Men get six months for dumpster-diving

Their crime? Taking five cucumbers, four or five apricots, two bundles of asparagus spears and a handful of cherries from a garbage can at Sweet Pea Produce. Their sentence? Six months in the Routt County Jail. Giles Charle, 24, of Somersworth, N.H., and David Siller, 27, of Wayne, Pa., were on their way to the Rainbow Family of Living Light Gathering in North Routt County when they were arrested June 26. On Wednesday, they were sentenced to spend six months in jail and pay $15 in restitution to Sweet Pea Produce. Charle and Siller were charged with felony second-degree burglary and misdemeanor theft. As part of a plea agreement reached with Assistant District Attorney Kerry St. James, the men agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor trespass in exchange for having the felony they were facing dismissed.

St. James said the sentence was the men's decision. "They had a choice between accepting a deferred felony with 90 days in jail or a misdemeanor conviction with six months in jail," he said. "They agreed to spend the six months in jail. It came down to whether they wanted a felony conviction with less jail time or a misdemeanor with more jail." Contacted Friday, the owner of Sweet Pea Produce declined to comment on the case.

Siller and Charle, speaking from the Routt County Jail, said they didn't have much choice. They said they couldn't risk having felonies on their records and that St. James wouldn't offer anything better on the misdemeanor charge. The men said they think six months in jail was an inappropriately harsh sentence given their crime. "We weren't trying to be inconspicuous. We didn't have any intention of committing a crime or doing anything wrong," Charl‚ said. "We had just come in town and we were prepared to buy groceries from a store but everything was closed."

Charle said he admits stepping over a rope onto Sweet Pea property and taking the food from the trash wasn't the best idea, but that he doesn't think spending six months in jail is justifiable. "I feel like we've been treated very unfairly and unjustly," he said. "Everyone we've talked to thinks we've gone through far more than we deserve."

St. James said the men were facing the felony second-degree burglary charge because they trespassed onto property without permission and took something that did not belong to them, regardless of how they got on the property or the value of what they took. "It's called unlawful entry," he said.

Charle's family and attorneys believe the District Attorney's Office is making an example of the men. St. James refused to respond to such claims. Don Wirtshafter, an attorney in Ohio who represented many of the Rainbow Family members who were charged with crimes during the gathering in Routt County, said he thinks Charle and Siller were forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. "A suspended sentence would have worked for these boys, but when a prosecutor is really going after you, the best thing you can do is plea," he said. "At best, this case is bizarre. It can only be explained in a heated time when a prosecutor feels he must do something."

Charle's mother, Shaune McCarthy Charle, said what has happened to her son is a joke. "It's really amazing and unbelievable how taking garbage out of a Dumpster became a felony," she said. "They spent three days in jail in the beginning and weren't expecting it to go any further. (St. James) is completely incorrigible." Isabel Charle, Charle's sister, called the case "absurd." "It's just so unfair," she said. "It's appalling how they were treated. It's a sickening reflection of the state of the justice system in this country," she said.

The men began serving their sentences Wednesday. They said they came to Routt County to celebrate peace and love and can't believe they're now spending their days doing yoga in a jail cell. Siller said, "No one in their right mind would lock someone up for six months for stealing $15 worth of produce that was in a garbage can."

Report here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)

PROBATION IS A JOKE IN BRITAIN

Four out of ten criminals are released before the completion of assessments to determine whether they are a risk to the public, a report by Home Office watchdogs discloses today. Offenders were sometimes free for “very lengthy” periods before prison staff, police and probation officers had completed the assessments and decided how they should be monitored.The study found that plans to manage high-risk and very high-risk offenders were completed within five days of release for only half the criminals.

The report was drawn up by Andrew Bridges, the chief probation inspector, Anne Owers, in charge of prison inspectors, and Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the chief inspector of constabulary. It was commissioned after public anger and Home Office concern was generated by a series of murders committed by offenders on probation. The report looked at the links between police, prisons and probation and the system of assessments of prisoners. It was found that there was “a clear need for improvement in about one third of the case work” examined last year.

Mr Bridges said: “While it will never be possible to eliminate risk, it is right to expect the work to be done to a consistently high standard.” A Home Office spokeswoman said: “Since the inspection concluded the completion of assessments on high-risk offenders has increased.”

Report here







AUSTRALIA: NO JAIL FOR VICIOUS ATTACK

A teenage boy who stabbed and seriously injured radio newsreader Rowan Barker outside a Sydney party has been given a two-year suspended jail term. The 17-year-old, who cannot be named, was sentenced in the NSW District Court at Penrith today for maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm on Mr Barker on December 3 last year. Mr Barker, a newsreader with the Macquarie Radio network, was in hospital in intensive care after being stabbed several times outside a Christmas party at St Ives, in Sydney's north.

Mr Barker today said he was "dumbstruck" by the court outcome. "There is no deterrent set by this sentence as far as I can see," he told his network. "He doesn't even get a slap on the wrist and I get a slap in the face and punched in the stomach. That's what I feel like."

Previous court hearings have been told Mr Barker was attacked in a case of mistaken identity. The youth, who used cannabis and began binge drinking at age 14, was extremely intoxicated and claimed no memory of the stabbing. He pleaded guilty to maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm in company, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years jail. Judge John Nicholson today sentenced him to a two-year jail term but suspended the sentence, saying the youth's rehabilitation was a priority and that would best be undertaken in the community.

The judge placed the teenager on a two-year good behaviour bond with strict conditions, including that he submit to random drug tests five times a month for nine months. The youth was free to leave court after today's sentencing.

A spokesman for NSW Attorney-General Bob Debus said the Government had asked the Director of Public Prosecutions to consider challenging the youth's sentence. Mr Barker, who had hoped the teenager's sentence might have deterred others from similar acts of violence, said he was "just absolutely flabbergasted". "The message it sends, I think, is abhorrent to the rest of society," he told Macquarie Radio. "It says that you can come within millimetres of taking somebody's life and not really pay for it in any way."

Mr Barker said he was attacked after he asked the youth, who was looking for someone who lived next door, to leave the Christmas party. "One of the wounds was very close to my heart, in fact did nick the top of my heart, and caused some damage," he said. "There's a part of my heart that doesn't have the blood supply to it any more as a result of that injury."

Two other people, neither of whom can be named, were also charged over the stabbing. In July, a 19-year-old Artarmon man who drove the getaway car was sentenced to 200 hours community service for concealing a serious offence. A 20-year-old man was charged last year with Mr Barker's attempted murder and maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm, but subsequently died.

Report here




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)

THE BRITISH DISASTER

For the last 40 years, government policy in Britain, de facto if not always de jure, has been to render the British population virtually defenseless against criminals and criminality. Almost alone of British government policies, this one has been supremely effective: no Briton nowadays goes many hours without wondering how to avoid being victimized by a criminal intent on theft, burglary, or violence.

An unholy alliance between politicians and bureaucrats who want to keep prison costs to a minimum, and liberal intellectuals who pretend to see in crime a natural and understandable response to social injustice, which it would be a further injustice to punish, has engendered a prolonged and so far unfinished experiment in leniency that has debased the quality of life of millions of people, especially the poor. Every day in our newspapers we read of the absurd and dangerous leniency of the criminal-justice system. On April 21, for example, even the Observer (one of the bastions of British liberalism responsible for the present situation) gave prominence to the official report into the case of Anthony Rice, who strangled and then stabbed Naomi Bryant to death.

Rice, it turned out, had been assaulting women since 1972. He had been convicted for assaulting or raping a total of 15 women before murdering Naomi Bryant, and it is a fair supposition that he had assaulted or raped many more who did not go to the police. In 1982, he grabbed a woman by the throat, held a knife to her, and raped her. Five years later, while out of prison on home leave, he grabbed a woman, pushed her into a garden, held a knife to her, and raped her for an hour. Receiving a life sentence, he was transferred to an open prison in 2002 and then released two years later on parole as a low-risk parolee. He received housing in a hostel for ex-prisoners in a village whose inhabitants had been told, to gain their acquiescence, that none of the residents there was violent; five months after his arrival, he murdered Naomi Bryant. In pronouncing another life sentence on him, the judge ordered that he should serve at least 25 years: in other words, even now the law has not quite thrown away the key.

Only five days later, the papers reported that 1,023 prisoners of foreign origin had been released from British prisons between 1999 and 2006 without having been deported. Among them were 5 killers, 7 kidnappers, 9 rapists and 39 other sex offenders, 4 arsonists, 41 burglars, 52 thieves, 93 robbers, and 204 drug offenders. Of the 1,023 prisoners, only 106 had since been traced. The Home Office, responsible for both prisons and immigration, still doesn’t know how many of the killers, arsonists, rapists, and kidnappers are at large; but it admits that most of them will never be found, at least until they are caught after committing another offense. Although these revelations forced the Home Secretary to resign, in fact the foreign criminals had been treated only as British criminals are treated. At least we can truly say that we do not discriminate in our leniency.

Scandal has followed scandal. A short time later, we learned that prisoners had been absconding from one open prison, Leyhill, at a rate of two a week for three years—323 in total since 1999, among them 22 murderers. This outrage came to light only when a senior policeman in the area of Leyhill told a member of Parliament that there had been a crime wave in the vicinity of the prison. The member of Parliament demanded the figures in the House of Commons; otherwise they would have remained secret.

None of these revelations, however, would have surprised a man called David Fraser, who has just published a book entitled A Land Fit for Criminals—the land in question being Great Britain, of course. Far from being mistakes—for mistakes repeated so often cease to be mere mistakes—all these occurrences are in full compliance with general policy in Britain with regard to crime and criminality.

Fraser was a probation officer for more than a quarter of a century. He began to doubt the value of his work in terms of preventing crime and therefore protecting the public, but he at first assumed that, as a comparatively lowly official in the criminal-justice system, he was too mired in the grainy everyday detail to see the bigger picture. He assumed also that those in charge not only knew what they were doing but had the public interest at heart.

Eventually, however, the penny dropped. Fraser’s lack of success in effecting any change in the criminals under his supervision, and thus in reducing the number of crimes that they subsequently committed, to the great misery of the general public, was not his failure alone but was general throughout the system. Even worse, he discovered that the bureaucrats who ran the system, and their political masters, did not care about this failure, at least from the point of view of its impact on public safety; careerist to the core, they were only concerned that the public should not become aware of the catastrophe. To this end, they indulged in obfuscation, statistical legerdemain, and outright lies in order to prevent the calamity that public knowledge of the truth would represent for them and their careers.

The collective intellectual dishonesty of those who worked in the system so outraged Fraser—and the Kafkaesque world in which he found himself, where nothing was called by its real name and language tended more to conceal meaning than to convey it, so exasperated him—that, though not a man apt to obtrude upon the public, he determined to write a book. It took him two and a half years to do so, based on 20 years of research, and it is clear from the very first page that he wrote it from a burning need to expose and exorcise the lies and evasions with which he lived for so long, lies and evasions that helped in a few decades transform a law-abiding country with a reputation for civility into the country with the highest crime rate in the Western world, with an ever-present undercurrent of violence in daily life. Like Luther, Fraser could not but speak out. And, as events unfolded, his book has had a publishing history that is additionally revealing of the state of Britain today.

By example after example (repetition being necessary to establish that he has not just alighted on an isolated case of absurdity that might be found in any large-scale enterprise), Fraser demonstrates the unscrupulous lengths to which both bureaucrats and governments have gone to disguise from the public the effect of their policies and decisions, carried out with an almost sadistic indifference to the welfare of common people.

He shows that liberal intellectuals and their bureaucratic allies have left no stone unturned to ensure that the law-abiding should be left as defenseless as possible against the predations of criminals, from the emasculation of the police to the devising of punishments that do not punish and the propagation of sophistry by experts to mislead and confuse the public about what is happening in society, confusion rendering the public helpless in the face of the experimentation perpetrated upon it.

The police, Fraser shows, are like a nearly defeated occupying colonial force that, while mayhem reigns everywhere else, has retreated to safe enclaves, there to shuffle paper and produce bogus information to propitiate their political masters. Their first line of defense is to refuse to record half the crime that comes to their attention, which itself is less than half the crime committed. Then they refuse to investigate recorded crime, or to arrest the culprits even when it is easy to do so and the evidence against them is overwhelming, because the prosecuting authorities will either decline to prosecute, or else the resultant sentence will be so trivial as to make the whole procedure (at least 19 forms to fill in after a single arrest) pointless.

In any case, the authorities want the police to use a sanction known as the caution—a mere verbal warning. Indeed, as Fraser points out, the Home Office even reprimanded the West Midlands Police Force for bringing too many apprehended offenders to court, instead of merely giving them a caution. In the official version, only minor crimes are dealt with in this fashion: but as Fraser points out, in the year 2000 alone, 600 cases of robbery, 4,300 cases of car theft, 6,600 offenses of burglary, 13,400 offenses against public order, 35,400 cases of violence against the person, and 67,600 cases of other kinds of theft were dealt with in this fashion—in effect, letting these 127,900 offenders off scot-free. When one considers that the police clear-up rate of all crimes in Britain is scarcely more than one in 20 (and even that figure is based upon official deception), the liberal intellectual claim, repeated ad nauseam in the press and on the air, that the British criminal-justice system is primitively retributive is absurd.

At every point in the system, Fraser shows, deception reigns. When a judge sentences a criminal to three years’ imprisonment, he knows perfectly well (as does the press that reports it) that in the vast majority of cases the criminal in question will serve 18 months at the very most, because he is entitled automatically, as of right, to a suspension of half his sentence. Moreover, under a scheme of early release, increasingly used, prisoners serve considerably less than half their sentence. They may be tagged electronically under a system of home curfew, intended to give the public an assurance that they are being monitored: but the electronic tag stays on for less than 12 hours daily, giving criminals plenty of opportunity to follow their careers. Even when the criminals remove their tags (and it is known that thousands are removed or vandalized every year) or fail to abide by other conditions of their early release, those who are supposedly monitoring them do nothing whatever, for fear of spoiling the statistics of the system’s success. When the Home Office tried the tagging system with young criminals, 73 percent of them were reconvicted within three months. The authorities nevertheless decided to extend the scheme. The failure of the British state to take its responsibilities seriously could not be more clearly expressed.

More here




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)

INCOMPETENT FORENSIC SCIENCE IN BRITAIN

Hundreds of pieces of evidence from unsolved murder cases may have to be re-tested after forensic scientists failed to spot clues in the Damilola Taylor case. The Association of Chief Police Officers has told chief constables in England and Wales to check any case where there should have been a "forensic harvest" but the Forensic Science Service (FSS) reported that it found no clues.

It comes after an investigation into the Damilola case found that the FSS missed the clues that finally led last month to manslaughter convictions for Danny and Ricky Preddie. Although the murder of the ten-year-old boy in November 2000 should have had the highest priority, scientists missed two bloodstains from Damilola on a trainer and a cuff. They also missed a number of fibres.

The FSS failures led to urgent talks in Whitehall. Last week John Reid, the Home Secretary, announced that Alan Rawley QC, an experienced counsel, and Professor Brian Caddy, a scientific witness whose evidence helped to free the Birmingham Six, will lead an inquiry into the service. The association has told forces to re-examine files on cases where investigators expected material such as blood, body fluids and fibres to be recovered from crime scenes but scientists reported that they had found nothing to identify possible suspects. Senior Scotland Yard officers have also discussed creating a forensic flying squad that would go to the scene of any major crime and check possible exhibits before they are moved.

The scientific team involved in the Damilola case six years ago should have been the best in Britain. No other unit handles the range of cases dealt with at the laboratory in Lambeth, South London. But when, in 2002, the Forensic Alliance was called in to carry out a review of the evidence after the collapse of the first murder trial, it found a visible bloodstain belonging to Damilola on the heel of a trainer used by Danny Preddie.

Within the stain was a fibre which matched the material in Damilola's trousers. A fibre on a sweatshirt used by the teenager was found on Damilola's jacket, and two fibres that could match the material in Damilola's trousers were found on a jumper belonging to the teenager. When the scientists began work on exhibits linked to his brother Ricky, they found a bloodstain from Damilola on the cuff of a sweatshirt. The Home Office inquiry has been given a wide remit. It will review the Damilola case and the FSS's examination procedures as well as the recruitment, training and management of scientists

Report here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)

IN OHIO YOU ARE A DECLARED SEX OFFENDER IF SOMEBODY JUST THINKS YOU ARE

You don't have to be convicted of anything and you don't get a chance to defend yourself in court

An Ohio legislative panel yesterday rubber-stamped an unprecedented process that would allow sex offenders to be publicly identified and tracked even if they've never been charged with a crime. No one in attendance voiced opposition to rules submitted by Attorney General Jim Petro's office to the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review, consisting of members of the Ohio House and Senate.

The committee's decision not to interfere with the rules puts Ohio in a position to become the first state to test a "civil registry." The concept was offered by Roman Catholic bishops as an alternative to opening a one-time window for the filing of civil lawsuits alleging child sexual abuse that occurred as long as 35 years ago.

A recently enacted law allows county prosecutors, the state attorney general, or, as a last resort, alleged victims to ask judges to civilly declare someone to be a sex offender even when there has been no criminal verdict or successful lawsuit. The rules spell out how the untried process would work. It would largely treat a person placed on the civil registry the same way a convicted sex offender is treated under Ohio's so-called Megan's Law. The person's name, address, and photograph would be placed on a new Internet database and the person would be subjected to the same registration and community notification requirements and restrictions on where he could live.

A civilly declared offender, however, could petition the court to have the person's name removed from the new list after six years if there have been no new problems and the judge believes the person is unlikely to abuse again.

The attorney general's office said it continues to hold discussions with a group representing day care operators about one of the rules pertaining to what such facilities would do with information they might receive pertaining to someone on the registry if that person is living nearby.

Report here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)

FORENSIC SCIENCE BUNGLING IN AUSTRALIA

Mardi McLean, the willowy young model with a million-dollar smile, was the Liberal Party's overnight sensation, a glamorous but flawed candidate for a Labor-held seat. As a heroin addict who swore she had stopped injecting and wanted to help others, her credibility was talked up by the party's Queensland leaders in a campaign that complemented Prime Minister John Howard's declaration in 2001 of a war on drugs.

But there were no political leaders at the Brisbane Magistrates Court yesterday afternoon. McLean, now 27, stayed away. As magistrate Michael Halliday, who five years ago ruled McLean should be tried on charges of murdering her uncle with an overdose of heroin, turned the page on the unresolved death of Mitch Collins, his parents stifled sobs....

McLean has always asserted she had nothing to do with the death of Collins, who was renowned for his loathing of heroin and the damage it caused. She has described him as a mentor during her troubled life, "like he really cared". She could not be contacted yesterday, but her grandmother, Lorna McLean, says: "Everything has fallen into place for her. She is having a baby. She is extremely settled and happy and she deserves it. Anybody who knows her would not think for a moment that she had done anything like murder."

Conflicting forensic evidence about whether the heroin that killed Collins was ingested orally or intravenously led to the Director of Public Prosecutions withdrawing the murder charges two years ago. McLean is unlikely to face a jury. "If I had any doubts about what happened I would probably accept it. I have no doubts. We have been let down by the courts, the police, Mardi and the forensic centre," says Mitch's stepdaughter Bobbi Spence....

Were it not for McLean's story that Mitch was a heroin user who went too far and fatally overdosed nine days before Christmas 2000, his parents would have let it go. Mitch's closest friends and relatives knew him as avowedly anti-heroin to the point of being openly hostile towards users. They remain angry that his membership of the Odins Warriors motorcycle club may have influenced police and the investigations into his death. "He had seen how heroin ruined other people's lives. He saw that the people who did use heroin stole and cheated and lied and were basically killing themselves while harming everyone else," says Spence...

For years before his death, Mitch was a volunteer in a medical research project. Tests on his blood and tissue samples never showed any trace of heroin, morphine or their metabolites. Graham Cooksley, a professor who had close contact with Mitch during the project, says he does not believe Mitch was addicted to anything.

He was no angel, his parents agree, but there were no needle marks on Mitch's body apart from where paramedics had attempted to revive him in the bedroom of his Brisbane townhouse. The heroin that killed him, bought hours earlier from a local dealer by McLean, is believed to have been ingested orally, and Mitch's parents suspect he drank it unwittingly from a bottle that had been spiked.

In pursuing justice, they became suspicious about the quality of the forensic evidence regarding the fatal dose of heroin, which McLean claimed Mitch had injected. Mitch's father, Patrick Collins, is a former psychologist, not a forensic scientist, but his growing dedication to obscure textbooks and journals about the human body's absorption of heroin made him worried.

When he pointed out fundamental mistakes by the state Government-run forensic science facility, the John Tonge Centre, he was at first fobbed off. Senior scientists who conducted a review were eventually forced to admit their errors and misleading testimony. "There was absolute and total forensic incompetence," Patrick Collins says. "I learned very early in the piece that if you do not have the evidence, you should shut your mouth. It's their job. They should do it properly."

Mitch had let McLean stay in the spare room of his Brisbane apartment for a couple of weeks after she assured him she was no longer using heroin. After his death, $20,000 which he had withdrawn from his business to repay his parents was missing.

Before yesterday's judicial hearing in Brisbane, Patrick Collins put thick folders of documents on the dining room table at his home and broke down while playing a CD. It was a recording of McLean's hesitant contact with the ambulance service at 12.38pm on the day Mitch died. She had hung up seconds after being connected. When the operator traced the number and called back, McLean sounded unperturbed: "Yeah, I'm sorry, it's all right. It's just a friend of mine, but he's OK." "He was dead for nearly two hours by then," Collins says....

Desley and Patrick Collins accept they have come to the end of the road with the formal closure yesterday of the original inquest, but they hope more people will question forensic science when it seems faulty. "I can understand people saying we have been obsessed," says Patrick Collins. "We had wrong evidence coming out and we tried to do something about it. We checked everything and we kept finding mistakes. Nobody else has tried to find out exactly what happened. "Do I want to see McLean tried in front of a jury of her peers? Mitch deserves that, but there is a threat for the rest of us, especially Desley and me. We are old, and getting older, and we have already lost too many precious moments."

Before concluding the inquest yesterday, Halliday said the concerns of Mitch's family about the quality of the forensic evidence "can be fully appreciated". After admitting their comprehensive submission as a formal exhibit he said there were still serious questions over the expertise of toxicologists at the John Tonge Centre.

More here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)

Australian police start out crooked

Police recruits at NSW's Goulburn training academy who failed a crucial course on police powers had their papers re-marked so they could pass the subject. The re-marking was part of a push to get more recruits qualified in order to meet the state Government's pre-election promises about increased police numbers, one former staff member at the college said yesterday. "It would appear they have lowered the bar, the pass rate, to get the numbers through," the former lecturer said.

The Weekend Australian has learned that at least 50 students in the group due to graduate just before next March's state election originally failed the fundamental criminal justice subject. The academy's educational services head, Commander Tony Aldred, confirmed the re-marking had taken place. "In accordance with Charles Sturt University policy, examination results at high distinction and fail levels are re-marked as a matter for quality control purposes," he said. "The quality control check identified that some students had actually passed the course rather than failing."

But The Weekend Australian understands that trainee police have been told by their lecturers they had "stuffed up" the marking of assignments a few weeks ago because they had used the wrong formula. "It was just bizarre. I got a good mark, passed easily, then got it re-marked a few days later with an almost 20 per cent reduction," one student said.

An employee of Charles Sturt University, which runs the academy, said the re-marking had confused many students. Students from a previous group have objected to the changed marks, given that a number failed the police powers course and are now repeating it.

The NSW Labor Government has made a pre-election promise to train an additional 750 new recruits. Premier Morris Iemma attended a graduation ceremony at the Goulburn college yesterday when 316 probationary constables were welcomed into the force. Most will begin work on Monday, with a large number posted to Sydney's crime hotspots. Mr Iemma said the new probationary constables would bring numbers to more than 15,000, the highest in NSW history. "It is your sense of justice and fair play that brings you into the police force," he said.

Former police corruption commissioner James Wood warned a NSW parliamentary committee last week about the dangers of mass-recruiting drives. Mr Aldred said students who failed the subject would have to re-attempt the three-month-long course, adding extra cost to their Higher Education Contribution fees. The Weekend Australian also understands that an 11pm curfew, introduced last month after a series of drunken episodes in Goulburn, has caused concern among students who see themselves as no different from any other university students who pay for their own education. A former college administrator, Inspector Matt Casey, said the students now had stricter controls imposed on them than any military establishment. "They are all adults and soon they are going to be trusted with a gun out on the streets and yet we are telling them what time to go to bed," he said. The NSW Police Association has called for legal advice on whether the curfew is lawful.

Report here




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)

Calif. bad check victim ends up in jail

A San Francisco man who unknowingly tried to cash a fake check written to him was arrested, jailed and spent $14,000 clearing his name.

Matthew Shinnick, 38, sold two mountain bikes on the Craigslist online market site and received a Bank of America check for $2,000. He asked a teller if there were sufficient funds to cover it and when she said yes, he signed it. The teller then called police and reported the check as a fake, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Wednesday. Police arrived and handcuffed Shinnick, and he was kept in a small cell for almost 12 hours before his father raised $4,500 bond.

Bank of America said it regretted the "unfortunate series of events," but said Shinnick has no grounds to sue for his legal costs because of a 2004 state Supreme Court decision that shields institutions and people from liability when reporting suspected crimes to the police.

Shinnick says after 18 years in retail, the bank could have done better. "The way to handle something like this is to take the person into a back room and work things out before you call the police," he said.

Report here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)

AUSTRALIAN BUREAUCRACY KEEPS MAN IN JAIL

And he should not have spent time in jail anyway. See previous report here of August 3rd.



A farmer who shot dead a standover man after a two-day campaign to illegally evict him from his rented home has walked free. Timothy John Nam walked out of prison this afternoon flanked by his parents, one month after a judge ordered he be freed as soon as possible. The 29-year-old farmer shot dead a notorious standover man during a frightening two-day campaign to illegally evict him.

Nam, from Arthurville, in central-western NSW, walked out of Bathurst Correctional Centre at 2.20pm after the NSW State Parole Authority granted him parole this morning. It is believed the family was headed for their home near Wellington in the state's west.

Nam had pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Michael "No Thumbs" Pestano, after he and his gang had terrorised Nam, his elderly and sick parents, his girlfriend and their 15-month-old baby boy in July 2004. He also pleaded guilty to two counts of maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm on two members of Pestano's gang who helped try to evict Mr Nam from his leased property. In the Supreme Court at Orange on August 2, Nam was sentenced to four-and-a-half years' jail, with a two-year non-parole period, backdated two years to the time of his arrest. The sentence made him eligible for immediate parole.

But Bathurst Prison failed to schedule Nam for a parole board hearing, making it unlikely that he could be freed until the next hearing of the board on September 25. The State Parole Authority today defended itself against criticism that it had taken too long to process Nam's release. The authority said in a statement that the appropriate paperwork had only been received yesterday and that in any case, Nam had not been eligible for immediate release because of the length of his sentence. "Only offenders with sentences of less than three years can be released automatically on the expiry of their sentence," the authority said. "In making a parole order, the State Parole Authority must receive and consider specific reports. "If parole is granted without these reports, the Parole Authority is in breach of its statutory obligations."

The authority said the process of preparing and receiving reports normally took up to six weeks and included the inmate's police record, the judge's sentencing remarks, comments from victims of the crime and the suitability of the the inmate's post-release arrangements. "In Mr Nam's case the process was fast-tracked because of the special circumstances of the case," the authority's statement said.

Pestano and his gang, which included his son Jason and Victor Kimble, a former associate of the late Sydney standover man Tim Bristow, had been trying to remove Nam and his family from the property they had leased for eight years. Nam's parole is due to expire on February 2, 2009.

Report here


(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)

ONE YEAR FOR A LIFE IN SCOTLAND

The killer will serve approximately a third of his three year sentence

A knife-wilding chef who killed a teenager outside a takeaway restaurant was jailed for three years yesterday. Boshor Uddin, 41, claimed he caught Jason Mayze, 16 stealing chicken from a container outside the Balti Spice in St Helens. Uddin pleaded guilty to manslaughter. The victim's mother said: "Three years for taking a life is a disgrace."

Report here





FOUL TREATMENT OF CALIFORNIA BORDER PATROLMEN

I am writing to ask for your help and support for two brave U.S. Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean of El Paso, TX who were abandoned by their command and hung out to dry in the greatest miscarriage of justice I’ve ever seen. You can learn the specifics of this case that epitomizes injustice at our website, FriendsOfTheBorderPatrol.com, and review media coverage featuring an exclusive article by Sara Carter who was granted this exclusive interview by Border Patrol Agent Ignacio Ramos.

I have personally investigated the entire case, after being contacted by a family member of Agent Ramos in March 2005 one month after an incident that led to criminal charges and convictions of two Border Patrol agents in El Paso, Texas by an overzealous prosecutor. I contend as do a number of Texas Border Sheriffs that they are innocent of any and all criminal conduct, as this was an administrative matter that should have solely ended in a 5-day suspension to all agents that day for not reporting the shooting incident and assault on a Border Patrol agent to the FBI per DHS guidelines. The only agents to suffer have been Ramos and Compean. In fact, when you read my recent testimony on our website as I presented it to the House Judiciary Committee led by Congressman Sensenbrenner, the only thing that was criminal that took place was the conduct of the government.

After investigating the incident, and discussing it with my sources and contacts I was as angry with our government as I have ever been, as these two brave agents put their lives on the line to stop a drug smuggler from succeeding in driving his load of 743 pounds of narcotics into the U.S. For this action, these men were charged with a crime they did not commit and now face a minimum of 20 years in federal prison.

Evidence was prevented from being introduced by the defense after overzealous prosecutor Assistant U.S. Attorney Debra Kanof won a questionable ruling from Federal Judge Kathleen Cardone. Her ruling meant that evidence, which included assaults against agents, shooting incidents, and Mexican Military incursions, would be taken on a case-by-case basis. Ultimately, none of these incidents were allowed as evidence to be used by the defense.

The U.S. Border Patrol's El Paso Sector abandoned these agents and hung them out to dry, which at the time was led by Chief Patrol Agent Luis Barker, who has since served as Deputy National Chief of the Border Patrol. In all honesty, the agency is making an example of these two agents because verbal orders to stand down have been ignored. With this case the message has sent shock waves through the Border Patrol, with agents understanding clearly that they could be next. What message you ask, “If you try to secure the border, and tangle with drug smugglers, you could go to prison.” In fact, if you've read the interview I did with the New American Magazine this past May 2, 2006 you are very familiar with Mr. Barker. I discussed him prominently in this article, which you can also read at our website.

To quote many Texas Border Sheriffs I interviewed including El Paso County Sheriff Leo Samaniego, and Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West, "These men should have been decorated for stopping a drug smuggler... these men are not criminals and should not be going to jail."

Friends, this is a dark hour for our nation, because this case is the most disgusting charade and miscarriage of justice imaginable. It's beyond words, and description.

This dangerous precedent benefits narcotic and human smugglers. Mr. Davila, the smuggler you will read about was never charged, or booked though he admitted trafficking the narcotics into Fabens, TX that fateful day. Also, when he was later busted with over 1,000 pounds of narcotics, an indictment was sealed, and later expunged by the government. In fact, questionable details have finally been shed as to how the DHS Office of Inspector General was even contacted, which was by a fellow Border Patrol Agent in Willcox, AZ who is tied to Davila, and not only provided comfort to a known drug smuggler, but even told him what to say in testimony, and arranged for the drug smuggler to get an attorney to sue the Border Patrol.

I was able to arrange an interview on behalf of the family with Sara Carter of the Daily Bulletin who recently met with Agent Ramos, his wife, and father in-law. I am truly grateful that Ms. Carter took time out from an extremely busy schedule on my recommendation to meet with them and hear their story, which is now being published by the Daily Bulletin.

This case is proof beyond all doubt that the Department of Justice and DHS will ignore facts to assist with national administration open border policies and directives, which weaken our national security. Before most people just figured that the open border policies was being used to help facilitate the cheap labor, but never thought that they’d go so far as to help smugglers bring narcotics, humans, and I am certain terrorists into our nation. This prosecution has destroyed the lives of these brave agents, who according to their fellow agents are the guys you want in the foxhole next to you during wartime. The impact on their families has left them completely devastated, while the impact on the agency will be felt for years as agents are terrified of becoming the next Ramos & Compean, the first Border Patrol agents to be convicted and sent to prison for doing their job.

We must band together for these brave agents, my friends Nacho Ramos and Jose Compean, because outside of their families and faith, we're all they have left. They are running out of time, and now is the time to drop everything else and fight for them as they are fighting for their lives. If they lose, their wives lose their husbands, and their children lose their fathers. The agents lose their names, and reputations. We as a nation lose if they lose, and why? What agent in their right mind would ever think to stop a smuggler again knowing they have more rights and are more credible though caught in the act of a crime? Our government betrayed my friends, Agents Ramos and Compean and we must defend them, as they have defended our nation and fought to keep those smugglers and their drugs off our streets.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me by writing to andy@friendsoftheborderpatrol.com and I will forward any comments of support to the agents and their families, who I am in regular contact with. To learn how you can help, or to make a donation to assist their legal defense fund, or to help our expenses as we assist on this case, (you will receive a 100% tax write-off due to our tax-exempt status) go to our website, FriendsOfTheBorderPatrol.com.

We must do all we can to correct their miscarriage of justice so that this never happens to any agent ever again. I warn you, you will be as angry as you have ever been after reading the article by Sara Carter.

Report here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)

CRAZY CANADIAN LAW

An 89-year-old man has been left both heartbroken and betrayed after his North York bungalow was stolen from him in the rising wave of title fraud. Paul Reviczky, who fled Hungary in 1957 to escape Communist persecution, is one of the latest homeowners to discover that Ontario law favours banks, mortgage companies and purchasers over victims of fraud. "I was shocked to learn that this could be the law in Canada," Reviczky says. "I fled Hungary to escape lawlessness like this and now my sense of security in Canada is gone."

Gerry Phillips, Ontario's minister of government services, vowed yesterday to change the land-registry system to protect homeowners like Reviczky from title fraud. Reviczky purchased the property at 220 Sheppard Ave. W. in 1980 for $67,500 to generate a rental income that would help pay for the education of relatives back in Hungary. The retired tobacco farmer, who came to Canada 49 years ago with his wife Ilona and his then 3-year-old daughter Marietta, says he felt so strongly about his duty to help out the family he left behind that he specified in his will that the property could not be sold after his death because the income was to be used for their support. Since his wife's death in February 2005, he has lived alone in his home a few kilometres from the rental property.

Reviczky could not believe his ears on June 26 when his neighbour, a real estate agent, told him she had noticed on the computer that he had sold his rental property in May. "So I went back to my office, got the record from the computer and showed it to him," Vivian Ho told the Toronto Star. "His face turned red and I was worried that he was going to have a heart attack."

Police believe Reviczky's most recent "tenants" forged his name on a power of attorney that purported to give a grandson named "Aaron Paul Reviczky" authority to sell the home on his behalf. "I don't have a grandson named Aaron," Reviczky says. "I don't have any grandsons." On May 15, "Aaron Paul Reviczky" sold the property on his behalf for $450,000 to a purchaser named Pegman Meleknia, who took out a mortgage of $337,500. "I did not get the proceeds," Reviczky says.

Reviczky's lawyer, Tonu Toome, says it was "very painful" to have to break the news to Reviczky that he may lose his house forever - even though he was an innocent victim of fraud - because Ontario law recognizes the transaction as valid where the purchaser is unaware of the scam. "I had to tell him that although he would ultimately receive financial compensation for the loss of his home, this would entail legal fees and an application to Ontario's Land Titles Assurance Fund, which could take several years," Toome says. Says Reviczky: "I want my home ... not just some money."

Phillips, who bears responsibility for the province's land titles registration system, says he met last week with 50 representatives of all the communities affected by title fraud - including police, real property and financial institutions - to get advice on how to stem this increasingly prevalent crime. "This is a high priority for our government and I want people to know that we are treating it seriously," Phillips says.

Earlier this summer, several other identity-theft victims in Toronto were also shocked to discover they weren't protected by the law. Susan Lawrence is a North York widow who faces the loss of the 100-year-old Victorian home she had lived in for 30 years - after criminals used publicly available information to sell her house without her knowledge and put a $300,000 mortgage on it.

Elizabeth Shepherd, an actress, lost her furnished Leslieville home to identity thieves, who rented the home and sold it to an accomplice after creating a false Elizabeth Shepherd. The accomplice took out a $250,000 mortgage, defaulted and disappeared. Both women expect to spend years - and money they would rather not spend on lawyers - trying to sort out the mess.

Reviczky had put a "for rent" sign on his property on March 1 after the previous tenants who had lived there for 12 years had gone back to British Columbia. Five days later, he agreed to rent the home to a couple who identified themselves as "Kristina and Adam Skurik." They signed rental papers and handed him $2,500 in $100 bills for first and last month's rent. But the house remained empty. In mid-April, Reviczky says, he was told by Kristina Skurik that the couple had rented the house to someone who was coming from Russia. The last time he ever saw either of the Skuriks was May 13, when Kristina gave him $1,250 in cash and told him the people would arrive "in a short time." "Kristina was a very pretty, quiet girl, about 5 feet, 6 inches, and she appeared very likeable and trustworthy," Reviczky says. A telephone check of listings throughout North America failed to turn up any Kristina or Adam Skurik.

Reviczky is now aware that he allegedly sold his house through the power of attorney that had been notarized by a North York lawyer named Sheldon Caplan, who said in an interview he is unable to discuss the case. Reviczky says he was surprised to see at the bottom of the power of attorney - which Caplan notarized above what appears to be his scribbled initials - a notation that the document was "acknowledged before me this 18th day of April 2006 by Reviczky Paul, who is personally known to me of who has produced Drivers Licence." "I have never retained solicitor Sheldon Caplan," Reviczky said in a statement he prepared for his lawyer. "I do not know him and did not communicate with him."

Toronto lawyer Satwant Singh Khosla, who represented the purchasers - parents who bought the property as an investment for their son - says his clients are "innocent buyers" who have suffered emotionally and financially because of the fraudulent transaction "through absolutely no fault of their own." "It was a straightforward transaction," Khosla said. "We never realized that the power of attorney under which the property was transferred was fraudulent." Khosla says his clients are on the hook for mortgage payments even though they have been unable to access the property because its legal status is in a state of flux.

Reviczky's daughter, Marietta Reviczky-Dolan, who lives in Montana, says people like her father should have the title returned to them and not left with the purchaser. "They (the owners) have invested more than money in it," she says. "It is their past and their lives have been centred around it. It means more to them." Meanwhile, the tiny house remains unoccupied and shows signs of disrepair, its yard often cluttered with garbage. It sits in a state of legal limbo while lawyers attempt to sort out the mess and the police hunt for the criminals and the $450,000 stolen along with Reviczky's heart. Reviczky cannot even enter the home because that could technically be trespassing and police have told him that they will need consent from the new owners to enter the premises.

Toronto lawyer Sidney Troister, an expert on real estate and mortgage fraud, says the Reviczky case is perplexing because "while we can feel sorry for the first owner, we can feel equally sorry for the buyer, who like every other buyer could never be certain that their vendor is the real owner." Troister says Ontario's land titles system is a good system, "except in the event of fraud where it breaks down, and leaves innocent owners and innocent buyers and lenders helpless and without speedy and fair relief." "Until the province can prevent this type of fraud from happening, it must formulate a more responsive and all-inclusive compensation scheme for title fraud," Troister says. "Innocent people, whether it is the innocent owner or the innocent buyer or lender, get hurt because the province does not protect innocent people registering documents in the system."

Ralph Roberts, a Michigan-based expert on mortgage fraud, says inroads will not be made into burgeoning real property and mortgage fraud until more homeowners and legislators become aware it exists. "There is not enough of a public awareness," he says. "People just keep getting dragged into it one after another." Last month, state legislators in Michigan declared war against mortgage and title fraud after FBI disclosures that mortgage fraud losses in the state jumped from almost $9 million in 2003 to $26 million in 2005. Several bills introduced in July contain an arsenal of measures, such as designating millions of dollars for investigation of unlicensed real estate brokers and making mortgage fraud a serious crime punishable by 10 years in prison for a first offence.

Mortgage and title fraud have also taken on a higher profile in Canada recently. Organizations such as the Law Society of Upper Canada have been meeting with their counterparts in the real estate and financial industries, and police authorities, to try and solve the problem. Police forces in Greater Toronto are struggling to cope with a noticeable increase in complaints of title fraud. A report published in March 2005 by the law society says the fraud is often facilitated because the parties to the transaction may never know or actually meet each other in person. "Without due diligence throughout the process, it is easy for fraudsters to pass themselves off and to take advantage of the lack of oversight," the report says. "Mortgage fraud and other frauds relating to title are all on the rise," says Det. Steve Majoran of the Toronto force's fraud and forgery squad. "That's my overall impression."

Majoran advises people renting out their homes to check references and verify backgrounds "as best as you can," heeding gut feelings where an applicant puts you off, and to question offers of cash rent. "You really have to do due diligence these days," he says. Majoran, who cannot discuss individual cases, says title-fraud investigations can be challenging because they involve following a paper trail and tracking back through a scheme to try to determine who committed the crime, "often months after the fact." "It's a total shock to the homeowner because the home has been stolen from under them without their knowledge - and usually without their complicity whatsoever," Majoran says. "I found in a lot of title fraud cases that the person has worked all their life for a property and regards their home as their castle," he says. "To find it's been stolen right out from under them is totally devastating."

Gabriella Toth, who is Reviczky's niece, says she can't understand how anyone could steal an 89-year-old man's home. "These have to be heartless persons," says Toth, a vice-principal at a Toronto high school. "I think he was targeted because he is elderly."

Report here




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)

Meet Australia's judge Go-Lightly



A former teacher who had a relationship with a 14-year-old schoolgirl and then threatened her to stay silent has escaped jail after civil libertarian judge Ian Dearden [above] accepted the actions were at the "less serious end" of sexual offences. Attorney-General Linda Lavarch immediately set in train a possible appeal after Steven Peter Quick, 29, walked from Southport District Court, despite pleading guilty to indecently dealing with a child and taking an indecent image.

Judge Dearden said "blind Freddy" could have seen that the relationship, which included Quick filming the girl as he caressed and sucked her breasts, was "a complete no-go zone" and a jail term would normally be imposed. But Judge Dearden, a former Queensland Council of Civil Liberties president, accepted a defence submission that there were "exceptional circumstances" that warranted Quick being given a wholly suspended 18-month prison sentence and community correctional order. These included that the offences were at the "less serious end" of sexual offending, that Quick was "crippled psychologically" by his guilt and had been publicly shamed.

Quick was a maths and science teacher in central Queensland in 2004 when he formed a "close friendship" with the girl. In the September 2004 school holidays, Quick drove the girl to a location near Bundaberg, where he filmed the girl as he sucked and caressed her breasts. When the Crime and Misconduct Commission launched an investigation, Quick rang the girl and told her to lie for him or he would "come back to hurt her".

Calling for at least three months of actual jail time, Crown prosecutor Bob Falconer said Quick had "flagrantly ignored" the trust placed in him. Defence solicitor Bill Potts said while the relationship was "very inappropriate", the schoolgirl had initiated much of the contact and she and Quick had planned to run away to "a happier place".

But Judge Dearden said he accepted a psychologist's report that Quick was "crippled psychologically" with remorse, had no pedophilia tendencies, was unlikely to re-offend and did not pose a danger to the community. Judge Dearden cited a Court of Appeal decision that set a precedent for suspended sentences for indecent dealing offences in "exceptional circumstances". He told Quick the suspended sentence "should not be seen in any way as a lessening of the punishment". A spokesman for Mrs Lavarch said she had asked the Director of Public Prosecutions for a report on a possible appeal against the decision.

Report here



More on judge Dearden

Yesterday was not the first time Judge Ian Dearden has given a controversial soft sentence. In February this year, Brisbane man Brett Ashley Connor appeared before Judge Dearden charged with with possessing 90 child porn images. The judge sentenced Connor to nine months' jail wholly suspended because of mitigating factors including Connor's co-operation with authorities and the lack of apparent distribution of the images.

In March this year, brothers Shammi and Shamal Chand escaped jail in Dearden's court after pleading guilty to savagely bashing an invalid pensioner with a baseball bat. Handing both brothers wholly suspended jail sentences, Judge Dearden said he took into account their own misery following the death of their father, the difficulties Shammi Chand faced supporting his extended family and Shamal Chand's battle with drugs and mental illness.

In August last year, Judge Dearden also said he would "take a punt" on serial fraudster Julia Antonia Villiers who faced court charged with defrauding a Brisbane beauty clinic. Despite previously serving time for stealing as a servant and breaching a subpoenaed sentence, Judge Dearden handed Villiers a 12-month intensive correctional order.

Judge Dearden's appointment to the bench in February last year was criticised by Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg, who questioned how the former Queensland Council of Civil Liberties president could remain impartial.

Report here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)

POLICE WHO DON'T GIVE A DAMN

Keith Spence wants his Cadillac back. Spence claims he was falsely accused of stealing his own car after he was stopped by police, who sold the vehicle at auction before he could appear in court to clear his name. "I tried to tell them it was my car, but they wouldn't listen," the Baltimore man said.

Police spokesman Matt Jablow said the department is investigating the incident. "We're looking into the circumstances surrounding why the car was sold," Jablow said.

Spence, 28, said police pulled him over in February because the 1993 red Cadillac Eldorado coupe had a cracked rear window. Spence said he and his two passengers were then dragged from the car and arrested by four officers who said the car was stolen. "I was listening to the radio from the back seat of the police car. It said a gray Cadillac sedan was stolen; mine is a red coupe. I guess the officer must have been color blind," Spence told The Baltimore Examiner.

In June, Spence represented himself in court, providing the title and the testimony of the car's previous owner. By then it was too late, however; the car had been sold at auction two months earlier. "I owned the car - I knew it wasn't stolen," he said.

Spence's attorney, Roland Brown, said he is preparing to sue the city. "Not only did the police violate my client's constitutional rights by selling his car before the trial, but the case demonstrates that young black males in this city are blindly targeted by the Baltimore City police," Brown said. The case also raises questions about why a vehicle thought to be stolen would be sold instead of returned to its owner.

Spence said all he wants is the Cadillac he bought with a tax refund. "I loved that car."

Report here




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)

Shameful Mickleberg case in Australia: Justice still being sought

The case of the forged fingerprint

Two brothers jailed over the infamous 1982 Perth Mint swindle are suing a former government minister over their wrongful convictions. Ray, Peter and the late Brian Mickelberg were convicted in 1983 of defrauding the Perth Mint of $653,000 in gold bullion in exchange for worthless cheques.

Ray, who served eight years of a 20-year jail sentence, and Peter, who spent six years behind bars for the scam, fought for years before a legal appeal was successful and their convictions were overturned in 2004. The success of their eighth appeal was largely due to a confession by corrupt detective Tony Lewandowski, who admitted that detectives, including lead detective Don Hancock, had fabricated evidence.

After their conviction was overturned, the Mickelbergs launched a civil suit against the West Australian government and six police officers involved in their case for an estimated $11 million in compensation. News Ltd reported the Mickelberg brothers were now also suing former police assistant commissioner and Labor minister Bob Kucera over their wrongful conviction. The latest suit comes after the brothers reportedly bought for $5,000 a box of sensitive police documents that were found at Lewandowski's ex-girlfriend's home in Thailand.

Mr Kucera, who was not one of the detectives involved in the case, has been accused of being part of the police conspiracy to support the Mickelbergs' wrongful conviction. Two of the detectives closely involved in the case have since died, Mr Hancock was killed in a bikie car bomb attack in September 2001, and Lewandowski committed suicide in May 2004. Brian Mickelberg had his conviction overturned after nine months jail. He died in a light plane crash in 1986

Report here


Background on the case:

Raymond and Peter Mickleberg made four unsuccessful attempts to have their convictions overturned - three appeals to the Court of Criminal Appeal, at which Mr Lewandowski and Mr Hancock testified, and an appeal to the High Court.

Mr McGinty said Mr Lewandowski had admitted that he and Mr Hancock had fabricated confessions from the brothers, and had lied at the trial and the appeals. He had also admitted that Peter Mickelberg was stripped naked and beaten by interviewing officers during the investigation.

Mr Lewandowski had said he had not come forward earlier because he had not wanted to cross Mr Hancock, who died in a car bombing in what police believe was a payback killing by Gypsy Joker bikie gang members after the murder of a gang member in 2000. Mr McGinty said Mr Lewandowski's belated admission - if it were truthful - would strike at the heart of public confidence in the justice system. "This is one of the most high-profile police investigations we have seen in Western Australia, and if it was found that convictions were obtained by police fabricating evidence, the ramifications are enormous." Mr McGinty has referred Mr Lewandowski's affidavit to the royal commission into alleged police corruption, which is due to recommence hearings on July 1.

The robbery on June 22, 1982, was the most audacious ever staged in Perth - an ingenious swindle which saw 49 gold bars spirited out of the impregnable Mint to a mystery hiding place. Although the evidence against the Mickelbergs was compelling - in particular Ray Mickelberg's fingerprint on one of three fake cheques used to pay for the gold - the brothers insisted from the start that the police had framed them. They said the detectives, led by Don Hancock, had lied at their trial in the District Court, had fabricated confessions by all three, and had planted the damning fingerprint.

It would have been easy for the police to get hold of a mould of Ray's finger, they said. One of his hobbies was casting hands, in brass, plastic, rubber and perspex. There were about 20 of the hands in his Marmion Beach home when the police first arrived, and several were taken away for inspection.

In 1989, 55 kilograms of gold pellets, said to have been from the swindle, were found outside a Perth television station, accompanied by a note protesting the Mickelberg brothers' innocence and claiming that a prominent Perth businessman was behind the swindle.

Report here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)

NO JAIL FOR THIEVES IN BRITAIN?

Sounds like British shops are becoming a free cafeteria

Serial shoplifters should never be sent to prison, the Government's advisers on sentencing said. They want judges and magistrates barred from locking up the petty thieves - no matter how many offences they have committed in the past. If their recommendations are adopted, only those who commit violent attacks on staff, work in organised gangs or use children to steal from shops would go to jail. At the moment, the maximum sentence for shoplifting is seven years. The attempt to cut the severity of penalties is being made by the Sentencing Advisory Panel, a Home Office body which provides recommendations on how to deal with offenders. Their plan would mean 13,000 fewer criminals each year would be sent to prisons at a time when jail overcrowding has reached crisis point.

But the suggestion provoked a new row over shoplifters - the most common breed of criminal to appear before the courts - to add to the furore over punishments for murderers, burglars and sex offenders. Retail trade chiefs, who calculate shoplifting adds £1 a week to the average family's bills, said they were "disgusted" with the scheme and called it "a licence to steal".

The panel - which advises Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips and his Sentencing Guidelines Council - said removing the threat of jail from shoplifters was "a radical departure from present practice". It offered a second, less far-reaching, option which would see no shoplifter imprisoned for more than eight weeks. At present the average sentence for a shoplifter in magistrates courts is longer - and Crown Courts send down a typical shoplifter for more than seven months.

The proposals were sent out for consultation among pressure groups and quangos. The panel's final recommendations will, if past practice is followed, be rubberstamped by the Guidelines Council and passed on as instructions to the courts.

The no-jail rule has been proposed despite evidence provided to the panel that more than nine million shoplifting offences are carried out in England and Wales every year. Most are not reported to police. There were 280,461 recorded offences last year, the panel said, and of these fewer than a quarter ended with a sentence in court. Some 14,000 offences are punished with 'fixed penalty' fines similar to parking fines each year. Last year 13,135 shoplifters - around one in five of those found guilty - went to jail.

The panel interpreted Labour's 2003 Criminal Justice Act to mean that persistent offending does not bring tougher sentencing. It also said courts should take into advice from the Council-of Europe - parent body of the European Court of Human Rights - which says a sentence should be 'in proportion to the seriousness of the current offence'. It also suggested that as many as two-thirds of those arrested for shoplifting may be addicted to or using drugs, and many of these are stealing to pay for drug habits.

Since virtually all shoplifters who are jailed are sentenced on the basis of dismal criminal records, downgrading the importance of earlier convictions would have a dramatic impact. Richard Dodd of the British Retail Consortium said: "We are disgusted at the suggestion that shoplifters should not face the possibility of going to jail. It is like offering a licence to people to go into stores and take things without paying." Tory home affairs spokesman Edward Garnier said: "The law-abiding public expect that people stealing from shops should be properly punished, particularly if they are persistent offenders."

The Sentencing Advisory Panel is headed by academic lawyer Martin Wasik, a member of two pressure groups which campaign for fewer criminals to be jailed.

Report here




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)

VIRGINIA FINALLY GETS THE RIGHT MAN

For once. Very often it is too late after a wrongful conviction is reversed. But the guilty cop escapes -- as usual

A convicted serial rapist has been indicted in a 1982 rape and slaying that another man spent 18 years in prison for, at one point coming within days of his execution. A Culpeper County grand jury Monday indicted Kenneth Maurice Tinsley on charges of murder, rape and sodomy in the death of Rebecca Lynn Williams. The 19-year-old mother was found stabbed to death outside her Culpeper apartment. Tinsley, 61, is serving a life term in a Virginia prison for a 1984 rape in Albemarle County and has two rape convictions in Chicago.

Earl Washington Jr. spent more than a decade on death row after being convicted of Williams' slaying and came within nine days of execution in 1985. After DNA testing in 1993 cast doubt on Washington's guilt, then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder commuted his sentence to life in prison. More sophisticated DNA tests conducted in 2000 prompted then-Gov. Jim Gilmore to pardon Washington. In May, Washington was awarded $2.25 million by a federal court jury that ruled that the mildly retarded man falsely confessed after he was fed details of the crime by a state police investigator.

Tinsley's name emerged only during Washington's civil lawsuit. Washington's attorneys also learned that the Virginia state lab had botched earlier DNA tests. Tinsley's DNA was identified six years ago as matching semen found on the victim. Special Prosecutor Richard E. Moore declined to say why it took six years to obtain an indictment, except to say the latest conclusion was "based in large part on test results not available to any previous prosecutors in this case."

Tinsley is scheduled to appear in Culpeper Circuit Court on Sept. 6. Tinsley was to have a lawyer appointed at that time. Prosecutors have not announced whether they will seek the death penalty. Curtis Wilmore, the state police investigator cited in Washington's false confession, died in 1994. An attorney for his estate has asked the court to vacate the jury's verdict.

Report here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)

THREE YEARS FOR MURDER

It seems that nobody cares in Australia

The family of a popular young man who died in an unprovoked attack said yesterday they were "sickened" by a Court of Appeal decision not to increase the killer's sentence. "What you hear is 'how good is the bloody criminal' – don't it make it sick?" the victim's devastated father Roy Markham said outside the court. "The system is rotten, rotten to the core." Court of Appeal president Margaret McMurdo had dismissed an appeal by Attorney-General Linda Lavarch, who wanted to increase the jail sentence for university student Moses Rupert Katia, 19, to 10 years.

Earlier this year, Katia was jailed for eight years with a recommendation for parole after three years when he pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of the Gold Coast concreter, 23. The court was told Katia had drunk 15 rums and cola and was walking with a friend through the city shortly after 5am. They came across Markham, who had passed out, sitting on a bench outside the Embassy Hotel in Elizabeth St. They were seen taking his mobile phone and shoes. Katia returned a short time later, punched Markham and stole his watch before fleeing. Markham died in hospital the next day.

Choking back tears, the mother of Paul Bernard Markham, Pam Markham, said: "I'm tired of being told what a nice person Moses is – nobody in this whole time has said what a nice bloke my son was. He was a delight and I haven't got him any more."

Judge McMurdo said Markham's death in February last year was a stark warning to all in the community about binge drinking. In dismissing the appeal by Mrs Lavarch, who had sought a 10-year jail term for Katia, Justice McMurdo attacked the binge drinking culture which she said could make pleasant and amiable people behave aggressively and out of character. She said Markham was an affable man of good character but had been grossly intoxicated and an easy target for predators. "His intoxication was almost certainly why a relatively minor punch to the head caused devastating vertebral artery rupture and a resultant serious brain injury which led to his death," she said. Justice McMurdo said alcohol abuse was also how Katia – a talented university student of good character when sober – came to rob, steal, assault and kill Markham.

Report here







And NO jail-time for this:

How do you value a life? Susan Harris, whose much-longed-for IVF baby died in her womb after a negligent driver crashed head-on into her car, has thought of little else for 19 months. As the law stood at the time, in January last year, her seven-month pregnancy accounted for nothing. Mrs Harris suffered serious internal injuries and underwent an emergency caesarean but her child, Lars, was stillborn. Although a birth certificate was issued and a funeral held, the child was not considered a living being by the law, as he had not drawn breath.

In May last year, the State Government amended the law so that the killing of a foetus became an aggravating feature, which could attract a 25-year jail sentence. It was dubbed "Byron's law" after the tenacious lobbying of the Government by Renee Shields, who had lost her unborn child, Byron, in a road-rage incident. Two hung juries and one acquittal later, Mrs Harris is in shock that the man accused of injuring her and causing the death of her child walked free from Goulburn District Court on Monday.

Mrs Harris wanted the jury to hear of the grief she and her husband, Tim, and their older son, Jehru, went through, and their renewed grief when doctors told her that her injuries would not allow her to have any more children. The couple had enrolled to adopt overseas when they convinced another clinic to implant the last embryo. "We said, 'This is our last chance, our last hope, and maybe then we can move on' … And look, now I have a five-week-old baby who we've named Byron to remember Byron's law," she said.

As for the most recent trial: "I just felt like the system let us down again. I am really angry with the DPP because they didn't allow me to do a victim's impact statement. My story never got heard," Mrs Harris said. Nathan William Crossley, 26, was accused of causing the accident when he was attempting to overtake a cattle truck near Braidwood in southern NSW.

A spokeswoman for the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions said when Crossley was acquitted by the jury of the dangerous driving charge, and pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of negligent driving occasioning grievous bodily harm, neither Mrs Harris nor her husband were at court. She said Mrs Harris had given evidence at the trial, and the Crown Prosecutor made sure the court was aware of the severity of Mrs Harris's injuries, and the magnitude of her distress. She said evidence that the deceased foetus was the result of IVF was not legally admissible in the trial. Victims' impact statements could be presented only after there was a conviction. Crossley was sentenced to six months' jail, which was suspended, and was disqualified from driving for two years.

Report here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)

A NARROW ESCAPE THANKS TO DNA

A caretaker feared for his life during a violent home invasion that only ended when one of his attackers turned on the other and shot him, the Brisbane Supreme Court was told yesterday. Michael William Weir had to pause to compose himself several times yesterday as he recounted how he was beaten, drugged, and threatened with a gun and knife for hours by two men almost nine years ago.

Weir was giving evidence against Darren Michael Golledge, 39, who has pleaded not guilty to the September 11, 1997, attack and murdering his alleged co-offender Tony Robert Stevens at the Yatala site of the former Bullens' African Lion Safari Park.

The court heard Weir was the caretaker at the 300-acre site but had arranged for Stevens to take on the role for several months while he visited family in Sydney. Weir said the pair had argued several times before September 11 when he was lured to Stevens's home and king-hit from behind by Golledge – a man he had never met before and heard referred to as Fraser during the incident. The court heard Weir was bound with tape, blindfolded, threatened and assaulted for hours before being forced to sign a pledge to leave the property. He was also forced to make a video confessing to being a drug dealer and filming four marijuana plants he had grown hydroponically in his house. He said that after he was taken back to his bedroom, he heard whispering and then a loud gunshot. "I didn't know if it was a warning shot or if they had missed me," he said.

Weir said Golledge then told him he had shot Stevens and he would live if he agreed to dispose of the body. When Weir agreed, he had been told to wait for half an hour before getting off the bed. He had checked that Stevens was dead before going to the front gate of the property, where two council workers called emergency services.

Crown prosecutor Peter Feeney said Weir was initially charged with Stevens's murder after bloodstains were found on his clothes, but the investigation changed focus when improved DNA testing concluded the blood was his own.

The court was told Weir did not see Golledge during the attack, but could recognise his voice as that of his second attacker. Golledge was subsequently arrested and charged. The trial before Justice John Byrne and the seven-woman, five-man jury continues today.

Report here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)

NEBRASKA: GOOD PLACE TO BE AN HABITUAL CRIMINAL?

Kevin Holder's rap sheet is 43 pages long, dating back to 1980, and he just got another entry his 226th arrest. Police say they caught him Sunday morning after a brief chase and found burglar tools in his possession. "He's very well-known to Lincoln police officers," Police Chief Tom Casady said. Holder's convictions include criminal mischief, marijuana possession, violation of protection order, assault, resisting arrest, assault on an officer, possession of cocaine. Many were misdemeanors, but he also has been sentenced to at least three prison terms for felonies, including a four-year stretch starting in 1996. "Your average Nebraskan thinks after a prisoner has committed a certain number of crimes (he) will be put away for a long period of time. That doesn't happen," Casady said.

Lancaster County Attorney Gary Lacey said Holder was charged Tuesday with felony possession of burglar tools and prosecutors will urge a judge to treat Holder as a habitual criminal. With another felony conviction, that could result in a sentence of up to 60 years. Holder remained behind bars Tuesday afternoon. Holder's list of arrests doesn't come close to setting a record for Lincoln-Lancaster County. He's No. 40, police spokeswoman Katherine Finnell said Tuesday. A number of people have more than 500 arrests in the city of 226,000 people. The record was held by Edward Rooks, who died in 2004, with 652 arrests.

Report here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)

BUNGLING BRITISH CRIMINAL RECORDS OFFICE UNREPENTANT

A teacher has told how his career is under threat after he was wrongly branded a crook three times by the Criminal Records Bureau. Richard Adams, a 27-year-old computer specialist and father of three, was mistaken by CRB officials for an offender with a similar name and identical date of birth. The blunder may have cost Mr Adams the teaching post he was due to take up next month and he now fears for his job prospects.

But the CRB remains defiant. A spokesman said: "We make no apology for erring on the side of caution."

Mr Adams said: "My life has been made hell. I have been labelled a criminal three times. "Each time I told the CRB they were wrong and each time I have received a written apology - but they still keep doing it. "The second time it happened, I was flabbergasted. I was told I could not go to the school until the mistake had been officially corrected by the Bureau. "Now it's happened again. If it wasn't so serious it would be a joke."

The new blunder comes three months after The Mail on Sunday revealed how thousands of law-abiding citizens had been labelled as criminals after being confused with real crooks.

But Home Secretary John Reid, to whom the CRB reports, has refused to change the rules to prevent similar errors, despite the public outcry.

Mr Adams's nightmare began five years ago after he successfully applied to be a computer teacher at a centre near Lincoln for youngsters with behavioural problems. The school then told him that the CRB claimed he had been cautioned in 1999 for common assault and had received a conditional discharge for forging a prescription. Mr Adams was fingerprinted and cleared by police. But when he applied to work at Lincoln Christ's Hospital secondary school in 2004, the CRB again sent his employer the same details, claiming he was a forger and a thug.

Now the agency has blundered again after the Aveland High School in Lincoln offered Mr Adams a place as a 20,000 pounds-a-year IT instructor. Meanwhile, said Mr Adams, "the real criminal is walking free".

A spokesman for the CRB said: "This is not about the Bureau making mistakes where there has been a mismatch. "It is because the individual's details are similar or even identical to someone else's conviction data held on the Police National Computer."

Report here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)