More on Da Kine

The news is good. First, from Kin-Shay:

2005-03-16 UPDATE - Courtney just called, she just spoke with CPT Rivera, the military laison to the civilian hospital. Shane is awake and speaking. We are not sure what he is saying, but his nurses described him as a “feisty young man.� CPT R is on his way to the hospital now to visit Shane. More updates to follow…

At first, I was worried Shane might be confused enough to default to one of the other languages he speaks. He'd have a hard time getting water from a nurse if he asked for it in Latin or Romanian... Luckily, Kin Yah Brutha adds some detail in the Soxaholix comments:

hey guys, da kine is out of the drug induced coma two days early and spoke to his wife this morning. he is speaking in complete sentences, but is still a little confused. ever the master of understatement, he said, "i seem to have been in a bit of an accident."

That's our boy!

If you have some spare good vibes...

Send them Shane's way, please. He was in a very serious accident while serving in Kuwait. Initial signs seem encouraging, but he suffered some nasty injuries.

We love you, brother. Be well.

...

This is purely trivial now, but Shane would be happy if circumstances hadn't interfered: Our BU Ice Dogs made it past Providence tonight and will meet New Hampshire in the Hockey East semis, which will be a single-elimination affair.

John Gilmore is a kook

And I love him for it. Grounded: Millionaire John Gilmore stays close to home while making a point about privacy

As happens to the disobedient, Gilmore is grounded. He is rich -- he estimates his net worth at $30 million -- and cannot fly inside the United States. Nor can he ride Amtrak, rent a room at most major hotels, or easily clear security in the courthouses where his case, Gilmore v. Ashcroft, is to be heard. In a time when more and more people and places demand some form of government-issued identification, John Gilmore offers only his 49-year-old face: a study in stringy hair, high forehead, wire-rimmed glasses, Ho Chi Minh beard and the contrariness for which the dot.com culture is renowned.

It's enough to make the folks at Reason soil their pants, I'm sure.

More Suburban Chaos

In case a home invasion/robbery isn't exciting enough for the soccer moms... Last night we were disturbed by (at least) a pair of police helecopters (or maybe they were just news choppers, don't really know) hovering over our whitebread 'hood like we we suddenly in Compton or something. While it was fun for me to watch the flyboys zoom around — they were a lot higher than I expected considering our walls were shaking, it was more than a little creepy overall.

Turns out some ass was trying to shake Johnny Law in a car chase that went right around our neck of the woods.

I can think of a handful of possible locations for that sign the police officer ran into. All of them are within maybe a mile of my house.

Big Drama in Small Town, USA

Newspaper Ad Leads To Home Invasion, Robbery

James Reynolds told investigators that around 8:30 p.m. three gunmen burst into his apartment at the Cascade Village complex in Westminster and staged a take-over style robbery. They bound him and then took off with a lot of his electronic equipment, including a plasma TV that he had advertised for sale in the newspaper, Westminster police said.

When the robbers fled, Reynolds freed himself of his restraints, ran to a neighbor's apartment for help and called police. He told investigators that he recognized one of the attackers as a prospective buyer whom he had invited into his apartment and shown his TV to earlier in the day.

The North Denver suburbs are becoming more and more like a soap opera every day.

The folks at Engadget might just have a point when they say maybe he should have used eBay...

Conserve! No, wait...

States Mull Taxing Drivers By Mile

And that saves him almost $300 a month in gas. It's great for Just but bad for the roads he's driving on, because he also pays a lot less in gasoline taxes which fund highway projects and road repairs. As more and more hybrids hit the road, cash-strapped states are warning of rough roads ahead.

This stuff makes me batty.

Here in Colorado, we've had a drought going for the past several years. Of course, all the powers that be tell us we have to conserve water — even going so far as to start up police patrols to ticket people who water their lwans on the wrong days. Then what happens? Well, the water people lose revenue and have to raise water rates!

It's like nobody is thinking about the consequences of conservation. I mean, really. Conservation means consuming less. That's going to cost someone some money. The "powers that be" need to think about these things before it becomes an issue.

Reactionary Big Brother shenanigans are not a proper incentive for beneficial (and important) behavior changes.

What the heck goes on in Wisconsin prisons?

This one is mostly for H: Prisoner sues for right to sex change

The department has been providing Konitzer, 40, with hormone therapy to stimulate female development since 1999 but will not allow genital surgery. Konitzer claims a prison doctor said the surgery would follow the hormone treatments, and the refusal to follow through violates the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment. However, department policy prohibits the surgery. Konitzer, who looks female because of the hormones, also objects to being housed in male prisons, where male guards do the strip searches and male inmates share communal showers. Konitzer is not allowed to wear a bra or women's clothing.

Personally, I'm a bit surprised they are providing the hormone treatment. It's a recent change in policy, though, so there you go.

I guess, ultimately, if it's something an HMO would cover (which I'm not sure would be the case), and Konitzer passes all the requirements he(she) would be required to pass if he(she) wasn't in prison, the state should probably cover it.

The best part fo the article, for me, is how Konitzer ended up in the big house:

"I stabbed the guy with a homemade ice pick," Konitzer said. "I'm pretty ashamed of that."

Juror Number Six

I was called into jury duty on Tuesday.We rendered our verdict today at five o'clock.

It wasn't a lot of fun, but it was certainly educational.

Now that the case is over, I can actually talk about it...

Basically, it was a rape case. And basically, we found the guy not guilty. None of this was easy. Unfortunately, the alleged victim either could not or would not remember anything about the alleged assault, and since the defense was consent (That is: "Yes we had sex, but it wasn't rape." This makes forensic evidence pretty useless, really.), it boiled down to he said / she said and that really wasn't enough for us to believe beyond the fabled "reasonable doubt" that the defendant was guilty.

When we went into deliberate, the first thing I asked was "Is anyone dying to be foreperson?" which got answered with "You go ahead." Ack! OK... That's me then: Foreman of the Jury.

Then we went around the table to state our feelings: One said guilty, three were undecided, and eight (including myself) felt not guilty was the right verdict. As we talked it over, it became apparent that we all felt something uncool happened. However most of us weren't so sure about it based on the evidence that we were willing to say a man was guilty of a serious crime. We all felt badly for the woman, but when close to ninety per cent of her testimony consisted of the phrase "Honestly, I don't remember at this time." we couldn't send a guy down the river. Something seemed to be going on with her. The District Attorney even asked her at one point "Are you trying to remember?" It was as if she had given up the fight. Whether that was because she just wanted it over with and behind her, as she stated, or if it was because she had lied about the whole thing, as the defense contended, we just didn't know. That's the very definition of reasonable doubt, I think.

Just before five the one juror who had been strongly in favor of a guilty verdict was just starting to realize that he, too, had a doubt in his mind, the bailiff / court secretary / ??? came in and said the judge was going to call recess for the day. Of course, we replied with a hearty "No! Wait! Just a couple more minutes!" I checked again with the juror who was changing his mind to be sure he wasn't feeling coerced in any way and that he would be able to sleep at night with this decision. He said simply that he did indeed have a reasonable doubt and that it would be worse to convict an innocent man than to send someone who, to our knowledge, might be a one-time offender free.

So we re-polled, and I got everyone to agree that we were unanimous, and I signed my name under the NOT GUILTY verdict.

This was all very difficult and distressing.

Luckily I hung out in the parking lot (telling my boss that I'd actually be back to work tomorrow) long enough that I saw the judge come out. I went over to him and thanked him for the experience, etc. Then I made a comment about how tough an ordeal it was and he described the whole situation in a single word: Pathetic. It really was. Pathetic and sad for everyone involved. Then I mentioned how there was no way we could have come back with any other verdict and he agreed totally. He said that if it had been a trial before the court (without a jury) he would have had to determine a not guilty verdict as well. This is why I say it was lucky I ran into him. That validation really helped.

I wish I could share that with the other jurors.

So, there you go.

Cool parts and observations:

  • Cops (at least patrol officers, and in particular the 2-years-in-the-service pup who testified) seem to hate defense attorneys. I think they feel like they are trying to make them look like idiots.
  • Contrary to what is depicted on TV (be it Vegas, Miami, or NY), CSIs wear uniforms. They look a lot like SWAT fatigues.
  • If you are an alternate juror, you won't know until the moment they send the jury in to deliberations. What a tease!
  • The forensic scientist from the CBI was really cool and very educational. She was also the only witness who brought anything (other than an oxygen tank) with her to the stand (her files, that is – no fun slides or anything like that).

Jury duty can be a hassle. It can drain you emotionally, like this did for all of us, I think. But it's certainly worth doing. I'm glad to have done it.

Besides, it could have been worse.