Tuesday - September 27, 2005

Most Ridiculous Item Of The Day

Some news stories require no comment. Others require a lot of thought and insight to prepare the reader. This news story requires none of the above. All this story requires is a nice seat in an electric chair and about 20,000,000 volts run through it until the smoking ashes are all that remains ....

Laci Peterson Life Insurance Hearing Set
MODESTO, Calif. (AP)

A judge on Tuesday set an Oct. 21 court date to decide who will collect Laci Peterson’s $250,000 life insurance policy. Sharon Rocha, the mother of the slain pregnant teacher, has petitioned the court for the money. But Scott Peterson’s attorney, Mark Geragos, won’t give up his client’s claim to the money until he has exhausted appeals of his conviction in her murder.

Rocha’s attorney, Adam Stewart, said Tuesday after a brief court hearing that it could take “a quarter of a century to find out whether he’s exonerated or put to death.” A telephone call to Geragos was not immediately returned. Peterson was convicted and sentenced to death last year for killing his pregnant wife and the fetus she carried. He maintains his innocence. A $25 million wrongful death lawsuit filed against Scott Peterson by Laci Peterson’s family is set for trial April 4.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/27/2005 at 11:18 PM   
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Angels With Meth

Once more, we find out that we weren’t told the entire truth at the time. It seems the hostage had a lot of help from God and even more help from a stash of meth ....

Hostage Gave Meth to Atlanta Fugitive
ATLANTA (AP)

Ashley Smith, the woman who says she persuaded suspected courthouse gunman Brian Nichols to release her by talking about her faith, discloses in a new book that she gave him methamphetamine during the hostage ordeal. Smith did not share that detail with authorities at the time. But investigators said she came clean about the drugs when they interviewed her months later. They said they have no plans to charge her with drug possession.

In her book, “Unlikely Angel,” released Tuesday, Smith says Nichols had her bound on her bed with masking tape and an extension cord. She says he asked for marijuana, but she did not have any, and she dug into her illegal stash of crystal meth instead. Smith, a 27-year-old widowed mother who gained widespread praise for her level-headedness, says the seven-hour hostage ordeal in March led to the realization that she was a drug addict, and she says she has not used drugs since the night before she was taken captive.

“If I did die, I wasn’t going to heaven and say, ‘Oh, excuse me, God. Let me wipe my nose, because I just did some drugs before I got here,’” Smith told the Augusta Chronicle. Police said Nichols took Smith hostage in her apartment March 11 after a shooting rampage at the Atlanta courthouse. During the ordeal, Smith says, she pulled out Rick Warren’s book “The Purpose-Driven Life” and read to Nichols a chapter called “Using What God Gave Me” to gain his trust. Nichols later released her, and she called 911 and told authorities where to find him.

Nichols is accused of killing four people, including a judge, and could get the death penalty. Since Nichols’ arrest, Smith has received $70,000 in rewards and has been bombarded with offers for books, movies and speaking engagements. Her ordeal has been held up as an example of the redemptive power of faith. “It’s hard for people to understand the miracle of the story,” she told the newspaper. “This was totally a God thing, to me in my life. This was God getting my attention, going, ‘I’m going to give you one more chance.’”

Financial details of the book have not been released, but Smith pledged to donate an undisclosed portion of the book’s proceeds to a memorial fund for the victims. Calls to Nichols’ attorneys were not immediately returned Tuesday. Prosecution spokesman Erik Friedly would not comment on the case.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/27/2005 at 10:43 PM   
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Watch those Utensils Boys

(local6)

Man Killed With Fork

A Green Bay, Wis., man is charged with killing his neighbor with a fork, according to police.

Investigators said Gordon Senecal was taking care of Todd Charles’ 15-year-old pit bull over the weekend when an argument broke out between the two men.

The men began fighting at Charles’ home and Senecal was stabbed with a large serving fork, police said.

Senecal was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Charles is expected in court Monday for his first appearance.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/27/2005 at 12:06 PM   
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Crack Shot

Today’s most ridiculous news item is courtesy of Boston, Mass. where a party at the YMCA degenerated into a shootout. One “victim” had surgery to remove a bullet from his groin and police made an amazing discovery during the surgery ....

Five People Injured as Bullets Fly in Hub
(BOSTON HERALD)

Three teens who claimed to have ``just left’’ a YMCA party were among five people shot in several apparently unconnected rounds of late-night gunplay on city streets. None of the injuries was fatal. The bloodshed spanned less than three hours between late Saturday night and early yesterday morning. At 1 a.m. yesterday at DeGauthier Way and Shabbaz Way, just outside Dudley Square, police found a 16-year-old Dorchester male face down with a gunshot wound to the neck.

Two 18-year-olds he’d been walking with after allegedly attending a bash at the YMCA on Huntington Avenue were also shot by an unknown gunman – one, from Dorchester, in the wrist and the other, from Roxbury, in the head. Police had no reports of trouble at the YMCA. Y officials refused to comment.

A 27-year-old Roxbury man shot multiple times outside 10 Castlegate Road, Dorchester, shortly after 11:30 p.m. on Saturday was also expected to survive. It wasn’t just bullets doctors were extracting: A 22-year-old man shot in the groin during an argument at M&M’s Jazz Club in Grove Hall at 2:12 a.m. yesterday had 17 bags of crack cocaine concealed in his buttocks, said police, who added insult to injury by slapping him with drug charges.

And a bullet, but no victim, was recovered from 17 Bickford St., Jamaica Plain, where police went yesterday at 12:30 a.m. on a report of shots fired. Three people were arrested, including one who tore a side mirror off a cop’s cruiser.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/27/2005 at 06:08 AM   
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   Thursday - September 22, 2005

Katrina Corruption Watch #4

Donations Found at Louisiana Official’s Home
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP)

Police found cases of food, clothing and tools intended for hurricane victims at the home of the chief administrative officer for a New Orleans suburb, authorities said Wednesday. Officers searched Cedric Floyd’s home because of complaints that city workers were helping themselves to donations for hurricane victims. Floyd, who runs the day-to-day operations in the suburb of Kenner, was in charge of distributing the goods.

Police plan to seek a charge of committing an illegal act as a public official against Floyd, and more charges against other city workers are possible, police Capt. Steve Caraway said. The donations filled a large pickup truck four times. “It was an awful lot of stuff,” Caraway said.

The donated materials must be processed as evidence but eventually will be distributed to victims. “We have lots of families that are begging for these supplies,” said Attorney General Charles Foti, whose office assisted in the investigation. Attempts to reach Floyd were unsuccessful at home numbers listed under his name in Kenner. His office number went unanswered after business hours.

Philip Ramon, chief of staff to Kenner Mayor Philip Capitano, has said city officials were investigating the alleged pilfering but added that many employees were themselves hurricane victims.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/22/2005 at 02:50 AM   
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   Wednesday - September 21, 2005

The Police will protect you, right?

For any of you that think the police’s job is to protect you from harm better read this:

Woman Calls 911 Before She Is Killed

SUNRISE, Fla.—Police say an 18-year-old Broward County woman used her cell phone to call 911 for help Monday night, but by the time officers arrived[emphasis mine], she had been killed.

Sunrise police said when officer arrived at the apartment building at 5990 N.W. 19th St. just after midnight, Christine Myers was lying dead in a hallway.

Police arrested up 26-year-old Edward Mosie Howard on Tuesday.

Investigators said Myers and Howard knew each other, but investigators said they don’t know a motive for the killing.

Howard made his first court appearance Wednesday. He is being held without bond on murder and sexual assault charges. Police said he also has a no-bond hold for a probation violation.

Police have not said how Myers was killed.

Who’s responsible for your protection?  YOU ARE!

Posted by Drew458     on 09/21/2005 at 12:59 PM   
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   Monday - September 19, 2005

Pirate Treasure Found

Looters’ Caches Popping Up in New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS (AP)

It was like a modern-day treasure map—a computerized diagram of neighborhoods with codes marking the addresses where National Guard soldiers came upon caches of goods taken by looters in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. “There’s probably still loot out there” hidden in various homes, Capt. Gregg McGowan said from his Oklahoma National Guard unit’s makeshift headquarters. “We’re not going house-to-house looking for it, but if we find it, we secure it so police can check it.”

In the chaos that followed Katrina’s flooding, looters targeted everything from grocery stores to gun shops to trendy women’s clothing boutiques. Now that the city is mostly empty of civilians, military patrols making house-to-house checks for remaining residents or the dead are finding some of the hiding places for the stolen goods. New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan said he intends to prosecute as many looters as he can. However, few arrests have been made thus far because authorities have been primarily concerned with reaching stranded residents, Jordan said.

The guardsmen recently thought they had caught a looter coming back into town to load his stash onto a moving truck. Inside his home, the soldiers found automobile parts stacked 8 feet high, a new off-road motorcycle and various electronics, including a video game system with a pawn shop ticket still attached. But the man told the soldiers he had no idea where the goods came from and that someone else must have broken into his home and stashed them there after he evacuated. Skeptical, the soldiers detained him until police arrived, filled out a report and seized the goods. They took the man’s name and address, but did not arrest him.

“You could be technical and say, ‘I’m going to book him with possession of stolen property,’ but then you have to find out who the owner is, find out whether that person had permission take that property,” New Orleans Police Capt. Marlon Defillo said. “So what we’re generally doing is seizing the goods as found property and writing a report.” That way, he explained, authorities can return the goods if they figure out where they came from—rather than holding them as evidence pending the resolution of often drawn-out criminal cases.

In other homes, McGowan’s unit found automatic teller machines that had been broken open and emptied of cash and bags of ammunition still packaged in 500-round bundles, not the individual boxes of 20 rounds usually sold over the counter. A smashed-open video poker machine, likely taken from a bar, was left lying on the sidewalk of an Uptown residential street. In a church-run assisted living home close to a heavily looted Wal-Mart in the lower Garden District, a team of guardsmen found new bicycles, stereos and clothing. Someone associated with the church, who refused to give his name, said at least seven rooms in the four-story residence were filled with goods believed to be stolen.

New Orleans police are storing seized loot in a makeshift warehouse near the city’s train station, Defillo said. He declined to provide details on how many goods had been found, how many businesses or homes had been looted, or if authorities had any long-term plan to track down some of the culprits. “We haven’t even had time to deal with that yet,” he said.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/19/2005 at 07:14 AM   
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   Sunday - September 18, 2005

Katrina Corruption Watch #3

Here is the quote of the week from Louisiana’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, referring to $60 million that was mis-spent and/or unaccounted for long before Katrina struck ....

Mark Smith, a spokesman for the Louisiana emergency office, said the agency had responded to calls for reform, and that “we now have the policy and personnel in place to ensure that past problems aren’t repeated.”

He said earlier problems were largely administrative mistakes, not due to corruption.

For instance, a Nov. 30, 2004, report by Tonda L. Hadley, a director in the Denton field office, examined $40.5 million sent to the Louisiana agency, mostly for the Hazard Mitigation program. The report found that the state’s emergency office did not have receipts to account for 97% of the $15.4 million it had awarded to subcontractors on 19 major projects. The report also said the Louisiana agency had misspent $617,787 between May 2000 and September 2003.

Questionable expenditures identified by the inspector general included $2,400 for sod installation, several thousand dollars for a trip to Germany by the deputy director, $1,071 for curtains, and $595 for an L.L. Bean parka and briefcase. The inspector general also challenged unspecified spending for camera equipment, professional dues and a 2002 Ford Crown Victoria.

The day before the report was issued, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Louisiana obtained an indictment against Michael L. Brown, deputy director of the Louisiana office of emergency preparedness. (Brown is no relation to former FEMA director Michael D. Brown who resigned this week.) Louisiana’s deputy director oversaw the state’s Hazard Mitigation program.

Brown was charged with conspiring to obstruct the inspector general’s investigation and for making a false statement to a federal investigator. Michael C. Appe, another senior state agency official, also was charged with obstructing the audit. Months earlier, Appe had been appointed as head of a “surge team” to review projects funded with FEMA money. The team’s mission was to help spot abuses. Both Appe and Brown hold the rank of colonel for their roles in overseeing elements of the state National Guard.

Appe was arrested in Baton Rouge last November, as was Daniel J. Falanga, the state agency’s flood-mitigation officer. Falanga was accused of committing perjury before a grand jury investigating misuse of FEMA funds. All three men have pleaded not guilty to the charges and deny wrongdoing, according to their lawyers. Trial dates remain uncertain because the hurricane disrupted court schedules. According to the indictment, Brown and Appe conspired in 2000 to use $175,000 in FEMA funds to cover a shortfall in a related agency’s budget. Later, when the inspector general began investigating the agency’s use of FEMA money, the two men conspired to create a fake, backdated memo to cover up the earlier diversion of funds, the indictment says.

State agency spokesman Smith said Brown had traveled to Germany, but to attend a conference. He declined to answer questions about alleged improper spending, citing the pending trial. Smith said at the time, state officials believed the trip to Germany was a proper expenditure. Brown’s lawyer, Elton Richey, said his client tried to spend federal disaster funds wisely despite job turnover and confusion between state agency officials and FEMA overseers. He said FEMA kept changing the rules. Marty Stroud, a lawyer who represents Appe and Falanga, said, “There are no charges that anyone in this case enriched himself at the expense of a federal program.”

Hadley, of the inspector general’s office, issued a second report on Feb. 25, 2005, which tracked state spending of FEMA money to pay for “extraordinary costs,” a special category used for the administration of disaster assistance programs. It said the agency had improperly spent $247,166 for items such as a car, computers, membership dues and travel to seminars. In addition to alleged misspending reported in the two audits, FEMA has asked for the return of $10.7 million allocated to a program for buying property in high-risk flood areas. Most of that money was passed on to local communities to determine which property owners would benefit.

FEMA alleged the Louisiana agency had not properly monitored expenditures, and failed to ensure that properties receiving the funds were eligible. About $2.8 million of the refund sought by FEMA went to consultant fees. Most of that money went to Aegis Innovative Systems, a Baton Rouge firm hired by many parishes to administer the flood buyout program. Aegis owners include Mark Howard, a former official at the Louisiana agency. State Sen. Reggie Dupre said it appeared that parishes employing Aegis were especially successful in winning money from the state emergency preparedness agency. “It smells like a horrible brother-in-law deal to me, “ he said in a phone interview. An Aegis attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/18/2005 at 03:18 AM   
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   Saturday - September 17, 2005

Jeb Bush’s Son Busted

Son of Florida Gov. Bush Arrested
AUSTIN, TX (AP)

The youngest son of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was arrested early Friday and charged with public intoxication and resisting arrest, law enforcement officials said. John Ellis Bush, 21, was arrested by agents of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission at 2:30 a.m. on a corner of Austin’s Sixth Street bar district, said commission spokesman Roger Wade.

The nephew of President Bush was released on $2,500 bond for the resisting arrest charge, and on a personal recognizance bond for the public intoxication charge, officials said. Wade said he had no further details about the charges.

Gov. Bush and his wife Columba appeared Friday evening at a museum reception in Miami. “My son’s doing fine. It’s a private matter. We will support him. We’re sad for him. But I’m not going to discuss it on the public square with 30 cameras,” the governor told reporters.

It’s not the first time Florida’s first family has experienced legal problems with one of their children. Noelle Bush, the governor’s daughter, was arrested in January 2002 and accused of trying to pass a fraudulent prescription at a pharmacy to obtain the anti-anxiety drug Xanax. She completed a drug rehabilitation program in August 2003 and a judge dismissed the drug charges against her.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/17/2005 at 08:48 AM   
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Kate Moss: Coke-Head

Supermodel Admits Cocaine Use
London (CNN)

Supermodel Kate Moss acknowledged to the Hennes & Mauritz clothing chain that tabloid allegations that she recently used cocaine are true, an H&M spokeswoman said Saturday. Moss, who is to model one of H&M’s upcoming clothing lines, has apologized for her drug use and promised in writing to abide by a company policy that models be “healthy, wholesome and sound,” spokeswoman Liv Asarnoj said.

H&M had decided to keep Moss on, Asarnoj told The Associated Press in a phone interview from the company’s headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden. “We strongly disapprove of her action,” Asarnoj said. “We feel that this is very unfortunate.” Asarnoj said Moss had acknowledged the allegations of drug use were true. “That’s why she was so regretful,” Asarnoj said. “We are giving her a second chance.”

Noelle Doukas, who answered the phone at the Storm modeling agency in London, which represents Moss, 31, said no one there was available to comment on the allegations, which have filled Britain’s newspapers. The Daily Mirror tabloid printed images from a video which it said showed the model doing five lines of cocaine in 40 minutes at a late-night music recording session, preparing them with a credit card and snorting the drug through a five-pound note.

The tabloid said the video was made at a West London recording studio last week during “a Mirror undercover investigation,” but gave no further details. The newspaper said Moss had taken a large amount of cocaine out of her handbag. Her boyfriend Pete Doherty, the musician whose alleged drug problems and brushes with the law have made headlines for months, was also present, the paper reported. The Mirror said Moss had shouted obscenities when one of its reporters asked her for comment on the allegations outside a restaurant in New York, where she was attending the city’s Fashion Week shows.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/17/2005 at 08:23 AM   
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Katrina Corruption Watch #2

Bulletin #2: FEMA debit cards being used in strip clubs in Houston? Taxpayers money being used for lap dances for hurricane voctimes? Somehow, it absolutely has to be George Bush’s fault ....

Storm-Relief Money Spent at Strip Clubs
Police in Houston find misuse of FEMA’s $2,000 debit cards
(WORLDNET DAILY)

On the heels of a report earlier this week that Atlanta area Katrina victims were using $2,000 debit cards to purchase luxury items like Louis Vuitton handbags, Houston police yesterday discovered the cards, provided by FEMA and the Red Cross, being used at local strip clubs. The Houston Police Department just formed a task force to investigate the abuse of the cards, which were distributed to thousands of Katrina hurricane victims to provide for necessities, such as food, clothing and toiletries. On the first day, the police found the cards being used to buy beer while ogling exotic dancers.

According to a report by KPRC, Channel 2, in Houston, a manager at Caligula XXI Gentlemen’s Club said he has seen at least one debit card used at his club. A bartender at Baby Dolls, identified only as “Abby,” said she has seen many of the cards used at her establishment. “A lot of customers have been coming in from Louisiana and they’ve been real happy about the $1.75 beers and they’re really nice,” she said. She couldn’t say for sure whether the cards she has seen were from the Red Cross or from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but she found no fault in using federal dollars to guzzle beer at a strip club.

“You lost your whole house, then, why not?” she said “You might want some beer in a strip club. There are a lot of guys out there that like to do that.” The wife of the manager of another strip club told KPRC that her husband has seen patrons from Louisiana offering Red Cross and FEMA debit cards, but she declined to reveal the club’s name. The FEMA and Red Cross cards have few restrictions, but some evacuees have gotten into trouble when they tried to get additional cards.

Meanwhile, Houston police are going undercover as evacuees to keep their eyes on those who get in line more than once. “There may be some individuals who use some false identifications or providing false information on the forms, so we’re targeting those persons also,” said Lt. Robert Manzo. Officers handed out a warning that falsifying government documents could result in a 20-year prison sentence.

Earlier this week, the New York Daily News reported that “profiteering ghouls” were using the debit cards in luxury-goods stores as far away as Atlanta. “We’ve seen three of the cards,” said a senior employee of the Louis Vuitton store at the Lenox Square Mall in affluent Buckhead. “Two I’m certain have purchased; one actually asked if she could use it in the store. This has been since Saturday.” Restrictions on the cards say they can’t be used to purchase alcohol, tobacco or firearms.

The clerk at the Louis Vuitton store said: “There’s nothing legally that prevents us from taking it, unfortunately – other than morally, it’s wrong.” The unnamed employee told the Daily News two women who had made purchases with the card each bought a signature monogrammed Louis Vuitton handbag in the $800 range. Meanwhile, in Memphis, Tenn., residents told News Channel 3 they saw Hurricane Katrina survivors purchase designer jeans, high heels and purses with their $2,000 emergency debit cards. According to the report, one Katrina victim was spotted at a Cordova clothier buying stacks of $65 designer jeans. Another viewer reported spotting a survivor buying “over $700 in high heel shoes and purses” at a Memphis department store “while (her) younger children, most of them looked under the age of 3, looked like they haven’t showered in weeks.”

“If they make an inappropriate decision as to what to purchase, the whole issue of victims’ rights comes into play,” said Bill Hildebrandt, chief executive officer of the Mid-South chapter of the Red Cross. “They have a right, I guess, to be inappropriate.” Hildebrandt conceded that the purchases could be traced, but he said if the receipts just said “shirt” or “jeans” or “clothes,” there would be nothing the Red Cross could do. He said the Mid-South chapter stopped using the cards because the process became too cumbersome.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/17/2005 at 12:30 AM   
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Katrina Corruption Watch #1

Bulletin #1: $200 billion is about to flow into Louisiana where state homeland security officials are already under indictment for misusing FEMA funds between 1997-2002. The state already owes FEMA $30 million for earlier years’ mis-spent funds. Imagine what will happen now that $200 billion is being dumped in their laps .... ?

Corruption a Worry As Katrina Aid Flows
BATON ROUGE (AP)

The sudden flow of billions of dollars in hurricane relief aid into New Orleans has raised fears that some of it is going to be lost to graft and sticky fingers in a state with a long and rich history of corruption. A group of current and former state officials is calling for more safeguards, more transparency in spending and the appointment of independent analysts to avoid corruption and keep the state out of trouble.

“If we don’t do this properly, we’re going to see the second looting of areas impacted by this horrible storm,” said Louisiana Treasurer John Kennedy. Kennedy said he does not want his name on the checks that spend the federal recovery dollars until he is satisfied that strict anti-fraud procedures are in place.

The billions in federal relief pledged to help Louisiana recover from Hurricane Katrina will flow through the state’s homeland security office, which already owes the Federal Emergency Management Agency $30 million for allegedly mishandling similar aid. FEMA officials said the state could not show that grant dollars given to parishes between 1997 and 2002 to buy out properties or elevate flood-prone houses were spent properly. The case led to the indictment last year of homeland security employees accused of trying to hide the suspected misuse of money.

Against that backdrop, Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s chief budget adviser said that auditors and investigators are watching the latest federal money as it comes in to make sure it is properly spent and documented. “We did not want to have those issues. And we are constantly reviewing. If we have to beef up more, we’ll beef up more,” said Commissioner of Administration Jerry Luke LeBlanc.

LeBlanc said Louisiana’s legislative auditor and inspector general are watching the cash now rather than waiting until after the money is spent, and he said changes were made to the state’s accounting system to more closely track spending. In addition, 30 U.S. Homeland Security Department investigators and auditors are being sent to the Gulf Coast to ensure federal funds are properly distributed.

The rescue, relief and rebuilding project across the region is estimated at more than $200 billion. FEMA pays for certain items directly. In other cases, the money passes through Louisiana’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, which either spends the money itself or funnels it to state and local agencies. FEMA can demand the repayment of any money it believes was spent improperly.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/17/2005 at 12:13 AM   
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   Friday - September 16, 2005

Most Ridiculous Item Of The Day

This story needs no prelude, no introduction and no explanation. All it needs is somebody, somewhere to explain to me why we aren’t allowed to have open season on lawyers. This story is an outrage and an offense against any rules of sanity, rhyme or reason ....

Injustice For Almost All
(BOSTON GLOBE)
by Brian McGrory

Every once in a while, usually for brief periods of time, the world starts to gain the veneer of sanity. Papi hits another game-winning home run. The moronic head of FEMA is sent packing from New Orleans. George W. Bush accepts blame for the miserable federal response to Katrina. Then, just when you think that all the pieces are falling into place and that maybe, just maybe, this collective life isn’t so crazy after all, something happens to remind you that, yes, in fact, it really is.

Take the case of Nancy Gertner, Palmer & Dodge, and an especially repugnant criminal by the name of Daniel LaPlante. By way of acquaintance, Gertner is a US District Court judge. Palmer & Dodge is an elite downtown law firm. Daniel LaPlante is a convicted triple murderer and not just any triple murderer, either. He broke into a neighbor’s house in rural Townsend in 1987, raped and executed the pregnant mother who lived there, then drowned her 7-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son in separate bathtubs. He smirked at the jury that convicted him.

The Superior Court judge who presided over his trial, Robert Barton, now retired, said: ‘’Of the 150 murder cases I heard, he is one of only five that I would personally have no problem pulling the switch on the electric chair myself. He was incorrigible, he would never be rehabbed, and we’d be wasting our money feeding and clothing him.” We’ve also wasted our money doing something else: pushing a lawsuit on his behalf. Which is where Gertner and Palmer & Dodge fit in.

In 2001, LaPlante complained about his safety in prison, and he was placed under extensive lockup. Unhappy with that, he sued state officials in federal court. Among other complaints, he said he wasn’t given unfettered access to the prison law library. He said he was mislabeled as a sex offender. He complained that officials intercepted ‘’sexually explicit” photographs mailed to him. He said a guard stole his shower shoes.

Palmer & Dodge took the case, supposedly pro bono, though please read on. In fact, it didn’t just take the case, it seemed to devote itself to it, assigning a partner, a senior associate, a midlevel associate, and a junior associate—four lawyers in all. Before I go on, spare me the argument from all the Lexus Liberals that even the most heinous criminals have the right to legal representation. They do. But is a convicted murderer really entitled to a battery of downtown lawyers because he wasn’t getting access to the library and his pornographic pictures in the mail?

Palmer & Dodge won the suit, and, lo and behold, its pro bono work wasn’t free any more. Federal law allows a firm to submit a bill when it wins a civil rights case, and it did: $125,000 in all. Judge Gertner ordered the state to pay $99,981 of it. That bears repeating: State taxpayers spent $100,000 on behalf of a convicted killer who slaughtered a pregnant woman and her kids.

‘’We did it as efficiently as we could,” said George Olson, a Palmer & Dodge partner. ‘’When we took the case, we didn’t expect to be compensated.”

Of course not.

Gertner blamed the state Department of Correction for fighting the suit and running up legal costs. She didn’t respond to a message yesterday. Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly was the assistant district attorney who prosecuted LaPlante on murder, and I called him to see if he remembered the case. ‘’I’ll take that case to my grave,” he said, quietly recounting the green OshKosh overalls that the little boy wore when they pulled his body from the tub. He described LaPlante as a constant escape risk who, given the chance, would absolutely kill again.

‘’To be worried about his civil rights?” he added. ‘’The victims had no civil rights. He executed them.” In short, LaPlante gets top-shelf legal representation. Palmer & Dodge gets another hundred grand. And as too often happens, state taxpayers get nothing more than the bill.

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/16/2005 at 01:56 PM   
Filed Under: • Crime • Judges-Courts-Lawyers • Outrageous •  
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   Thursday - September 15, 2005

Ticklish Evidence?

Lafave’s Attorney Tries To Block Photos
Detectives took intimate photographs of the ex-teacher accused of sex with a student
(ST PETERSBURG TIMES)

Everybody knows about Debra Lafave. They know about her alleged trysts with a 14-year-old student. They even know what she was wearing that day in the portable classroom. But few know about the graphic photos police took of the former Greco Middle School teacher. On Tuesday, Lafave’s attorney filed a motion to block public access to six photos taken of her last year, saying officers violated Lafave’s constitutional right to privacy when they shot close-ups of her genitals.

Hillsborough Circuit Judge Wayne S. Timmerman is scheduled to hear the motion next week. “We don’t believe that the search warrant issued by the judge authorized them to do this,” said John Fitzgibbons, Lafave’s attorney. “At this point, anybody could literally go into the State Attorney’s Office, get copies of these photographs, put them on the Internet, and the world would have access to them.”

There’s been no shortage of public interest in Lafave’s case since she was arrested in front of her former student’s Temple Terrace home on June 21, 2004. The teenage boy told police he had sex with Lafave, 25, on three occasions. Questioned by detectives a week before Lafave’s arrest on charges of lewd and lascivious battery, the boy told them things about his teacher that only intimate contact would have revealed. He mentioned belly button rings and butterfly tattoos. Then he told them about Lafave’s “V” shaped tan line along her waist and that she had shaved her pubic area in a “unique” pattern.

Hillsborough Circuit Judge Michelle Sisco issued a search warrant last year authorizing Temple Terrace investigators to collect evidence that would verify the victim’s account. When detectives brought Lafave to the county jail, they told her they had a warrant to photograph her body, according to the motion filed Tuesday. A nurse draped a sheet over Lafave and a female jailhouse deputy snapped four pictures of her hips, legs and back. Then they placed Lafave’s feet in stirrups and took two close-up photos of her genitals that Fitzgibbons described as “pornographic.”

When they tried to take pictures of Lafave’s breasts, she refused, Fitzgibbons said. “They didn’t need to do it this way,” he said. “It’s just outrageous.” Under Florida’s public records laws, any citizen can request access to the Lafave photos. Assistant State Attorney Michael Sinacore pointed out that there have been other Hillsborough cases where alleged sex offenders’ genitals were photographed. “If it’s necessary to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt to show graphic photographs, it’s the state’s job to produce the photographs and the jury’s job to view them,” Sinacore said.

Allison Taylor, executive director of the Council on Sex Offender Treatment, an independent Texas state agency that manages convicted sex offenders, said the practice may seem invasive but so is the practice of photographing victims’ genitals to corroborate their accounts. Taylor said she doubts the issue would get as much attention if Lafave were less attractive or if the accused offender was a man.

“If you turned the table and it was a good looking male and that was done to a little girl, the scenario is he would have been crucified,” Taylor said. Temple Terrace police spokeswoman Paula MacDonald declined to comment on the photos of Lafave, saying the case is now in the hands of the State Attorney’s Office.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/15/2005 at 07:01 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime •  
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