TMI
Kansas lawyer Dennis Hawver was disbarred in November for his comically bad (24 separate deficiencies) defense of double-murder suspect Phillip Cheatham in 2005 (which led to a new trial for Cheatham). Hawver had admitted to the jury that his client was a “shooter of people” (a previous manslaughter conviction) who, as an “experienced” criminal would never have left that third victim alive with multiple gunshot wounds. A confident Hawver had virtually invited the jury to execute "whoever" the killer was. (At a September hearing to keep his license, he dressed as Thomas Jefferson, banging the lectern and shouting, as reverse psychology, “I am incompetent!”—leading the blog Lowering the Bar to muse that by then, the argument was wholly unnecessary.) Cheatham told the Topeka Capital-Journal that Hawver is “a good dude (but) just in over his head.”
Questionable Judgments
■ Those Frightening Alabama Schools: In October, a mother charged that officials at E.R. Dickson School in Mobile, Ala., first detained her daughter, 5, for pointing a crayon at another student as if it were a gun, and then pressured the girl to sign a paper promising not to kill anyone or commit suicide. “What is suicide, Mommy?” the girl asked when her parents arrived.
■ The West Briton newspaper reported in October that a darts team composed of blind men was ready for its inaugural match at an inn in Grampound, England, sponsored by the St. Austell Bay Rotary Club. The inn’s landlord acknowledged that the game-room door would be closed “just in case” a dart strays off course. (The blind darters would be aided by string attached to the bull’s eye that they could feel for guidance.)
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Police Report
Twice in September, police in North Kingstown, R.I., reported that women had complained of a motorist who would stop female strangers on the street to tell them jokes about blonde women. The jokes were not sexual, but still made the women “uncomfortable.” A high school girl told her mother of a similar episode. Based on a license plate number, police visited the man at home, and he agreed to stop.
Unclear on the Concept
In some developing countries, a sex “strike” organized by women is often the only hopeful tactic for convincing husbands and lovers to take grievances seriously. However, in November, Nderitu Njoka, head of a Global Men Empowerment Network in Nairobi, Kenya, announced that his organization would commence a “sex boycott” for five days, denying men’s “services” to their wives—to protest “tyrannical” female domination. According to Njoka, hundreds of Kenyan men are physically assaulted by females every year (including at least 100 whose wives vengefully castrate them). (Referring to a notorious U.S. incident, Njoka offered support to the singer Jay Z after he was punched by his sister-in-law Solange Knowles.)
Perspective
Despite a 70-year-old U.S. Supreme Court decision to the contrary, six states still have laws exempting parents from homicide charges when they deny a child life-saving medical care because they trust no remedy except prayer. An inordinate number of child deaths have occurred in Idaho, where (according to a November report by vocativ.com) no prosecutor seems willing to put a trust-in-God parent before a jury. Children in Idaho have died when simple medical treatments were available (e.g., insulin and fluids for Type I diabetes). Neighboring Oregon, by contrast, now vigorously prosecutes parents who let their children die, including a 13-year-old girl’s parents convicted in November in Albany, Ore.
Least Competent Criminals
Police in Murfreesboro, N.C., announced in November that they had intercepted a shipment of 30 pounds of marijuana that had been loosely packaged and shipped from California by U.S. Mail, and an investigation was underway with arrests expected. Police Chief Darrell Rowe told WTKR-TV that the scent of the packages was so vivid that, even though he had summoned the department’s K-9 unit, “the dog kind of looked at us [as if to say], ‘Do you really need me for this?’”
© 2014 CHUCK SHEPHERD
