The Supreme Court of Spain tossed out assault charges against Henry Osagiede in August because of unfairness by Madrid police. Osagiede, a black man, was convicted after the victim identified him as her attacker, in a lineup in which he was the only black man.
Justice Run Amok
Extreme Behavior
Officials in Heath, Ohio, might have solved their budget problems. The town (population 8,500) reported in July that its new, six-intersection traffic-camera ticketing system issued 10,000 citations in its first four weeks. (Nonetheless, officials admitted that was too many and were discussing how to ease up.)
At press time, Rhode Island legislators were scrambling to fix an oversight in state law that came to light only earlier this year. While the state treats 16 as the age of sexual consent and the age at which most child labor laws no longer apply, the under-18 sex-worker law bans only "prostitution" and "lewd" activities, leaving girls age 16 and 17 free to work as strippers. (Nudity, by itself, is not "lewd" under constitutional law.) Other Rhode Island laws bar under-18s from, for example, serving drinks, working with power tools or buying pornography. (The city of Providence is also now trying to fix its own ordinance in which prostitution appears to be illegal only for streetwalkers, thus legalizing the trade for those working indoors.)
It should be well-known by now to News of the Weird readers that a DNA test disproving fatherhood will not necessarily relieve a man of child-support obligations. Frank Hatley's case is especially alarming. He was finally released in July in Cook County, Ga., but only after having spent 13 months in jail because he had missed a few payments for another man's child. Hatley had paid conscientiously, albeit incompletely, from 1987-2000, out of meager wages, and continued (even during periods of unemployment and homelessness) for several years after he learned he was not the father. In 2001, a court absolved him of the duty to make future payments, but the state interpreted that ruling as not affecting the overdue amounts from the past, and in 2008 jailed him.
In the American version (which actually happened at least once, in Bucks County, Pa., in the 1980s), cynical cops use a photocopier "connected" by a crude wire to the suspect, and a sheet of "He's Lying" paper in the output tray, as a "lie detector" test. In July, the Tel Aviv, Israel, Police Department used a "memory machine" to change the mind of a murder suspect who swore he could not remember anything about the night of the crime. Hooked up to an electrocardiogram machine, the perp was "informed" that certain squiggles on the paper proved that he did indeed remember and must be hiding details. Andrei Polokhin, 47, then confessed and was charged with fatally stabbing his neighbor.
Neighborhoods near the Wimbledon tennis tournament in suburban London are typically clogged in June, as visitors scramble for parking space. This year, nearby St. Mary's Church sold parking for 20 pounds a day (about $33), even though the space offered was directly above gravesites in the church's cemetery.
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Operation Repo
The Smoking Gun Presents: World's Dumbest
Inside American Jail
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