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by Chuck Shepherd

May 28, 2009

FLUSH TO JUDGMENT 

In April, the district attorney in Vilas County, Wis., announced that he was seeking volunteers for a forensic test to help his case against Douglas Plude, 42, who is scheduled to stand trial soon for the second time in the death of his wife. The volunteers must be female, about 5-feet-8 and 140 pounds, and will have to stick their heads into a toilet bowl and flush. Plude is charged with drowning his wife in a commode, but his version (which the prosecutor will try to show is improbable) is that his wife committed suicide by flushing herself.

REMOVED FROM REALITY

Neal Horsley, running for governor of Georgia in the 2010 election on a platform encouraging the quaint Peach State legal theory of “nullification” (i.e., that the state can override the Constitution in certain instances), is principally known as a staunch foe of abortion who once posted a “hit list” of doctors. However, Horsley is also celebrated for a 2005 television interview with Fox News’ Alan Colmes, in which Horsley described his childhood: “When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule.” 

THERE’S GOTTA BE AN EXPLANATION

A month after her client was accused of a March attempted murder, attorney Frances Hartman spoke up for him to a reporter. “[My client] is an exemplary young man,” said Hartman, describing fourth-year Camden, N.J., medical student Brett Picciotti, 26, who was charged with shoving his girlfriend off a second-story balcony, but who denied that he pushed her. “This is an aberrational charge,” Hartman said. “I think there’s an explanation. I’m just not prepared to give it to you right now.”

TRAGIC IRONY

Environmental activists Raoul Surcouf and Richard Spink set sail from Bristol, England, in May on a 40-foot boat outfitted with solar panels and a wind turbine to attempt the first carbon-neutral crossing of Greenland’s polar ice cap (a journey being monitored eagerly online in Bristol by 25,000 schoolchildren). However, 400 miles off the coast of Ireland, hurricane-force winds destroyed the boat, and the crew was lucky to be rescued by a nearby ship—which was a tanker carrying 680,000 barrels of crude oil. 

OUT TO LUNCH

In April, accounting clerk James Kauchis made a formal complaint to the personnel office of the county Department of Social Services in Binghamton, N.Y., demanding that he be compensated for a recent interrupted lunch hour. Kauchis had missed lunch when DSS offices were locked down as police secured the neighborhood surrounding the site of the April 3 massacre in which a gunman killed 13 people and then himself. Although DSS had pizza and beverages brought in during the siege, Kauchis felt that wasn’t as good as a regular lunch hour. 

FLASH BROTHERS

(1) Allan Mailloux, 45, was arrested for flashing motorists as he walked among rush-hour traffic in Madison, Wis., in January, on a day when the high temperature was minus-2 (F). (2) Police in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, investigated reports in February that a man was driving up alongside motorists on Highway 78, and if the motorist was a lone female, he would speed on ahead, pull over to the shoulder, get out, and flash the motorist as she drove by. MTW