[Photograph: Sam Howzit on Flickr]

A county judge in West Chester, Pennsylvania, was asked to rule whether a slice of pizza could be construed as a weapon. Police allege that William James Fennie III threw a slice of pizza at a passing car and arrested him for "resisting arrest and propulsion of missiles."

The definition of missile in terms of the law here is "any solid object," so Judge James P. MacElree got a bit cheeky and conducted an experiment [my emphasis in bold]:

MacElree said that to confirm his assessment, he bought a pizza and tested its physical properties. Unlike a gas, the pizza did not take up the shape or volume of the container in which it came, i.e. a cardboard box. When he sliced it into six pieces — ''because I was not hungry enough to eat eight pieces," he said in an aside — the slices did not reform to take the shape of the container, and thus it was not a liquid.

To confirm that a slice was a solid, MacElree said he picked one up and noted that it retained its basic shape, "although it did droop a bit at the end."

"Further, I was able to bite off one piece which required some chewing before I could swallow it," he continued. "I put the remainder on top of a paper towel and observed that it stayed in place, did not spill onto my desk, and held its shape (less one bite)," he wrote. "I therefore concluded it was a solid."

Hah. I wonder if the honorable James P. MacElree has been reading up on "tip sag" here at Slice.