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February 12, 2009
ABSTAINING FROM JUSTICE
An Oregon district attorney's office set out two years ago to prosecute David Simmons for having sex the year before with his girlfriend, then 14, while he was 17. A grand jury in Jefferson County refused to indict Simmons, but the prosecutor acted exactly like the indictment had gone through, and no one, even Simmons, noticed the mistake. Only when Simmons agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a 30-day sentence in October 2006 did the news finally reach the foreman of the grand jury that had "no-billed" Simmons, and the foreman's complaint caused the judge to dismiss the conviction. However, in December 2008, prosecutors in neighboring Lane County charged Simmons anew for that 2005 tryst, claiming that "double jeopardy" does not apply because the Jefferson County case never legally happened (in that Simmons was never really indicted).
WELL VERSED
(1) Twelve local poets jumped into the frigid Green Lake in Seattle in December, just because they thought it would be a good way to publicize their art. "It's not enough to write," said one. "You need that audience." (2) The Ontario Court of Appeal overturned the conviction of Antonio Batista in November, declaring that his "death threat" against a Missassauga city council member, in the form of a sonnet on long-neglected potholes, was more likely literary expression.
ON THE CUTTING EDGE
Hysterectomies by ordinary surgery can take hours to perform, several days' recovery and six weeks off from work, largely from the trauma of cutting open the abdomen, but recent advances in laparoscopy have reduced the burdens dramatically because the four required incisions are each only about one-eighth of an inch long. The Chicago Sun-Times reported in December that one of the leading practitioners, Dr. Richard Demir of South Barrington, Ill., had recently been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for having removed a 7-pound uterus via laparoscopy (by cutting the organ into smaller pieces and pulling each out through the tiny incisions).
CHARITABLY STUPID
Police in New Britain, Conn., arrested Joel Rubin, 42, in January and charged him with using a stolen credit card, but unanswered was why Rubin also tried to use his own store discount card to get a lower price on the merchandise. It was Rubin's name on the discount card that tipped off police, and it was not immediately clear why Rubin wanted to save a few bucks off a bill that would be sent to someone else.
FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS
(1) In December, Pauline McCook of Britain's Isle of Sheppey reported the theft from her front yard of her life-sized glass statue of mobster Al Capone. It was not reported why McCook would have such a statue in the first place. (2) In Plant City, Fla., in December, Robert Thompson and Taurus Morris were charged with armed burglary after taking a woman's eggbeater from her at knifepoint. It was not reported why they wanted the eggbeater or why the victim had to be threatened at knifepoint to get it.
RACE TO JUDGMENT
In November, some African-American leaders in Danville, Ill., complained when eight black players were cut from the Danville High School basketball team at once, charging that the coach was engaging in "racial profiling" by, in the words of a black pastor, "(taking) a look at the way the young men wore their hair." The coach pointed out that though all the dismissed players are black, so are all eight retained players, and that two of the retained players wore the same style braids to which the pastor was referring. MTW
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