Kathy E <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: LEAD STORIES * New Scientist magazine announced in January that Australian biologist Roger Short has applied for funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health because he believes he can grow human sperm extraordinarily efficiently inside the testicles of mice by injecting them with human testes cells. * Henry Ingram Jr. told the Savannah (Ga.) Morning News in February that he intends to bar all northerners from ever setting foot on any part of his recently-acquired 1,600 acres along U.S. 17 near Hardeeville, S.C., and he recently recorded a deed restriction making that official. The ban applies to members of the "Yankee race" (through birth or at least a year's residence), to anyone named Sherman (after the Union general), and to anyone with a last name that is an anagram of Sherman. Ingram is upset at the recent development of Hilton Head Island and other picturesque vistas in the area. * The Los Angeles Times reported in January on the unusual, sustained success, in turbulent economic times, of the Cat Theater of Moscow, Russia, whose 300-seat shows remain sold out weeks in advance. Despite conventional wisdom that cats are untrainable, proprietor Yuri Kuklachev has them climbing poles, walking tightropes, pushing toy trains, leapfrogging over human backs, and balancing atop tiny platforms. BAD IDEAS * In January in Zinnowitz, Germany, according to an Associated Press report, two skinheads in a billiard hall hurled several racial insults at Cuban pro boxer Juan Carlos Gomez, who is in town training for his next fight. Gomez punched the man in the face, and the skinheads left. Three days later, a larger group of skinheads waited to confront Gomez and his entourage in front of their hotel and resumed the insults. Again, Gomez punched one of them in the face, and the skinheads left. * The Denver Post reported in September that Jenny Roper earlier in the year was ordered to pay her estranged husband $4,000 under Colorado's no-fault divorce law, despite the fact that he was at the time awaiting trial for hiring someone to kill her (and for which he was later convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison). Under Colorado law, marital misconduct is irrelevant in a divorce, and in this case Jenny happened to be earning more than her husband. * In September, four special education students in Howe, Okla., filed a lawsuit against the school system, their principal, and a teacher for a creative history lesson that turned bad. According to the lawsuit, the kids were forced to portray slaves on a ship, under disgusting circumstances, by being shackled with masking tape, being paddled, and being imprisoned in a feces-smeared shower stall (with dirty diapers waved in their faces) to simulate slave-ship stench. * A 33-year-old man was arrested in Anaheim, Calif., in November and charged with robbing a credit union. He attracted the attention of police officers while walking down a street several hours after the robbery. In the time between the robbery and the arrest, police said, the man had broken into an apartment and taken a business suit for a change of clothes, but for some reason thought that he ought to change his shoes, as well, despite the fact that the shoes he came away wearing were fuzzy pink slippers. Said police Sgt. Joe Vargas, "He couldn't give us a logical reason for wearing the slippers." While the questioning continued, the apartment burglary report came over the police radio, mentioning the slippers. * In November, Portsmouth, Va., Circuit Judge Von Piersall dismissed charges against former high school track coach John W. Crute, 47, who had clandestinely made videotapes of girls in a locker room. Despite the fact that the girls were captured in full frontal nudity, Judge Piersall said the tapes were not lewd under Virginia law because they portray mere nudity. Piersall was not even persuaded by the fact that, interspersed among the shots of the girls, Crute had spliced scenes from hard-core pornographic videos. * In November, Lenexa, Kan., police chief Ellen Hanson purchased an airline ticket in her name to go to a police conference but had to change plans because of a family illness. Rather than have the department purchase another ticket for her substitute, officer Dawn Layman, Chief Hanson made up an official police ID card with her name and Layman's face, to present to the airline clerk. Someone tipped off the airline on the return trip, and after some heavy explaining, Chief Hanson apologized. * The Associated Press revealed in November that Bishop Guertin High School in Nashua, N.H., may be violating state law by employing as a teacher a man, Shawn McEnany, 35, who had been convicted of sexual assault. McEnany was hired in 1990 despite two misdemeanors for unlawful sexual contact, but a school spokesman said that McEnany was not a risky hire because in 1990, the school was for boys only, and McEnany's 1988 conviction involved a girl. * In July 1997, the Texas Supreme Court threw out a $7 million lower court judgment for a girl who was born without fingers on her right hand, allegedly due to her mother's having taken the controversial morning-sickness drug Bendectin. Dejected, the girl's lawyers filed a motion in November asking the Court to reconsider its decision but referring to the justices as "the nine nutty professors" and saying they constituted the fourth horseman of the apocalypse (along with Pestilence, Death, and Famine). The motion was denied. * In October, Lyman Ray Postoak Jr., 44, was found guilty of armed robbery in Oklahoma City, undoubtedly with the assistance of two decisions that he made for himself. First, he chose to act as his own lawyer during the two-day trial. Second, contrary to convention, Postoak chose to wear his jail-issued orange coveralls in front of the jury, telling the judge he felt more comfortable in jail clothes. Sentences are frequently long ones in Oklahoma, and this jury gave Postoak 125 years. WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND * In Rangoon, Burma, in August, Htun Wai, who as minister of health in 1988 was reported to have mistreated wounded freedom fighters by shackling them to beds and refusing to help them, was struck by a hit-and-run driver and died shortly afterward when no hospital would admit him because he had no money and because no hospital employee recognized him as a former official. * Road-raged motorist Delfina Gonzales Morales, 42, and her daughter, 26, taunted and tailgated the driver of a van as he exited down a ramp on the Golden State Freeway in Sylmar, Calif., in January. At the base of the ramp, Morales spun around and splashed mud on the van, then sped back up the ramp to the freeway. However, she apparently lost her bearings and, instead of bearing right, she kept on going straight, directly against the traffic, immediately ran into a Federal Express truck, and was killed instantly, along with her daughter. (The truck driver suffered minor injuries.) UPDATES ON CHARACTERS * Odell Sheppard was jailed in Chicago in 1987 at age 40 for contempt of court for failing to give the whereabouts of his daughter, Deborah, then 2, in a child-custody dispute (though he has always claimed he knew nothing). He was finally released January 28, 1998, after Deborah's mother passed away, ending the dispute. And a Norwegian astrophysics student, 39, who was first barred from Oslo University at age 22 because he refused to bathe (contending that living a soapless life gave him a deeper meaning of astrophysics), and who lost several court cases for readmission against the school, filed a lawsuit in January against the Norwegian government in order to place the matter before the European Court of Human Rights. -- Kathy E "I can only please one person a day, today is NOT your day, and tomorrow isn't looking too good for you either" http://members.delphi.com/kathylaw/ Law & Issues Mailing List http://pw1.netcom.com/~kathye/rodeo.html - Cowboy Histories http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/2990/law.htm Crime photo's Subscribe/Unsubscribe, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the body of the message enter: subscribe/unsubscribe law-issues
