or look out back at the yard where he can't romp with his terriers, or see his boat trailer with the Bayliner he can't take on the water.

Maybe Stewart, who has five months of electronic monitoring ahead of her, sees the horses she can't ride, a garden she can't putter in.

"It's a strain on you," said Whichard, who has two months left with his transmitter. But violating the rules could mean a day, a week, a month behind bars.

Above the ankle, he and Stewart have little in common. She's a media tycoon; he does floor and drywall work besides being a self-employed painter. She lied to federal agents in a stock-fraud probe; he got in a loud beef with his girlfriend outside a Rockville pub one night, then wrestled with some off-duty police officers who intervened.

If Stewart requires something from the outside world while she's leashed at home, a member of her staff can see to it. Whichard doesn't have a staff, only a live-in girlfriend who tends bar at night and who can't just up and leave her job to help him in a pinch.

"Oh, man," Whichard said, "you get in here after work, and you crack your pack open and you look, and you're like, 'Man, I have one cigarette left!' " He buried his face in his hands and groaned at the memory. "My girlfriend don't come home until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, and I'm on the phone trying to call friends of mine. I'm hurt, man."

Stewart had no prior criminal record. Whichard, now a recovering alcoholic, can't remember how many times he was arrested for beer- and rum-fueled mayhem, including accidentally shooting a man in the buttocks, an act that landed him in state prison for 13 months in the mid-1990s. He also has served some shorter stretches in county jails.