Law & Justice: February 2005 Archives
The "Bind, Torture, Kill" killer has been caught, and the Spork has been following the story and has the scoop before the mainstream media. Apparently the guy, Dennis Rader, was actually posting messages on the Catch BTK forum, and now the FBI has taken the site down. He was also the President of Christ Lutheran Church in Wichita. It looks like he got married in the early 70s, had a couple of kids, killed a bunch of people in the late 70s, and may have stopped killing when his kids got older. He may not have stopped entirely, but he stopped taking public responsibility for the killings at least, until recently when he started taunting the police again. Maybe he got bored when his kids moved out? Apparently Rader didn't realize that police in the 21st century are a bit more sophisticated than the cops from the 70s.
More from Fox News, with a timeline. Also, here's a cache of Kerri Rader's website, the daughter who turned him in.
I'm not a lawyer, but it strikes me that the recent sperm theft trial has possible implications for the abortion issue.
Phillips alleges that he and Irons, who practices internal medicine, never had intercourse during their four-month affair, although they did have oral sex three times.His suit contends that Irons, without his knowledge, kept some of his semen and used it to impregnate herself. ...
But the judges agreed with the lower court's decision to dismiss fraud and theft claims against Irons.
They agreed with Irons' lawyers that she didn't steal the sperm.
"She asserts that when plaintiff 'delivered' his sperm, it was a gift -- an absolute and irrevocable transfer of title to property from a donor to a donee," the decision said. "There was no agreement that the original deposit would be returned upon request."
Most pro-choicers say that the mother has a right to an abortion because the baby is inside her and entirely dependent on her, but perhaps the "irrevocable transfer" argument is valid here as well. I suppose the objection would be that egg and sperm don't change from being "property" to being a "person" until the spatial location of the result of their combination changes, so there's no "person" to be the recipient of the "irrevocable transfer"... but what about the father? Maybe a father could argue that when the mother had sex with him she irrevocably transferred her egg into their joint possession.
Or even her entire womb! After all, there's no "I" in uterus.
So Bill Cosby won't be charged for drugging and fondling a woman in his mansion last year. I wasn't aware of the alleged drugging until I read this article, and in my opinion that makes the accusation much more serious. Setting the specifics of this case aside, I'm curious about what women think about unwanted fondling in general. It's obviously inappropriate and wrong in the extreme for a man to grab or touch a woman without her consent, but do you women think a criminal prosecution or a civil lawsuit are the appropriate responses? Is it sufficient to just slap the creep across the face or kick him in the nuts? Obviously the context and details are important, but would a single instance of unwanted fondling drive most women to get the police involved? My expectation is that that sort of thing happens pretty frequently at clubs and bars and what-not.
Matthew Reed is suing Rasheed Wallace and Nike for featuring a tattoo he created in an ad without his permission.
Matthew Reed from TigerLilly Tattoo and DesignWorks claims he owns the copyright for the design of the tattoo. Reed's lawsuit wants the Nike ad featuring Wallace and the tattoo off the air and the Internet, as well as damages. ...But Reed claims he became aware last year of a Nike ad that centers on the tattoo and its creation. He claims the ad violates the copyright he holds to "the Egyptian Family Pencil Drawing."
Apparently, the tattoo doesn't just appear in the ad, it's the center of the ad. As such, I think the artist deserves some compensation or credit.
It seems that most fugitives get caught by doing something really stupid. Many argue that only stupid people think they can live a life of crime and get away with it, and that's definitely true in the long run, but once you're free from the cops it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to stay free. Here are the guidelines that come to mind:
1. Leave the area. Don't go home, and possibly leave the country. If your crimes are minor enough, this may be pretty much all you have to do.
2. Stop using your credit cards and cell phone. Terrorists and child abusers alike seem slow to discover that the good guys can track these technologies rather easily.
3. Stop committing crimes. You want the heat to die down, and crime just raises the ire of the locals wherever you fled. If you must commit crimes, at least change your modus operandi so the police can't connect the dots.
4. Don't break traffic laws. Remember Scott Peterson, Timothy McVeigh, and countless others who were caught because they got stopped by the fuzz.
5. Break contact with people and things from your past. Ditch the car and house, make new friends, get new hobbies, change your name, don't go to family reunions.
6. Don't tell anyone anything about your past. Resist the need to unload your guilty stories on someone you come to trust, because they're likely to betray you. Just hide it all away and take your secrets to your grave.
Can anyone else think of any others?
In a just world, Albert Garcia Jr. would have to eat a Big Mac stuffed full of glass as punishment for this heinous crime.
When a police officer visited the McDonald's in the Bronx he asked for the usual -- a Big Mac.What he didn't realize is that the worker who prepared his dinner Saturday night allegedly added shattered bits of glass to his meal.
After biting into the sandwich, the officer quickly realized something was cutting his mouth and throat. He examined the burger and found bits of glass embedded in it, police said. ...
The worker, Albert Garcia Jr., 18, was charged with assault in the first degree, criminal possession of a weapon and reckless endangerment, police said.
In my book, that's attempted murder.
