Daily Rotten Archives January 17, 2004 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 Missouri's rapists, child molesters get out of jail free St. Louis Post-Dispatch | Submitted by: lovethebomb "Sex offender Thomas Ingrassia knew Missouri had no law making it a crime for him to escape from its highly touted Sexually Violent Predator Unit. "I had researched it," Ingrassia said, using a few old statute books left in a library at the mental health facility... Ingrassia told the Post-Dispatch that he knew about a loophole in the law before cutting a fence for freedom in 2001 at the civil commitment unit in Farmington. The unit holds Missouri's most incorrigible rapists and child molesters. 'Missouri's so quick to make up laws without researching whether it's proper,' he said. 'They're idiots.' ... when the Legislature enacted the civil commitment procedure in 1998, it neglected to change the escape law to include escape from a civil facility." Read article... Accused rapist captured attacks on video Canadian Broadcasting | Submitted by: Dolores C "Vancouver police have charged a man after seizing several videotapes showing violent assaults on as many as 50 women. Most of the women are thought to be sex-trade workers, said acting police Insp. Tom McCluskie... Police called to the scene arrested a man and seized a bag containing a video camera and tape. Officers later found more tapes, including some showing child pornography, after searching a home and car... Donald Michel Baker, 40, of Vancouver has been charged with five counts of sexual assault and one count of unlawful confinement." Read article... Scientist determined to clone human Sky News | Submitted by: Tully "Professor Panos Zavos told a news conference in London that he has transferred a cloned embryo into a 35-year-old woman. It is not certain that the embryo - grown from the skin cells of the woman's husband - will produce a successful pregnancy. Dr Zavos said the chances of implantation in the womb are about 30 - 40% and he would announce the result in the next few days. But even if the embryo is rejected, Dr Zavos told Sky News: 'We are going to do another one and another one and another one until we succeed.'" Read article... Teacher accused of shaking first-grader Atlanta Journal-Constitution | Submitted by: jackie "A Clayton County first-grade teacher faces criminal charges for grabbing and shaking the head of a 6-year-old student in her class. Rose C. Hagy, 49, of Peachtree City is free on $2,000 bond after Clayton Chief Magistrate Michael Baird decided Wednesday that there was enough evidence to charge her with simple battery... Hagy told Clayton County police that she was trying to 'get her student to pay attention to her,' according a police report." Read article... Lawsuit dropped against George Harrison's doctor Atlanta Journal-Constitution | Submitted by: jackie "The estate of George Harrison has settled its lawsuit against a doctor it accused of coercing the dying ex-Beatle into signing a guitar belonging to the doctor's son. The guitar 'will be disposed of privately' and Harrison's estate will give a new guitar to Ariel Lederman, the 14-year-old son of the doctor who treated Harrison for cancer two weeks before his death, according to a joint statement read aloud Friday in federal court... The settlement came 10 days after the lawsuit was filed against Dr. Gilbert Lederman, his three children and his employer, Staten Island University Hospital... Lederman entered uninvited with his three children and had Harrison listen to his son play the guitar before asking the musician to sign the instrument and two cards, the suit charged. It alleged that the musician tried to resist, saying, 'I do not even know if I know how to spell my name anymore.' Lederman held Harrison's hand as the musician wrote his name on the guitar 'with great effort and much obvious discomfort,' according to the suit." Read article... Recovering addict allegedly kills crackhead friend New York Post | Submitted by: Marla Jones "A Brooklyn man charged with strangling his crack-addicted woman friend last month told cops he killed her because he thought he could not kick his drug habit while she was still alive, authorities said yesterday. Accused murderer Jose Garcia, 32, told police he strangled Evelyn Figueroa with towels and then attempted suicide in her apartment on Throop Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant... Apparently despondent over killing his friend, Garcia tried to take his own life by slashing his throat and wrists, sources said. Some time later, Figueroa's roommate discovered Garcia bleeding in the bathtub and called 911." Read article... Pedestrian randomly electrocuted New York Post | Submitted by: Marla Jones "Jodi Lane, 30, was crossing East 11th Street near Veniero's Pastry Shop around 6:20 p.m. when her two pets started 'freaking out' and looked like they were attacking each other, witnesses said. Lane, who lived around the corner on East 12th Street, feverishly tried to separate the dogs... A woman, who identified herself only as Meg, said she tried to help, but realized Lane and her dogs had been hit by a jolt of electricity... Lane may have been zapped by a bunch of uninsulated wires when she tried to separate the dogs and was electrocuted by a surge that traveled through them." Read article... Feds updating their drug testing regime CBS News | Submitted by: wdon "The federal government is planning to overhaul its employee drug testing program to include scrutiny of workers' hair, saliva and sweat... All federal workers are eligible to be tested.. But privacy advocates express doubts, pointing to cases of police officers and others who allege false positives because their hair absorbed drugs around them, as well as research suggesting dark hair soaks up more drug byproducts than light hair." Read article... America's most corrupt state: Mississippi Mississippi Clarion-Ledger | Submitted by: Truxillo-X "More Mississippi public officials have been convicted on federal corruption charges per capita over the past decade than any other state... federal prosecutors convicted 215 Mississippi public officials from 1993-2002, at a rate of 7.48 per 100,000 people... North Dakota was the survey's second-most corrupt state with a rate of 7.09, and Louisiana was third at 7.05. The least corrupt states, according to the survey, were Nebraska, Oregon and New Hampshire." Read article... Florida might exempt gun ranges from environmental laws St. Petersburg Times | Submitted by: Crazy Quagga "Just try to follow the twisted logic of legislation passed by two committees that give gun range owners immunity from the state's pollution laws. It goes like this: Florida residents need to practice their gun skills, so ranges are a 'necessary component' (the bills' language) of the constitutional right to bear arms. Yet if ranges are forced to clean up the lead and arsenic pollution they cause, they will go out of business and deny Floridians that right... Sen. Durell Peaden, a Crestview Republican and bill sponsor, took the argument one illogical step further by denying that lead contamination is even a problem. Since his district contains both a military firing range and good schools, Peaden concluded: 'It's hard for me to consider us having the two highest performing school districts if birdshot and lead cause brain damage.'" [Well, then -- case closed!] Read article... Bush spreading cheeks for energy lobbyists CNN | Submitted by: Liddell "Former Vice President Al Gore on Thursday called President Bush a 'moral coward' who caves in to campaign contributors at the expense of the nation's environment. Gore said the Bush administration appears to be 'wholly owned by the coal, oil, utility and mining industries.' 'While President Bush likes to project an image of strength and courage, the real truth is that in the presence of his large financial contributors he is a moral coward, so weak that he seldom if ever says no to them on anything,' Gore said. He accused the administration of listening to 'pseudo-scientific' front groups funded by the energy industry while ignoring a 'broad-based consensus' within the scientific community about the threat of global warming." Read article... and This article...