Remember the case of the pilot who used "go pills" and mistakenly killed four Canadians by dropping a bomb in the wrong place in Afganistan? He won't face a court martial after all.

The Air Force has decided not to court-martial a U.S. fighter pilot who mistakenly dropped a 500-pound, laser-guided bomb that killed four Canadians in Afghanistan in 2002. Maj. Harry Schmidt, 37, will face nonjudicial punishment and four dereliction-of-duty charges against him will be dismissed in court, the Air Force said Thursday. He could face punishment including 30 days confinement or loss of one month's pay, about $5,600, Air Force spokeswoman Col. Alvina Mitchell said.

Schmidt originally was charged with manslaughter and aggravated assault and faced up to 64 years in prison. Military officials recommended against a court-martial on those charges last June, saying Schmidt could face nonjudicial punishment instead. Schmidt turned down the offer, saying he wanted to clear his name in a court-martial instead. He was ordered to be tried on the lesser charge of dereliction of duty.

Schmidt will remain in the military, although not as a pilot. He has transferred to the Illinois National Guard.

A juror has been removed from the Scott Peterson trial for discussing media coverage of the trial with his girlfriend. After being dismissed, the juror, an airport screener, said if the vote was today, he would have voted "not guilty" as the prosecution hasn't put on evidence to convince him Peterson killed his wife--only that he lied about some things.

Mark Geragos asked for a mistrial and the request was denied.

The Houston Chronicle reports that within the next two weeks, prosecutors will ask a federal grand jury to indict former Enron CEO Ken Lay for conduct that occurred during his last few months at Enron.

Prosecutors have been busy calling witnesses to the grand jury this past week, purporedly asking about Lay. While the prosecution is under a rule of secrecy, witnesses are not in the federal system. Here's what the prosecutors are believed to be asking about:

· Lay's receipt of three memos or e-mails warning of financial trouble and fraud at the company within weeks of Jeff Skilling's abrupt August 2001 departure as CEO.
·His public statements to investors and analysts.
·Lay's attempt to find an alternative to having to substantially write down the "goodwill" or excess price paid for assets.
·His trades of company stock for millions of dollars in company cash in those last months.

Sounds like they can't prove he was a participant in the main crimes, so they're going for the aftermath and coverup.

TChris started it with stupid criminals of the week. We'll continue with most ridiculous arrest of the week. This is too much.

A teacher's aide who forgot to put away her marshmallows and hot chocolate at Yellowstone National Park last year was taken from her cruise ship cabin in handcuffs and hauled before a judge Friday, accused of failing to pay the year-old fine. Hope Clarke, 32, crying and in leg shackles, told the judge she was rousted at 6:30 a.m. by federal agents after the ship returned to Miami from Mexico. She insisted that she had been required to pay the $50 fine before she could leave Yellowstone, which has strict rules about food storage to prevent wildlife from eating human food.

Turns out Ms. Clarke did indeed pay the fine, there shouldn't have been a warrant out for her, and she spent 9 hours in detention. The federal magistrate demanded an explanation. Here's the pitiful excuse:

Zach Mann, spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, called the arrest "an unfortunate set of circumstances." He added, "We were acting on what we believed was accurate information."

Don't think it can't happen to you.

by TChris

An Air Force prosecutor apparently tried to tamper with a witness in the court-martial of Ahmad Al Halabi. (TalkLeft background here.) During Halabi's preliminary hearing, Suzan Sultan, a former Air Force translator, made a mistake.

She said she misread a letter from the Syrian government to the airman, thinking the Syrians had given Al Halabi permission to visit another Middle Eastern country, Qatar. Sultan later realized that Qatar also could mean "homeland," meaning that Al Halabi could have been telling the truth when he said he merely wanted to go to Syria to get married.

Sultan says that the prosecutor, Capt. Dennis Kaw, refused to allow her to admit the mistake. Fortunately, Sultan has a conscience, and she ratted out Kaw's unethical behavior to Halabi's civilian lawyer, Donald Rehkopf Jr. Rehkopf asked the judge to dismiss the case to sanction the prosecutor's miconduct -- a rarely granted remedy -- but the court ruled that, having foiled Kaw's attempt to cheat, the defense sustained no harm that warranted dismissal. Instead, the judge ordered the prosecutor "to forward the defense's complaint and any evidence of alleged misconduct to the Staff Judge Advocate at Travis and the Office of Professional Responsibility for Air Force lawyers in Washington."

Kaw isn't the only member of the prosecution team to demonstrate questionable character. One of the Air Force investigators who worked on Halabi's case has been charged with "rape, sodomy, fondling girls and mishandling classified material." Other investigators have been less than professional.

Rehkopf alleges that [the lead investigator] and agents with the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations drank beer, failed to wear gloves and rifled through the contents of a box seized as evidence from Al Halabi, then repacked the box to "pretend and mislead" that they were following protocol.

This kind of news doesn't happen often and as defense lawyers, it makes our day. From the St. Petersburg Times--Feds Lose Cocaine Case, 16 Go Free:

TAMPA - The federal government took a hit Tuesday in its ongoing efforts against overseas drug smuggling. After a six-week trial involving 16 people from Lithuania and Ukraine accused of smuggling drugs, jurors deliberated for three days and came back with not one guilty verdict. They acquitted 15 of the defendants and couldn't agree on whether the remaining defendant was guilty.

All 16 were charged with possession of cocaine on a vessel subject to U.S. jurisdiction and could have spent 25 years to life in prison if convicted... The verdict comes nearly a year after the men - crew members of the 500-foot freighter M/V Yalta - were arrested in connection with an apparent attempt to smuggle nearly 4 tons of cocaine.

Link via Drug War Rant, who says:

So they seized a ship with 4 tons of cocaine, but couldn't get a single conviction? Embarrassing. There was a 17th crew member who pleaded guilty in September and agreed to testify for the Feds ... and they still couldn't get a conviction. My favorite quote from the article:

"This verdict is a major black eye to the government in their ongoing Panama Express operation," said Steve Crawford, one of the court-appointed defense attorneys. "The philosophy of 'Let's arrest everybody and see if the evidence is there' lends itself to these kinds of verdicts."

Update: Some commenters have wondered why the acquittal pleases us. The main reason is the draconian penalties the crew members would have received if convicted. 25 years to life for a hired crew member (far lower in culpability than the organizers or owners of the load) is outrageous.

by TChris

Wes Owens, 19, decided to throw a "pasture party" on his parents' property in East Texas. Also attending were Colt Amox, 21, Cory Hicks, 24, and Dallas Stone, 18. They planned to smoke and drink and listen to music around a campfire. Along the way, they picked up Billy Ray Johnson, a middle-aged, mentally disabled black man, who was "a big hit at parties" because of his penchant for dancing.

What happened next is disputed, although Amox admits that he punched Johnson, who fell unconscious. Hicks had obvious reasons to fear being associated with a battery; he was a jailer for the Cass County Sheriff's Dept. Owens and Stone may have been afraid their underaged drinking would be revealed if they took Johnson to a hospital. According to the district attorney, all four took Johnson to a dump and dropped him onto an anthill. Hicks returned three hours later, then called the Sheriff to report that he'd found Johnson laying unconscious.

Johnson woke up three days later. Ants had ravaged his body. The four men have been charged with injuring a disabled person. Hicks and Amox go on trial June 28.

Whether this crime is race-related is unclear. The linked article presents both sides of a story that is both tragic and fascinating. It also provides background on some other incidents that may or may not be race-related in Linden's recent history.

Report from DC: A Saturday night in a random upscale but not luxe-luxe hotel bar in the heart of DC. Not a single person mentioned Ronald Reagan. The topics of discussion at the bar: Kobe Bryant, Scott Peterson, Michael Jackson, JonBenet Ramsey and Michael Skakel, in that order. All topics were introduced by the female bartender who has been on the job at this establishement for 16 years. Here's the consensus, from bartender and patrons:

• Kobe: Not guilty
• Scott Peterson: He did it but it was an accident and he panicked, denying all.
• Michael Jackson: Not sure, but the settlement in the first case a decade ago makes them think he might be guilty.
• JonBenet: The killer's out there and they think it's great that her father, John Ramsey, is running for office in Michigan.
• Michael Skakel: His own words convicted him, but it might have been his brother.
• OJ: He either did it or had someone go over there to cause mischief which got out of control--but the prosecution didn't prove its case and Mark Furhman has zero credibility.

Talk about a jury pool...we've been in enough hotel bars around the country to know they are a pretty good barometer. And, by the way, the show this group watched most consistently, usually the late night re-run, and the host they trusted the most, was Dan Abrams of MSNBC.

Lea Fastow, wife of former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow, has been designated to serve her one year prison sentence for misdemeanor tax evasion at the downtown Houston federal detention facility. In other words, no federal prison camp. Detention facilities are jails--they house all security levels of prisoners who are awaiting trial--including repeat offenders and those charged with violent crimes.

Lea Fastow, the wife of former Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, has been ordered to serve her one-year sentence for a misdemeanor tax charge in a downtown Houston federal lock-up, just blocks from the failed company's headquarters. U.S. District Judge David Hittner ordered Fastow, 42, to surrender by July 12, an order made public on Tuesday said.

The Houston federal detention center is a considerably more restrictive prison than the one her lawyer had requested. Attorney Mike DeGeurin had asked that Fastow be sent to a minimum security women's federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, 100 miles northwest of Houston. DeGeurin could not immediately be reached for comment.

Lea Fastow shouldn't receive special treatment, but she also shouldn't be treated more harshly than anyone else serving the same sentence. What's next, will Martha Stewart be sent to MCC Manhattan? This is overkill. The Bureau of Prisons should reconsider.

by TChris

Animal cruelty is repellent, but it doesn't excuse human cruelty -- particularly when it's inflicted in the name of the law.

A Texas woman convicted of neglecting her two horses will get only bread and water for the first three days of a 30-day jail sentence, a judge said on Tuesday.

Apparently a fan of westerns, County Court at Law Judge Mike Peters of Houston thought an Old West-style punishment was fitting for a crime against horses. Why not just let the defendant and the horse shoot it out at the corral?

by TChris

Charges against Philadelphia rapper "Filthy Rich," a/k/a Richard Rayordo Harris, will be dropped after a judge suppressed key evidence that the prosecution neglected to provide to the defense. The judge also suppressed statements made by Harris and pre-trial witness identifications. The prosecutor blamed a heavy workload for his failure to turn over evidence that included transcripts of conversations that the police recorded using wiretaps in its investigation of an alleged cocaine distribution ring.

Harris was facing a drug kingpin count that carried a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years. Harris' lawyer, William Riddle, argued that the prosecutor wasn't playing around with the charges but seemed to be playing around with discovery.

It isn't the first time the state's attorney's office has failed to provide evidence to defendants on time. In April, [State's Attorney] Eastridge dropped a rape case after a clerical error caused his office to miss a 45-day deadline to turn over DNA evidence. Eastridge also blamed that mistake on his office's high caseload.

by TChris

Christopher Lame of Des Moines believed he didn't get one of the tacos he ordered at a Taco Bell drive-through. He entered the business to complain, but the woman working at the drive-through told him they were closing. Lame responded by pelting her in the face with a chalupa. He's now charged with assault, having avoided the greater charge of assault with a deadly chalupa.