Jury votes for death penalty for killer of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford in Florida

By: Associated Press | Wednesday, March 14, 2007 7:11 PM PDT ∞

MIAMI -- A jury decided Wednesday that a convicted sex offender should get the death penalty for the kidnapping, rape and murder of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford, who was buried alive in trash bags just yards from her home.

The jury, on a 10-2 vote, brushed aside pleas for mercy and a life sentence from defense lawyers based on claims that John Evander Couey, 48, is mentally retarded and suffers from chronic mental illness. Jurors deliberated for about one hour.

The final decision on Couey's fate will be made in several weeks by Circuit Judge Richard Howard, who is not bound by the jury's recommendation but is required to give it "great weight."

Couey, 48, was convicted last week of taking Jessica in February 2005 from her bedroom to his trailer about 150 yards away, where he raped and killed her. Despite an intensive search, the third-grader's body was found in a grave outside Couey's home, about three weeks after she disappeared.

Angelina Jolie arrives in Vietnam to adopt 3-year-old boy

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam (AP)-- Angelina Jolie arrived in Vietnam late Wednesday night, where she plans to adopt a 3-year-old boy.

Airport security officials told a photographer working for The Associated Press that Jolie was whisked into a car with dark windows and driven away.

The actress was expected to attend an adoption ceremony with Vietnamese officials in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday morning, according to adoption officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the matter.

After she receives the child, Jolie will meet with U.S. consular officials, who must review the adoption before a passport can be issued for the boy.

If all goes according to plan, Jolie could bring the child home by the weekend, officials said.

A message left early Wednesday for a Jolie representative in Los Angeles wasn't immediately returned.

The boy has been living at the Tam Binh orphanage on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City since he was abandoned at a hospital as an infant, according to adoption officials.

Shortly after he arrived at the orphanage, the Tam Binh staff tried unsuccessfully to locate the boy's birth parents.

The boy is healthy, friendly and a little bit shy, they said. He gets along well with other children and loves to play soccer.

Jolie filed adoption papers as a single parent, because she and her partner, Brad Pitt, are not married.

They have three children: 5-year-old Maddox, adopted from Cambodia; 2-year-old Zahara, adopted from Ethiopia; and another daughter, Shiloh, who was born to the couple in May.

The pair made a surprise visit to the Tam Binh orphanage at Thanksgiving, when they were spotted cruising around Ho Chi Minh City on a motorbike.

Mackey wins 1,100-mile Iditarod

NOME, Alaska (AP) -- Sitting with two of his dogs on the winner's platform on Front Street in Nome, Lance Mackey savored his first Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race victory.

His win Tuesday in the 1,100-mile Iditarod came just days after using a majority of the same dogs in winning the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race.

He had good reason to sit back and relish being the first musher to win both races in the same year: even he doubts he'll do it again.

"Yeah, I'd love to come back and repeat that performance but I'm really realistic here. Once in a lifetime is probably a rare opportunity," he said while one of the dogs licked some of the frost off his goatee.

He acknowledged that his dogs were a one-of-a-kind team, but next year, they will be older.

"I owe it to them. I think I'm smart enough to know when enough is enough, to back off a little bit. They're in their prime, they proved that. So I think it's time for a little R&R," he said.

But Tuesday night, the down-to-earth musher planned a little whiskey for his own rest and relaxation and to celebrate the feat with his family, including father, Dick, and brother, Rick, both past Iditarod champions.

"This is a damn dream that I've been living, you know, dreaming about since I was a little, little boy when my Dad won this race," said Lance Mackey, 36.

Mackey got his dream early Tuesday evening, crossing under the burled arch in downtown Nome early, completing the Iditarod in 9 days, 5 hours, 8 minutes.

Paul Gebhardt, 50, who was third last year, finished second.

"He is a very driven dog driver," Gebhardt said of Mackey. "You got to admit, he's like the Dale Earnhardt of dog racing."

About a thousand fans braved subzero temperature to cheer Mackey to the finish. He lived the moment, slapping high-fives with fans as his dogs led him down the last block, sometimes jumping off the sled and running with them until his family mobbed him at the end.

"Dreams do come true, Mama, they do," Mackey said, fighting back tears.

"This is my passion," he said, adding he was proud to follow in his father's footsteps and joked about being thankful his father was a musher and not a lawyer.

"It's our lifestyle, it's something we breathe, eat and sleep," he said of the Mackey family's love of mushing. "This is what we do.

On Feb. 20, Mackey won his third consecutive Yukon Quest, which is run between Fairbanks, Alaska, and Whitehorse, Yukon.

With only 12 days rest, Mackey took 13 of his 16 dogs from the Yukon Quest to Willow for the March 4 official start of the Iditarod. In the two races, the dog team covered a distance equivalent to mushing from Boston to Salt Lake City.

Mackey's father, Dick, and brother, Rick, both won the race wearing bib No. 13, and each did so in the sixth time they ran the Iditarod. Lance Mackey camped out for days at the Iditarod headquarters last June to be the first person to sign up for this year's race -- also his sixth -- to select the No. 13 bib.

"I didn't know exactly what this bib was going to do for me, but what an honor," said Mackey. "This is the most cherished piece of memorabilia I'll ever own."

Many mushers have long believed it would not be possible to win both races in the same year with the same dogs because the animals would need more time to recover from one grueling race before launching off on another. But Mackey said he wasn't pushed much in the Yukon Quest, and it served as a good mental and physical training run for the dogs.

"I kept saying I want to be the one to prove that wrong. For those who don't believe it can be done, I thrive on underestimation. Don't ever doubt that I can't do something, I lived through cancer," he said.

Canadian Hans Gatt, 49, a three-time Quest winner who was also runner-up to Mackey twice, said Mackey's team was the best-looking on the Iditarod trail this year. Instead of tiring, his team recovered faster than any of the others after long runs between checkpoints, and maintained their speed.

"I can't run my dogs like that," Gatt said Tuesday, almost 100 miles back on the trail. "He obviously has figured out something we have not figured out yet."

Sled dog racing is a sport where mushers perform more for glory than big-time payouts, having to rely heavily on sponsorships to continue feeding their dogs.

For winning the world's longest sled-dog race, Mackey will pocket $69,000 and be handed the keys to a $41,000 pickup.

Mackey had been thinking about that truck along the trail and for good reason. One year, when he was trying to get to the start of the Quest, he was fined $500 for missing a meeting for mushers. The reason he was late was that the two trucks he was driving broke down. One lost an engine and the transmission went out in the other.

Just before this year's race, he splurged on a used, 14-year-old pickup.

Thrusting both arms high in the air, he yelled out an elongated, "Yeah! Oh, the truck!"

He plans to paint the truck, but not sure yet what color would look best with his dogs in it. "They're going to look good in silver, black, blue, I don't care if it's hot pink, I'd be proud to drive it."

Mackey, who has named his kennel Lance Mackey's Comeback Kennel, was diagnosed with neck cancer in 2001 and underwent surgery and radiation.

With a feeding tube into his stomach and still undergoing cancer treatment, Mackey started the 2002 Iditarod, but was forced to scratch in Ophir more than 400 miles from Anchorage. Mackey now is cancer-free.

Mackey's father, Dick, is considered one of the founders of the race, which began in 1973. Dick Mackey won in 1978. His brother, Rick, became champion in 1983.

This year's Iditarod has been marked by poor trail conditions, causing an inordinate numbers of mushers -- 21 -- to scratch. One musher also took a wrong trail, prompting a search, and one dog died during the race.

On the Net:

http://www.iditarod.com

Three college pals were enjoying reunion when fatal avalanche hit

DENVER (AP) -- A long-awaited reunion of three college friends turned tragic when a massive avalanche killed two of them during a backcountry skiing trip in the Colorado mountains, family members said Wednesday.

Alexis Michel Dodin of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Simon Martin Ozanne of Maplewood, N.J., were killed Tuesday afternoon when the category 5 avalanche -- the most dangerous kind -- crashed down on them about five miles southeast of Aspen, authorities said.

Their friend Jason Luck, from the Denver suburb of Aurora, survived and called for help.

All three had attended the Colorado School of Mines outside Denver. For Ozanne, 35, the trip was a Christmas gift from his wife Jennifer, who is pregnant with their first child.

"We're having a baby, and this was his chance to get out there for one more time. He loved the mountains, he loved being out there," Jennifer Ozanne told The Associated Press. "I gave him this trip for Christmas .... He was doing something he loved."

Dodin, 32, was a French citizen and a resident of Buenos Aires who carried a Houston driver's license, Pitkin County sheriff's patrol director Jeff Lumsden said. A listed telephone number for Dodin in Houston was disconnected.

There was no answer at a telephone number listed for Luck, 33.

Jennifer Ozanne said her husband grew up in England and came to the U.S. to attend the School of Mines, graduating in 1999 with a master's degree in engineering. He moved to New York as a partner in the international management consulting firm Marakon Associates.

"He was an incredibly loyal and thoughtful person who worked hard and had a huge zest for life," she said.

Jennifer Ozanne said Luck was extremely distraught by the deaths. She said he called personally to give her the news.

"He wouldn't let anyone else do it," she said.

A friend, Chris Russell, said Ozanne was a strong person who was devoted to his friends and wife and enjoyed working on his new home.

"He was just a spectacular guy," Russell said. "This sort of thing shouldn't happen to anybody."

Lumsden said the avalanche was about two football fields wide and broke away at about 11,500 feet above sea level in the White River National Forest. He said it was probably naturally occurring.

"I think they didn't even trigger this thing," Lumsden said. "I think they were just standing there and the whole thing just came down."

The three had planned to ski to the top of a mountain and back down, but by mid-afternoon the snowpack had become extremely unstable, Lumsden said.

"People pretty much know in our area they're encouraged to be pretty much done by noon," Lumsden said. "I tend not to go out this time of year. It's a crapshoot."

The Colorado Avalanche Information Center said five people have been killed by avalanches in the state this season, compared with four in 2005-06. The average is six per season, the center said.

The center said avalanches kill about 28 people a year nationwide.

The other deaths this season were a skier near Snowmass on Dec. 21, a snowmobiler in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado on Feb. 4 and a snowshoer on March 3 south of Idaho Springs in the central mountains.

A large avalanche pushed two cars off the heavily traveled road at Berthoud Pass north of Interstate 70 on Jan. 6, but there were no deaths.

John Snook, a forecaster at the avalanche center's Boulder office, said Wednesday the danger of avalanches builds in the late winter and spring. A sequence of snowfall followed by warm, sunny days and cold nights creates loosely connected layers of snow, and a disturbance or a rapid change in temperature can trigger a slide.

Snook said avalanches are limited to mountainsides with a pitch of 35 degrees or steeper, so the best way to avoid one is to stay on less severe terrain. Hikers and skiers should keep an eye on their surroundings and avoid areas where it appears avalanches have started on their own.

"If something went on its own, what we call a natural strike, that's an indication that things are unstable," he said.

L.A. woman burned by church candles can seek punitive damages

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A woman badly burned when church candles set her clothes on fire as she prayed in front of a statue of St. Jude can sue the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles for punitive damages, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Josefina Martin suffered third-degree burns to her ankles, legs, back and arms on Oct. 16, 2005, after she stopped to pray in the courtyard of a Catholic Church in the San Fernando Valley.

She filed suit last year, claiming negligence. She named as defendants the archdiocese, the archbishop of Los Angeles, Mary Immaculate Church of Pacoima and the maker of the skirt she wore to church.

Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu ruled Martin's attorney provided enough evidence that church officials acted in reckless disregard of parishioners' safety to allow her and her husband, Salvador, to seek punitive damages. Their lawsuit is scheduled for trial May 29.

Archdiocese attorney Brian L. Williams argued that Martin had no grounds for punitive damages because church officials never intended to hurt her.

"Simply put, this case centers around an unfortunate accident -- nothing else," he said in court papers.

One church employee testified in a deposition that she knew nearly nine months before Martin was hurt that candles placed around the statue were becoming a growing problem.

As many as 200 candles were sometimes in front of the statue, church employees said, and a maintenance worker testified that three months before Martin was hurt he came to the aid of a girl whose hair caught fire when she leaned over the candles.

Charter bus rolls off Mississippi highway; 32 people sent to hospitals after crash

BOND, Miss. (AP) -- A chartered bus carrying hotel employees rolled into a highway ditch Wednesday after the driver reached for a map, injuring 32 people, authorities said.

Staff Sgt. James Snyder of the Mississippi Highway Patrol said the bus driver lost control and rolled the vehicle after taking a wrong turn. The driver turned onto U.S. 49 but headed south instead of north toward Jackson, Snyder said. The driver realized his mistake about 5 miles after making the turn.

"That's when the driver actually reached down to look at the map and dropped it, according to his own statements," Snyder said. "He reached over to get it and lost control of the bus."

The bus was one of two charters taking Jamaican immigrants who worked for a hotel chain from Tallahassee, Fla., to Jackson, Snyder said.

There was no immediate word on the conditions of those hurt, but none of their injuries were considered life-threatening, Snyder said.

Enhanced video shows boot camp guards hitting Fla. boy, pinning him to ground

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- Guards at a boot camp for juveniles struck a teenager with fists, pinned him down and held what appears to be a white cloth to his face, according to an enhanced video released Wednesday in the investigation of his death.

The tape was among more than 20,000 pages of evidence released by prosecutors in the manslaughter case against seven former guards who were videotaped manhandling 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson in January 2006, and a nurse who observed.

The 36-minute video is still grainy and overexposed after a NASA enhancement. It shows guards repeatedly hauling the boy to his feet and knees at the Bay County sheriff's boot camp in Panama City. The guards haul him up against a pole and apparently throw water in his face.

Investigative reports said the nurse examined him early in the incident and said his vital signs were normal. The tape shows her watching, but she does not appear to give Anderson another close examination until about 27 minutes into the tape. At that point, guards have stopped hitting him.

Paramedics arrive about 35 minutes into the tape and load Anderson onto a stretcher. He died in a Pensacola hospital the next day, starting a case that led to the dismantling of Florida's military-style detention system for young offenders and protests at the state Capitol.

An initial autopsy found Anderson died of natural complications of sickle cell trait, a usually benign blood disorder. But after an uproar and cries of a cover up from the boy's family, a second autopsy was conducted by another medical examiner, who concluded Anderson suffocated by the guards' hands over his mouth and the "forced inhalation of ammonia fumes."

Anderson collapsed at the camp while doing exercises. The guards said they were trying to revive him, but Anderson's family and others were outraged at the video footage.

The guards and the nurse pleaded not guilty last month. They face up to 30 years in prison if convicted of aggravated manslaughter.

The boy's family sued the sheriff's office and the state Department of Juvenile Justice, which oversaw the camp system. A judge ruled last month that the $40 million wrongful death lawsuit must wait for the state's criminal case against the guards to conclude.

Prosecutor says 'unicorn defense' was a mixup; man never claimed creature was driving truck

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) -- It turns out there are no such things as unicorns -- and even if there were, they wouldn't drive trucks.

On Tuesday, a Billings prosecutor had told a district judge that Phillip C. Holliday Jr., 42, claimed a unicorn was driving when his truck crashed into a light pole earlier this month.

But on Wednesday, the chief prosecutor said it was all a misunderstanding. Apparently, Holliday told police an unnamed woman was driving when his truck hit the pole -- not a unicorn.

"Mr. Holliday has other serious problems, but this is not one of them," County Attorney Dennis Paxinos said of the unicorn alibi.

The mixup occurred when a deputy prosecutor misunderstood an e-mail from a colleague who used the phrase "unicorn defense," thinking it was an actual statement from Holliday, Paxinos said. "Unicorn defense" is a slang term used by prosecutors when a defendant blames some mythical person for a crime, he said.

"It's kind of a code (between prosecutors) and the code was misinterpreted," Paxinos said.

Paxinos apologized "to the public, the court and to Mr. Holliday" for the confusion and said he has chastised the prosecutors involved.

Holliday has pleaded not guilty to felony charges of criminal endangerment and drunken driving. He is being represented by a public defender. Kristina Copenhaver-Landon, director of the public defender's office in Billings, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

Police look for 6-year-old boy missing for a week; 2 accused of lying to investigators

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) -- Police searched for a missing 6-year-old boy Wednesday in a thicket of dense pines where two men told investigators they had buried the boy's dead body, but several hours of searching failed to turn up any sign of the child.

Both men led police late Tuesday on a fruitless search in the woods beside the mobile home park that Christopher Michael Barrios, 6, vanished from six days earlier. They were arrested early Wednesday on charges of lying to police.

"They might not be lying necessarily about the location -- it could be they're just not certain," Doering said Wednesday. "I'm convinced enough to keep looking. If we didn't have any degree of confidence at all, we wouldn't be here."

Doering said the men, David Edenfield and Donald Dale, were arrested because they first told police they knew nothing about the missing boy, then later claimed to know where his body was buried.

The men are also charged with concealing a body. Doering explained that the charge can be applied in a case in which a suspect hinders the discovery of a body that has yet to be found.

The boy's father, Mike Barrios, said he's not putting much stock in the men's claims.

"It's all based around these people's confessions, that he's dead -- and they've lied so much," said Barrios, 33. "In a way that's good, because we're keeping hope that he's coming home alive."

Christopher has been missing since Thursday, when neighbors last saw him playing alone on a swing set down the road from his father's trailer just outside of Brunswick, a port city 60 miles south of Savannah.

Police found one of the boy's toys, a Star Wars light saber, along the road outside.

Edenfield is the third member of his family to be arrested in connection with the case. His 32-year-old son, George David Edenfield, is a convicted child molester who has told police he played a role in the boy's disappearance. Police are calling him a suspect, but as of Wednesday they had not charged him in the boy's disappearance.

He has been jailed on charges of violating his probation, which prohibits him from contact with children. His mother, Peggy Edenfield, has also been arrested on suspicion of lying to police.

Doering said that using tips from the Edenfields, police have searched in at least seven different places for Christopher, including the Edenfield family trailer and a drainage canal.

"Although we're hopeful he's alive, we're also realistic enough to know he may not be," Doering said.

A $31,500 reward has been offered for Christopher's safe return, and dozens of volunteers have joined in the search for him.

Christopher's grandmother, Sue Rodriguez, said she had warned her grandson to stay away from the Edenfield home after she found her neighbor's name on Georgia's online sex offender registry.

"I told him, 'Christopher, they're not nice people. Stay away from them,"' Rodriguez said.

Ice melts prompt flooding in Minnesota town, at least 100 people evacuated by boat

BROWNS VALLEY, Minn. (AP) -- Melting ice and snow sparked flooding in this small town early Wednesday that forced the evacuation of about 100 residents, many by boat.

The town was hit by flooding from two sides -- north by overland flooding and from the west by the Little Minnesota River, which rose out of its banks. Witnesses said that in some areas the water was neck high and could be seen pouring into the first-floor windows of houses, but a foot or so was more common.

Volunteers in boats or wearing waders were shutting off propane tanks the size of small cars that were floating among the debris.

"It's the worst I've ever seen, but everybody's working together," said Mayor Jeff Backer Jr. from the porch of his home. It was among the 35 to 50 houses in town damaged in the flood.

The American Red Cross was using a school for a shelter and called in extra volunteers from nearby Fergus Falls. Browns Valley, a town of 700, is located in the western portion of the state near the South Dakota line.

Sandy Biel said some people had to be evacuated from their homes in the large scoops of heavy earth-moving equipment. "They got it awfully bad," she said.

Officials said everyone in the affected area was accounted for, and the water had already dropped 6 inches by midmorning.

The National Weather Service office in Aberdeen, S.D., attributed the flooding to excessive runoff from melting snow and ice jams that formed on the river Tuesday afternoon. Ice jams form when river currents pile up chunks of floating ice, restricting water flow.

Backer later said at a news conference that the town would need help to rebuild.

"We're not a rich community," he said. "We're a poor community, an elderly community."

Parents want to continue shock treatment on autistic son; mainstream doctors call it barbaric

CHICAGO (AP) -- Bradley Bernstein's parents say an electric cattle prod is the only thing that stops him from banging his head and violently punching his eyes, nearly blinding himself.

The Illinois couple's fight to continue shock treatment on their severely autistic 48-year-old son and the uproar over a Massachusetts school that uses similar treatment, have pulled back the curtain on this extreme form of behavior modification. Critics call it outmoded, barbaric and unethical.

Even a leading supporter of the technique, Harvard-educated psychologist Matthew Israel, acknowledges, "The natural reaction is to be horrified."

"It always has been very controversial and is not politically correct, and if you want to advance your career, you try to stay away from it," said Israel, founder and director of the Judge Rotenberg Center, a residential school in Canton, Mass. The institution houses children and adults with autism, mental retardation and other behavioral and psychiatric disorders.

The school is under legislative and regulatory scrutiny for routinely using skin shocks on about half its 230 students to stop serious behavior problems, including self-injury.

Electric shocks and other painful or unpleasant treatments known as "aversive conditioning" were accepted more a generation ago. But mainstream psychiatry relies on new drugs and other methods that have proven effective.

Using this form of shock therapy is "cruel and unusual punishment," said Dr. Louis Kraus, an associate professor of psychiatry at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center. "The concept of doing that is frightening."

Some states, including Illinois last year, have banned or severely restricted use of electric shocks in mental health treatment.

But Israel favors the technique over psychiatric drugs that he says make students too drowsy to learn and says most critics "have never seen children who have blinded themselves, or banged their head to the point of brain injury, or bit a hole in their cheek."

Israel developed a device he calls a graduated electronic decelerator. It's carried in backpacks students at his school wear, and elicits shocks through electrodes strapped on their arms and legs.

"The beauty of it is there's no side effects," Israel said. "It's a temporary painful experience for two seconds."

His school's techniques are the subject of a bill pending in the Massachusetts Legislature and complaints including a lawsuit by a New York mother who says the shocks traumatized her now 18-year-old son.

The device used on Bradley Bernstein is a cattle prod. It used to be a long electrified rod, but the newer model is a handheld shocker about the size of a portable phone, with two short metal prongs.

Fran Bernstein, his mother, says it delivers a shock about as painful as a bee sting. Critics say it's considerably stronger, akin to sticking a finger in an electric socket.

Often just seeing the device was enough to make Bradley stop hurting himself, Mrs. Bernstein said.

Bradley Bernstein only says a few words and sometimes hurts himself in frustration or opposition to his caretakers' demands, his mother said. He is allergic to several drugs that could calm his behavior, she said.

The Bernsteins are fighting a Cook County judge's March 2 ruling that said Bradley's shock treatment violates an amendment to state law passed last May.

"Now we're not going to be able to control him and we don't know what's going to happen," said Mrs. Bernstein, of suburban Lincolnshire, Ill.

A therapist recommended the shocks when Bradley was a boy and he got the treatment routinely in group homes where he lived until the state law was enacted last year, his mother said.

Specialists at Trinity Services Inc., which took over the agency that used to care for Bradley, oppose shock treatment and helped change the law so it and other painful techniques are banned from group homes.

"This is something that our professional staff doesn't believe is ethical," said Trinity's president, Art Dykstra.

Bradley Bernstein is the only group home patient in Illinois known to have received shock treatment in recent years. His parents agreed to a compromise to gradually stop the treatment, but sued when Trinity officials abruptly stopped it after the law changed, according to the their attorney, Robert O'Donnell.

The judge's recent ruling said the change in Illinois law makes the Bernsteins' complaint moot. O'Donnell is appealing and has enlisted Matthew Israel to help evaluate Bradley and determine whether his shock treatment should resume.

"Anything that causes pain isn't necessarily cruel and inhumane," Israel said. "If you go to a dentist or a surgeon, you're going to be involved in temporary pain but have long-term hope of improvement."

Trinity officials dispute the Bernsteins' claim that their son's behavior has grown worse without the shocks.

Bradley looked away and did not respond to questions during an attempt to interview him this week at his group home in suburban Des Plaines. Wearing a maroon sweat shirt and khaki pants, the gray-haired man wasn't violent during the half-hour visit and had no visible bruises.

His mother said he started "beating himself up" during a recent visit home, however, and that his eye doctor worries he'll do permanent damage.

"The judge and the legislature are taking my son's life away," Mrs. Bernstein said. "If he doesn't stop hitting his head he's going to go blind."

On the Net:

Rotenberg school: http://www.judgerc.org

Judge dismisses tax, money laundering charges against ganja guru

By: - SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Tax and money laundering charges were dismissed Wednesday against self-proclaimed marijuana guru Ed Rosenthal after the defense argued prosecutors were retaliating against him for public complaints he made about his earlier trial.

U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer granted the defense's motion to dismiss the charges because of a "vindictive prosecution," but refused to dismiss charges that Rosenthal grew hundreds of plants for a medical marijuana dispensary.

Last year, Rosenthal, 62, successfully appealed his earlier conviction on the drug charges because of misconduct by a juror who consulted an attorney on how to decide the case.

Federal prosecutors indicted the "Guru of Ganja" again in October over the same marijuana operation, adding four counts of hiding money and five counts of filing false tax returns.

Breyer dismissed all the non-drug charges against Rosenthal, saying they were motivated by Rosenthal's appeal and complaints that his first trial was unfair.

"The government's deeds -- and words -- create the perception that it added the new charges to make Rosenthal look like a common criminal and thus dissipate the criticism heaped on the government after the first trial," Breyer wrote.

After Rosenthal's conviction on three marijuana-growing felonies in 2003, Breyer sentenced him to just one day in prison, saying Rosenthal reasonably believed he was growing the plants on behalf of Oakland officials for a city medical marijuana program.

In the latest order dismissing the tax and money laundering charges, Breyer said prosecutors knew that a new conviction on the drug charges alone would result in the same sentence.

With Rosenthal likely to be set free for time served even if convicted, "there really is nothing left to this prosecution," said Joe Elford, a lawyer for Rosenthal.

Messages left with a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office were not immediately returned.

Rosenthal, a longtime pro-marijuana activist, has written books on how to grow marijuana and how to avoid getting caught.

A hearing to discuss the remaining charges was set for Friday.

Kentucky, land of the thoroughbred, is swamped with unwanted horses

STAFFORDSVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- The bidding for the black pony started at $500, then took a nosedive.

There were no takers at $300, $200, even $100. With a high bid of just $75, the auctioneer gave the seller the choice of taking the animal off the auction block. But the seller said no.

"I can't feed a horse," the man said. "I can't even feed myself."

Kentucky, the horse capital of the world, famous for its sleek thoroughbreds, is being overrun with thousands of horses no one wants -- some of them perfectly healthy, but many of them starving, broken-down nags. Other parts of the country are overwhelmed, too.

The reason: growing opposition in the U.S. to the slaughter of horses for human consumption overseas.

With new laws making it difficult to send horses off to the slaughterhouse when they are no longer suitable for racing or work, auction houses are glutted with horses they can barely sell, and rescue organizations have run out of room.

Some owners who cannot get rid of their horses are letting them starve; others are turning them loose in the countryside.

Some people who live near the strip mines in the mountains of impoverished eastern Kentucky say that while horses have long been left to roam free there, the number now may be in the thousands, and they are seeing herds three times bigger than they did just five years ago.

"There's horses over there that's lame, that's blind," said Doug Kidd, who owns 30 horses in Lackey, Ky. "They're taking them over there for a graveyard because they have nowhere to move them."

It is legal in all states for owners to shoot their unwanted horses, and some Web sites offer instructions on doing it with little pain. But some horse owners do not have the stomach for that.

At the same time, it can cost as much as $150 for a veterinarian to put a horse down. And disposing of the carcass can be costly, too. Some counties in Kentucky, relying on a mix of private and public funding, will pick up and dispose of a dead horse for a nominal fee.

The cost is much higher other places, and many places ban the burying of horses altogether because of pollution fears.

Sending horses off to the glue factory is not an option anymore. Adhesives are mostly synthetic formulations nowadays, according to Lawrence Sloan, president of the Adhesive and Sealant Council. And because of public opposition, horse meat is no longer turned into dog food either, said Chris Heyde of the Society for Animal Protective Legislation.

Eventually, anti-slaughter groups insist, the market will sort itself out, and owners will breed their horses less often, meaning fewer unwanted horses.

Nelson Francis, who raises gaited horses, a rare, brawny breed found in the Appalachian mountains, said the prices they command are getting so low, he might have to turn some loose. He houses about 57 of them, double his typical number.

"I can't absorb the price," Francis said. "You try to hang on until the price changes, but it looks like it's not going to change. ... What do I do? I've got good quality horses I can't market because of the has-been horse."

"Kill buyers" used to pay pennies a pound for unwanted horses, then pack them into crowded trucks bound for slaughterhouses that would ship the horse meat to Europe and Asia.

However, public opposition to the eating of horse meat has caused the number of horses slaughtered each year by American companies to drop from over 300,000 in 1990 to around 90,000 in 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Only one U.S. slaughterhouse -- in Illinois -- still butchers horses for human consumption.

"What do you do with them all?" said Lori Neagle, executive director of the new Kentucky Equine Humane Center in Lexington. "What do you do with 90,000 head of horses? That's something that has to be addressed. It'll be interesting to see if people financially can do the right thing or if they will leave their horses to starve."

Federal law prohibits the use of double-decker trucks for transporting horses to slaughter. Many members of Congress have also been pushing a national ban on the butchering of horses for human consumption.

While California is the only state that has expressly banned horse slaughter, in a 1989 ballot initiative, similar measures are under consideration elsewhere, including Kentucky, Maryland, New York and Illinois. Connecticut has made it illegal to sell horse meat in public places, and many states have tightened up the labeling and transportation requirements governing horses bound for slaughter.

A federal court ruled recently that Texas must start to enforce its long-ignored 1949 ban on the transportation and possession of horse meat. That put a stop to horse slaughter at the two slaughterhouses in Texas that engaged in the practice.

While the market price for horses has plummeted, the cost of food, lodging and veterinary care has not.

Kathy Schwartz, director of Lisbon, Md.-based Days End Farm Horse Rescue, which adopts abused and neglected horses, said that rescue operations that choose not to euthanize horses are generally full.

"We had one horse we brought in that was a rack of bones -- in pain both from starvation and parasite infestation and injury," Schwartz said. "His owner thought life was better than going to slaughter. Well, life is -- if you're going to feed it and take care of it."

New stamp honors poet Longfellow

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Listen my children, and you shall hear

Of the poet Longfellow, whose verses bring cheer.

On the fifteenth of March, stamp collectors will hail

A new postage stamp, that is going on sale,

Recalling that famous man this year.

The 23rd stamp in the Postal Service's literary arts series marks the 200th birthday of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

First-day-of-issue ceremonies for the 39-cent stamp are being held at the American Stamp Dealers show in New York.

The stamp features a portrait of Longfellow based on an 1876 photograph with background art evoking scenes from Paul Revere's Ride, one of Longfellow's most famous poems.

On the Net:

U.S. Postal Service: http://www.usps.com

6-year-old found in home with father who was dead for 2 days on sofa

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- A 6-year-old boy stayed in an apartment with the body of his father for two days after the man died on their sofa, obeying instructions to never leave without permission, firefighters said.

The boy, whose name was not released, didn't want to leave even after firefighters arrived, fearing punishment if he left, fire department Maj. Noble Lee said.

"He wasn't as distraught as one might think," Lee said. "I don't think he understands the gravity of the past few days. He wasn't as upset at the situation as he was about being outside the residence without permission."

His father, Kevin Dale Judd, 52, appears to have died of natural causes, authorities said. The body was found late Monday after neighbors and a maintenance man reported a foul odor, Lee said.

According to a police report, the boy told police his father had been feeling ill and laid down. The boy left the room to watch television, and when he returned his father was slumped over.

The boy did not know to call 911 in case of an emergency, said Department of Human Services spokesman George Earl Johnson Jr. He apparently had not eaten in two days but refused food and water offered by firefighters and paramedics, Lee said.

Johnson said the boy will remain in DHS custody until relatives are found to care for him.