DURANT, Okla. – A man who had just received a 10-year prison term exchanged marriage vows with a woman in the same courthouse before being led away in shackles.

Forrest Lynn Foreman, 49, was sentenced to 10 years Friday after pleading no contest to making methamphetamine, but he wanted to marry 30-year-old Amie Gayleene Lang before beginning his sentence.

In a third-floor courtroom of the Bryan County courthouse, Calera Police Chief Don Hyde Jr., who is an ordained minister, performed the marriage ceremony after being asked to do so by a court clerk deputy.

“It was an emotional moment because the two had professed to love each other and do what was right and unite as a family,” Hyde said. “It was a situation, that from talking to the two of them, he was going away a long time and they wanted to become legal as a couple.”

Hyde said that the service was beautiful and that the couple cried.

“It was just an emotional thing,” he said.

After the service, Foreman was taken to jail.

University team engineers hamburger-making machine

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.- A team of Purdue University students concocted a 156-step recipe to prepare a hamburger to win Saturday’s annual national Rube Goldberg Machine Contest.

This year’s task was to assemble a burger consisting of no less than one precooked meat patty, two vegetables and two condiments, sandwiched between two bun halves.

The victory by the 17-member Purdue Society of Professional Engineers was the team’s third such win in the past four years in the contest, named for the late cartoonist known for his drawings of complicated devices performing simple tasks.

Texas A&M; University placed second; the University at Buffalo in New York was third.

After winning the regional contest in February, Purdue’s team added 55 more steps to perfect its machine, said captain Drew Wischer.

“We put 4,000 to 5,000 man-hours into this machine since September, and all the hard work has been well worth it,” said Wischer, a senior in aviation technology from Cedarburg, Wis.

The competition, sponsored by Phi Chapter of Theta Tau fraternity, rewards machines that most effectively combine creativity with inefficiency and complexity. Machines must complete the assigned task in 20 or more steps.

Winning machines must complete two successful runs. Points are deducted if students have to assist the machine once it has started. Judges award points on the creative use of materials, team chemistry, flow of the machine and each machine’s theme.

Other teams competing Saturday were Ferris State University in Michigan; Michigan Technological University; Penn State University Brandywine; and the University of Texas at Austin.