Sure, let’s treat prisoners decently, but honey buns?

What’s cooking at the Chesapeake city jail?

Spectators couldn’t help but wonder about that last week as they gawked at Ryan Frederick during his capital murder trial.

I mean, how often does an inmate pack on about 60 pounds behind bars?

Comparing photos of the skinny soft-drink delivery guy who was arrested a year ago to the chipmunk-cheeked defendant in the too-small suit was a lot like looking at before-and-after photos from a Jenny Craig ad.

“I have a bad habit of doughnuts and honey buns,” Frederick confessed during his teary testimony Thursday.

That wasn’t his only bad habit.

Seems that prior to his arrest for the shooting death of Detective Jarrod Shivers on Jan. 17, 2008, Frederick was a stoner who took a couple of bong hits as soon as he got home from work, then chased the pot with an anti-anxiety drug to relax. Questioned about grow lights and other paraphernalia found at his house, Frederick demonstrated an encyclopedic knowledge of cannabis cultivation and admitted that he had tended a small marijuana crop in his garage.

Yet, if Frederick was afflicted with the munchies during his pothead days, it didn’t show. The 5-foot-7-inch Chesapeake native was just 120 pounds on the night of the arrest. In the weeks that followed, his weight dropped to about 100 pounds. Frederick now admits to being about 185.

To explain his girth to the jury, Frederick said he spends 23 hours a day in a 9-by-5-foot cell where “one of the best ways to pass the time is to snack.”

Hold on a minute. They serve snacks in jail?

I phoned the sheriff to find out.

Jail spokesman Sgt. David Rosado said inmates aren’t given complimentary pastries, but they are allowed to buy them from the canteen. Each inmate may spend up to $60 a week.

That’s a lot of jelly doughnuts.

Frederick certainly didn’t bulk up on the jail meals. Chesapeake’s 1,800-calorie-a-day fare is an adventure in unimaginative cuisine and precision measurements.

For instance, Friday’s dining highlights included a hearty breakfast of 1 cup of oatmeal, two pancakes, one slice of bologna, a cup of milk, ¼ cup of syrup, 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1 tablespoon of margarine.

Lunch was two slices of salami, one of cheese, cake, and two pieces of bread with a single mustard pack and a ¾-ounce bag of chips.

Dinner consisted of a 3-ounce chicken patty nestled alongside ¼ cup of grilled onions, 1 cup of mashed potatoes, ¹/³ cup of gravy, ½ cup of seasoned greens, two slices of bread and a brownie.

Edible. But not enough to send most inmates to the Big and Tall Jumpsuit Shop.

Frederick’s waistline isn’t just a curiosity, it’s an issue in the case.

On Thursday, prosecutors tried to focus attention on Frederick’s weight, hinting that the beefy 29-year-old might have kept thin in the past by abusing drugs that cause weight loss. The prosecution posed hypothetical questions to an expert witness about whether cessation of methamphetamines or cocaine might result in rapid weight gain.

Frederick insisted that the only illegal drug he used was marijuana. He said his overeating is stress-related, yet conceded that stress on the night of the shooting caused him to vomit several times.

“You’re not exactly wasting away from regret and remorse now, are you?” snapped prosecutor James Willett, who then flashed an image of skinny Frederick in an orange jumpsuit on a screen. With the thin Frederick towering over the chubby one, Willett told Frederick to rise, open his jacket and turn sideways .

The jurors in this case have plenty to ponder. The senseless death of a police officer in the line of duty. The deadly actions of a defendant who says he feared for his life. The testimony of sketchy witnesses.

And now this: Frederick’s jailhouse weight gain.

 Kerry Dougherty, (757) 446-2306, kerry.dougherty@cox.net