A Texas jury decided in 1991 that Steven Kenneth Staley, now 43,
should be put to death for killing a restaurant manager, but three
days before his February 2006 date with destiny, psychologists
testified that he is mentally ill, and the U.S. Supreme Court has
ruled that a mentally ill person cannot be executed. The solution,
declared state judge Wayne Salvant in April, is for the state to
inject Staley with enough psychotropic medicine to make him
sufficiently sane to understand why he is going to die, at which
point he can be killed. (In similar cases, drugs improved Charles
Singleton enough for his 2004 execution in Arkansas, but have
failed since 1999 to restore Texan Emanuel Kemp's competency.)
[Fort Worth Star Telegram, 4-15-06]
Prosecutors in Dresden, Germany, charged Petra Kujau, 47, with
fraud recently for selling at least 500 fake paintings of such
artists as Monet, Picasso and Van Gogh. However, the paintings were
always clearly labeled as fakes, according to an April Times of
London dispatch, and their sale was a crime only because Petra had
claimed they had been painted by Konrad Kujau (her great uncle),
who had a worldwide reputation as a master faker. Thus, Petra is
charged with duping collectors into thinking that they were buying
original Konrad Kujau classic fakes. [The Times (London),
4-22-06]
In April, the organization Gymnastics Australia ordered cheerleader
teams to supply less-revealing uniforms (e.g., no bare midriffs),
based not on alleged "indecency" but on its fear that the
exhibition of too-svelte cheerleaders' bodies would make overweight
girls feel bad and lead to eating disorders. (2) Greater Manchester
(England) police filed a criminal charge against a 10-year-old boy
who, in a schoolyard spat, called a classmate a "Paki" and "bin
Laden" and, allegedly, the "n" word. Judge Jonathan Finestein of
Salyer youth court urged prosecutors in April to deal with the
matter in some other way (and in fact, the defendant told the court
that the two boys are now friends). [Chicago Tribune-AP, 4-16-06]
[Daily Telegraph (London), 4-7-06]
