After analyzing new DNA evidence, the Arkansas Supreme Court has ordered a new hearing for the “West Memphis 3,” three men convicted as teens in the 1993 murders of three West Memphis Cub Scouts.
The justices also said a lower court must examine claims of misconduct by jurors who sentenced Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley, and Jason Baldwin.
CBS: “West Memphis 3” Get New Hearing in Murders of Three 8-Year-Old Cub Scouts
(Thanks Bryce!)
According to a survey conducted by Christie Barnes, author of the top 5 things parents are worried about:
1. Kidnapping
2. School snipers
3. Terrorists
4. Dangerous strangers
5. Drugs
And the top 5 ways kids actually get hurt:
1. Car accidents
2. Homicide (usually committed by a person who knows the child, not a stranger)
3. Abuse
4. Suicide
5. Drowning
NPR: 5 Worries Parents Should Drop, And 5 They Shouldn’t
(via Bruce Schneier)
There’s little doubt among legal experts that Colton Harris-Moore’s best bet to avoid a lengthy prison term is to mount a defense that highlights his troubled upbringing and plays down the bravado of his two years on the run.
That’s already started.
His defense attorney, John Henry Browne, said on national television that the “Barefoot Bandit” isn’t interested in making money from his story. Harris-Moore didn’t have fun on the run, his lawyer said. He was lonely and scared.
Now, at 19, Harris-Moore could be facing years, if not decades, behind bars. Experts believe a trial — if no plea agreement is reached — is months away, at best.
Legal experts suggest that a successful defense likely will focus more on arguing for a reduced sentence than on challenging the facts in the dozens of crimes Harris-Moore is linked to.
HeraldNet: Defense options limited for Colton Harris-Moore
Update: From the Seattle PI:
He said Harris-Moore had a message for the public.
“He’s concerned that kids will think this is fun, and he wanted us to say publicly that it was not fun. He was scared to death most of the time he was on his ‘lark’,” said Browne. “It was not enjoyable … he was living in port-a-potties at times.”
perhaps his most benign nickname is the most telling. Long before stealing boats and planes made him a marvel of elusiveness, an Internet antihero, Mr. Harris-Moore, 19, was suspected of stealing cookies and frozen pizza from the Kostelyk family, a few gravel roads from the squalor that was his home, a trailer on a dead end here, barely an hour from Seattle. The Kostelyks had waterfront property and a freezer full of food. He lived inland and had nothing.
“We called him ‘Island Boy,’ ” recalled Linda Johnson, whose mother, Maxine Kostelyk, was among Mr. Harris-Moore’s first suspected victims. “He came back over and over again — frozen pizza, cookies, ice cream. He was a tall boy, and he was growing.” […]
An examination of his early life and troubles suggests a picture far less cinematic. According to court and public documents and dozens of interviews, Mr. Harris-Moore was nobody’s hero, not even his own. On the contrary, whether he was hiding in the Kostelyks’ tree house, watching for delivery of the high-powered flashlight the police believe he ordered with a stolen credit card, or flying solo to the Bahamas in a stolen Cessna this month, isolated in the tiny cockpit for more than a thousand miles — Colton Harris-Moore, for much of his life, was alone and hungry.
That was true even as he was being celebrated by thousands of fans on Facebook.
“He says he’s not into any of that,” said Monique Gomez, a lawyer who briefly represented Mr. Harris-Moore in the Bahamas. “He just wants to get this behind him.”
New York Times: ‘Barefoot Bandit’ Started Life on the Run Early
(Thanks Joe!)
According to the AP, Colton Harris-Moore has been arrested in the Bahamas, where he continued his crime spree after crashing a stolen plane near Great Abaco Island.
Colton’s mother retained the high profile lawyer John Henry Browne this morning. Browne says Colton faces 7-15 years in prison if he’s convicted on a package-deal for his various crimes. (Assuming they can hold on to the slippery kid!)
Browne said various members of the Harris-Moore family have contributed to Colton’s defense fund, but the attorny – perhaps best known for defending Ted Bundy – said he’s not too concerned about money.
(Thanks for the heads up Bill!)
The notorious Camano Island fugitive some call the “Barefoot Bandit” was again the focus of a manhunt on a small island Tuesday after he allegedly crashed another stolen plane.
This time, though, Colton Harris-Moore, 19, was being sought on the white sand cays of the Bahamas, more than 3,500 miles away from his home.FBI officials say he is wanted in connection with the theft of a plane from Indiana that somebody flew roughly 1,200 miles and crashed Sunday off Abaco, a small island west of Miami.
How much is your kidney worth?
In Turkey the prized organ fetches around €2,300, an Indian or Iraqi kidney enriches its former owner by a mere €800, and the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates the going price on the black market to be about €4,000.
But when you consider that wealthy clients will later pay well over €100,000 for the kidney, this massive profit margin would appear to guarantee a lucrative future for the international trade in human organs if it continues unchecked.
Irish Health: The Rise Of ‘Transplant Tourism’
Should organ sales be legalized and regulated instead of relying on voluntary donations?
In what sounds like the setup for a bad “psychological thriller” movie, neuroscientist James Fallon discovered that his brain fits the profile of a psychopath’s: low activity in the orbital cortex.
“You see that? I’m 100 percent. I have the pattern, the risky pattern,” he says, then pauses. “In a sense, I’m a born killer.”
Fallon’s being tongue-in-cheek — sort of. He doesn’t believe his fate or anyone else’s is entirely determined by genes. They merely tip you in one direction or another.
And yet: “When I put the two together, it was frankly a little disturbing,” Fallon says with a laugh. “You start to look at yourself and you say, ‘I may be a sociopath.’ I don’t think I am, but this looks exactly like [the brains of] the psychopaths, the sociopaths, that I’ve seen before.”
I asked his wife, Diane, what she thought of the result.
“I wasn’t too concerned,” she says, laughing. “I mean, I’ve known him since I was 12.”
Diane probably does not need to worry, according to scientists who study this area. They believe that brain patterns and genetic makeup are not enough to make anyone a psychopath. You need a third ingredient: abuse or violence in one’s childhood.
NPR: A Neuroscientist Uncovers A Dark Secret
(via Cat Vincent)
A sobering reminder of why “neuroscanning” for criminals/terrorists/whatever in airports or elsewehre is a problematic idea.
In recent decades, it began to seem as though America’s proud tradition of venerating great outlaws might have been lost. We’d grown to accept — and secretly admire — corporate-thievery. Our renegades and outlaws, once admired for their boldness in the face of tyrants, were recast in popular culture as degenerates. The logic went that by breaking the law — written to protect the powerful corrupt — they acted against society itself. Now we know nothing could be further from the truth. Thank God Colton Harris-Moore, the “Teenage Jesse James,” is winning back the hearts and minds of all those people who forgot the allure of a goodhearted outlaw.
The South Dakota crime spree started after Harris-Moore apparently left the Northwest, donating $100 to a Raymond animal hospital and stealing a $450,000 yacht on his way to Oregon, then reportedly stealing more cars as he made his way toward Idaho.
A few days after Harris-Moore’s trail went cold in Boise, Idaho, on June 12, authorities in South Dakota noticed an unusual series of incidents:
• A vehicle with Washington state license plates was found abandoned in South Dakota, according to a local news station.
• A vehicle was reported stolen from the Spearfish, S.D., airport and another was stolen from the Yankton airport on Tuesday.
• One or more homes were burglarized in the same area, not far from the airport.
• In one of the burglaries, police say a man who fits the description of Harris-Moore occupied a home while the family was on vacation. The family came home and surprised him in their house, and the man fled the scene.
KATU: Is ‘Barefoot Bandit’ Harris-Moore in the Midwest?
Lots more Harris-Moore stuff at Colton Harris-Moore Fanclub
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