The Patrick J. Sullivan Jr. Detention Facility in Colorado this week took in an unexpected prisoner: Patrick J. Sullivan Jr. himself. The former sheriff of Arapahoe County (1983-2002), for whom the jail was named, was arrested on charges of trying to sell drugs for sex with a man. In 1995, President Bill Clinton appointed Sullivan to the National Commission on Crime Control and Prevention. In 1998 he served as co-chair of Citizens Against the Legalization of Marijuana.

 

During his trial, 36-year-old LaDondrell Montgomery, a repeat offender, told jurors he was not the unidentified suspect shown on surveillance video taken at the scene of the robbery. Montgomery was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Weeks later his defense lawyer, Ronald Ray, made a startling discovery: his client was already in custody for another crime, suspicion of misdemeanor domestic violence. “It boggles the mind that neither side knew about this during trial,” Judge Mark Kent Ellis said. “Both sides in this case were spectacularly incompetent.”

When playing golf, there are water hazards and then there are real water hazards. While bending down near the 11th hole, which sat adjacent to a dark brackish pond, 77-year-old James Wiencek was attacked by a 10-foot, 400-pound alligator that suddenly appeared, clamped onto his right arm and dragged him into the water. While struggling to free himself, he lost part of his arm, which was torn away at the elbow. Fripp Island Resort advises golfers who plan to play their Ocean Creek course that, “You may want to pack your camera in your golf bag, as the course is home to a wondrous variety of wildlife including egrets, osprey, herons, and deer.” No mention is made in their course promotional material about other, less charming examples of wildlife.

Republican lawmaker Curry Todd of Tennessee was unable to live up to his own law, which established the right to carry guns into bars in 2009. On Tuesday, he was arrested for driving under the influence while in possession of a .38-caliber revolver. A police report said Todd was nearly falling down from inebriation. On Thursday, Todd resigned his position as chairman of the all-Republican House firearms task force, which has yet to meet.

 

Nearly three years after his culinary encounter with the “dangerous substance,” Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) has sued a congressional cafeteria for slipping an olive pit into the politician’s sandwich wrap. The offending morsel allegedly caused “permanent dental and oral injuries,” according to Kucinich’s lawsuit, after he bit unsuspectingly into his food. Bizarre as Kucinich’s contention may seem, Matthew Heller of On Point notes that there is legal precedent for processed olive suppliers to be held liable for leaving pits in olives that a consumer may reasonably assume to be pitted.

Michael Ferreira, who is now 57 years old, will be arraigned in juvenile court in Massachusetts for a murder he is charged with committing more than 40 years ago, when he was 16. Ferreira tied up John McCabe with a rope and covered his mouth and eyes with tape. The trio left him in the lot “to teach him a lesson.” When they returned about two hours later, McCabe had died of asphyxia. Shelley, Brown and Ferreira took a vow of secrecy that would last four decades…but not a lifetime.

Despite Dylan’s presumed association with the left, two right-wing Supreme Court justices have referred to him. In 2008, Chief Justice John Roberts paraphrased a line from Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” in a case in which billing firms had a claim on money they collected for others by saying, “When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.” Justice Antonin Scalia, in a case involving the privacy of employees using company email, said, “‘The times they are a-changin’’ is a feeble excuse for disregard of duty.”

Pediatrician Howard Weinblatt was charged on November 23 with four counts of spying on an unclothed person and two counts of window peeping, all of which occurred while he was in his bathroom. The victim was Weinblatt’s 12-year-old female neighbor whom he observed changing her clothes in her bedroom. The criminal complaint against Weinblatt asserts that the girl had a “reasonable expectation of privacy.”

When inmate Shawn Goode tried to buy a CD featuring  Dylan Thomas reading his poetry and that of others through the only company approved by the Virginia Department of Corrections, his purchase request was denied because corrections regulations instituted in August 2009 forbid prisoners from having non-music CDs unless they are faith-based.

 

Sam Mullet, leader of a 120-member breakaway Amish group in Berholz, has been accused of ordering five men to send a message to members of his group in Holmes County by forcibly cutting off men’s beards and a woman’s long hair. Hair and beard cuttings are considered degrading and insulting in the Amish world, where being untrimmed is a sign of holiness. The October 4 incident stems from a dispute in which Mullet ordered the shunning of two families and part of the group sided with the shunned members.