California Prison Doctors Win Very Limited Right to Disregard Prisoner Directives

A hunger strike going on more than 45 days among California gang leaders who have been kept in solitary confinement took an odd turn last week.  (Full coverage, LA Times)  The California Bureau of Prisons, which is under receivership (taken over by outside authorities) won a very limited four-paragraph order from a federal judge. The order allows prison doctors to disregard previously signed Do-Not-Resuscitate directives from the patients.  It has been styled a “force-feed” order, while it really will allow doctors to give unconscious inmate/patients an IV of vital nutrients.  Why would they do this?

The prison doctors are allowed to disregard the DNR only where they feel that the prisoner signed it under duress.  That is, where the prisoner was forced by higher-ups in the gang to join the hunger strike but didn’t really want to.  How will this work in practice? 

Bradley (Chelsea) Manning: Gender identity is not a defense to espionage

Last week, Bradley Manning was found guilty of espionage and given a 35-year prison sentence.  The length of the sentence shocked many.  The next day, it was widely reported  that Manning now wanted to be called Chelsea and to live as a woman – and have the military pay for gender reassignment hormones and surgery while in Levenworth Prison; good luck with that, seriously. I hope he does get what he needs, but doubt he will.

The world seemed shocked by the revelation that his defense to espionage was basically that he had gender identity disorder, and that would somehow preclude a conviction.  However, his lawyers had been putting on this defense for almost two years. (Daily Kos article from 2011) 

The problem with such a legal strategy is that it is not a good legal defense. It may literally be why Manning did it, why he leaked 700,000 pages of diplomatic cables, videos, and the like, but that doesn’t make it a good legal defense. Sometimes the truth is not a good legal defense. You shot your neighbor because you hated him – while maybe true – is not a good legal defense. 

Friday Fiction: Devils Walk Through Galveston, Ch 1

The following is the first chapter of my novel, Devils Walk Through Galveston.  The prologue was posted on August 11. 

I hope you enjoy it.  Other portions of the book will be posted from time to time on Fridays, along with my other work, and the work of other writers.  I hope you enjoy.  If you like it, share it, and buy the book.  I’ll sign it and love to talk about it.

1.  John Doddy, morning

            She had red hair and patches of red skin beginning to bruise.  Each had started another color.  Each had looked better before.  The sun rose red, foretelling a blazing heat.  John’s eyes were bloodshot, opening slowly.  She lay quiet and damp. 

            John Doddy was slapped fully awake to Clarksdale, Mississippi.  Slapped hard and heard the words, “Get up man.  Look around.  What are you doing sleeping?”

John groggy, clutching his face, careful not to move, replied, “It’s Friday, no one’s going to stir for a while after the first wave of folks go to work.”

Judas leaned against the wall, one foot raised and resting on the beige paint, rolling a cigarette out of a pack of Drum.  Asked: “You looked around yet?  You look around last night when you came in?  You see the truck across the street with the fire department plates?  The one with cop plates?  Or how ‘bout the one with nurses scrubs in the back seat at the front of the driveway, the front of this duplex?”

Bath Salts: They’re a Powerful Drug (MS mini-rampage)

The synthetic drug marketed and sold as “Bath Salts” have been blamed for a mini-rampage in Meridian, Mississippi.   On Wednesday, Sean Carnell (awesome mugshot in the link), had a 90-minute, one mile path of mini-destruction. He did the following:

1.      Attacked a kid at a skate park, hitting him several times and stealing his skateboard (as a former citizen of Mississippi – albeit in the Delta on the other side of the state, the idea that Meridian has a skate park is kind of awesome);

2.      Decked a guy on a bike, knocking him unconscious (no word on whether he used the skateboard);

3.      Confronted a ten-year old boy and his dog and got chased away, with only the dog taking a kick (leading to my premise, discussed more later, that dogs, not guns, are the great equalizer. Show me someone of any size or disability with a decent-sized, well trained dog and I’ll show you someone that even a bath-salt zombie won’t mess with);

4.      Walked to an apartment complex and beat a construction worker with a shovel, breaking bones in his face and injuring his spine (10 year old kid with a dog, fine; construction worker, no dog, in the hospital);

5.      Forced his way into an apartment and attacked a 36-year old woman (woman’s daughter and boyfriend broke it up);

6.      Left the apartment and tried to kidnap a guy in a wheelchair, tipping him over;

7.      Began throwing things at another apartment, breaking windows, until police arrived.

When police arrived, he gave up peacefully 90 minutes after the rampage began.  Bath Salts: they’re a powerful drug.

Rafael Resendez-Ramirez: The Railroad Killer Whose Parade Inspired My Novel

In the summer of 1999, I was a part-time paralegal at a law firm on Main Street in downtown Houston. This was before our light rail took up the middle of the road, and Main Street was still the main thoroughfare of downtown.  Houston was on edge.  In June, the body of Noemi Dominguez, a schoolteacher in Houston who lived near the Union Pacific train tracks was found in her home, bludgeoned to death. Her Honda Civic was found seven days later on the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas.  Police, the FBI and Texas Rangers linked her killer to that of Claudia Benton, who was murdered in her home in West University Place, Texas, a wealthy internal suburb of Houston a year earlier. She also lived next to the train tracks.

Police quickly linked this killer to other murders on or near train lines, including those of Norman Sirnic, a pastor, and his wife Karen Sirnic in Weimar, Texas. Rape was involved in some of the murders.  Some personal effects were missing from some of the houses.  So was some money and jewelry.  Many times, valuables were left behind.

A few days later, George Mober and Carolyn Fredrick were killed just north of Cairo, Illinois, near the border of Illinois, Missouri and Kentucky, also along train lines.

A manhunt of epic proportions ensued.  Other murders were linked up.  Texas’ then-Attorney General hoped publicly that every murder committed near railroad tracks was not blamed on the same killer.  He remembered the notorious case of Henry Lee Lucas, who confessed, wrongly, to hundreds of murders he didn’t commit, among the dozens he did, in the 1960’s.  Lucas will be profiled later.

Home Invasion, Rape and Murder of 93 Year-Old Woman in Omaha

In a horrific, and truly senseless crime that shocked Omaha this summer, a 19 year-old itinerant, homeless roofer was drunk and “angry with women.”  (FullStory).  He walked through an unlocked door in the Little Italy section of Omaha, into a random house, and found a 93 year-old matriarch of the Little Italy community.

What followed was the brutal rape and beating of a tiny, frail old woman described by all who knew her as a wonderful person, “a saint.” Her daughter heard the commotion and came down to find her mother’s blood all over the walls of the room, her mother under the man so drunk he had passed out after the brutal attack.

Louise Sollowin died of complications due to blunt force trauma to her head and body.  Sergio Martinez-Perez was arraigned on felony-murder (deaths that occur in the commission of another crime, such as sexual assault or burglary).

This blog from time to time chronicles the devils who walk among us.  This time, a devil lived for four months in Omaha until he lashed out and killed the most vulnerable among us.

Jogging kid murdered because other kids were bored

Three teenage kids in rural Shelby County, Oklahoma were sitting around bored.  They saw a college baseball player, whom none of them knew, jogging by.  So, they shot him in the back with a .22.  No reason. No motive.  No anger.  No drugs or robbery.  They were bored so they killed a kid running by with a shot in the back with a rifle. 

The murderers were teenagers who are going to be tried as adults.  Their disdain for human life is shocking. If they thought their lives were boring before they fired the shot, they didn’t think how boring it’s going to be spending most of their lives rotting in prison.  Full story here in all its senseless depravity.