Weird news - 10 year old boy shoots his mother dead, on trial

These are the sort of cases that both judges and juries dread to have. If you have a murder trial, where an adult has killed another person, you would not feel too much trouble in being part of such a trial, and even if it came to passing a judgment of execution in such a case, you would feel that you have gone through the proper process and done what needs to be done. However, this can get real tricky when you are dealing with a 10 year boy who is on trial for killing his own mother.
Typically, societies consider the age of 18 to be one where a person is considered to be an adult, and more important, when a person is considered of sound mind and capable of being responsible for their own actions. For somebody younger than that, and specially when somebody is like 10 years old, you would think that the child cannot be responsible for their own actions. What was more of a problem was that the 10 year old was in such anger after an argument with his mother, and equally important, had access to a gun with he was able to shoot his mother (link to news article):

An Ohio boy admitted he fatally shot his mother in the head with a rifle when he was 10 after what a relative described as an argument over chores. The boy, now 13, entered the equivalent of a guilty plea Monday in juvenile court. In January 2011, the boy went to a neighbor's house, called 911 and told the dispatcher he had shot his mother at their home in rural Holmes County, about 70 miles northeast of Columbus. "I shot my mom. I shot her with a gun," he said. At the time, his uncle said the boy and his mother had argued over carrying firewood.

Weird news - In Britain, man banned from speaking to women strangers for 10 years, will face prison if he does

Sometimes one comes across strange court judgments, which do not make sense from a layman's perspective. A typical judgment from the court typically would involve either a person getting exonerated by a court, or being sentenced to some sort of community service, or to probation, or to a prison term. These are the sort of court judgments in criminal matters that we have come to expect, and if something deviates from such a judgment, it seems weird. What would you say to a court judgment where a man is sentenced to a prison term if he speaks to a unknown woman in public, unless it is an emergency. This was a strange case where a man walked up to a lady in her mid 20's, kissed her on the cheek and told her that he was a sex offender.
You can imagine the shock that this lady would have felt, including the fear that she would have felt. The only reassurance that she would have felt was that they were in public; the problem is that such a situation is so odd that one does not know whether such a man is safe in public. At the same time, since the offence conducted was not one to jail him for a long period of time (in a sort of preventive custody), there was not much that the judge could do; and hence the unusual judgment. But how does one make such a judgment effective ? How do you determine whether the man spoke to an unknown lady, or just replied back. Similarly, how do you determine what is an emergency ? Read this news article (link):

A 56-year-old Briton has been banned by court from speaking to women for 10 years after he told a woman he was a rapist who had just been freed from prison. David Delahunty, 56, faces up to five years in jail if he just says hello to a woman he does not know, The Sun reported. A judge imposed the ban after the man admitted sexual assault. The order bans him from speaking to any woman he does not know in a public place for the next 10 years, except in an emergency. He said he walked up to a woman stranger at a bus stop, kissed her on the cheek and told her she was a "bonny lass".

Weird news - Husband fined for not having enough sex with his wife

This is a strange case. Would you ever believe that a person could be fined in a court of law because his ex-wife filed a case against him for not having enough sex in the marriage ? Seems a bit strange, isn't it ? Many societies would be aghast that such an intimate discussion / discord is brought out in the public like this particular case. In this particular case in France, the ex-wife used a particular clause in the law which states that part of the duties of a marriage is a shared communal life, and the judge has used this clause to mean that sexual relations must happen in a marriage, and based on the complaint by the wife, awarded compensation to her. It is interesting however to determine how it an be decided whether the amount of sexual relations is enough or not (link to article):

In a unique ruling, a French court has reportedly ordered a 51-year-old man to pay his ex-wife nearly 8,500 pounds in damages for failing to have enough sex with her during their 21-year marriage.
The man, Jean-Louis B, was fined under Article 215 of France's civil code which states that married couples must agree to a "shared communal life", the 'Daily Express' reported. The judge in the south of France's highest court in Aix-en-Provence ruled that this law clearly implies "sexual relations must form part of a marriage".
"A sexual relationship between husband and wife is the expression of affection they have for each other, and in this case it was absent. By getting married, couples agree to share their life and this clearly implies they will have sex with each other," the judge said.

Weird news - Cat called for jury duty, owner tries to get exemption

In the United States, the jury system is the backbone of the judicial system, whereby people are governed by a jury made of their peers; so, for a trial, a jury is selected out of all the eligible population, with very few people exempt. So, people are called for jury duty, and are then selected by the lawyers for both sides; it is not easy to get an exemption from this jury duty, and the law looks unfavorably at any attempts to try to evade this duty.
But, sometimes, the officialdom that make up any system can get trapped into their red tape and processes, and lead to some hilarious situations, which get reported as weird situations. What can you call a situations where a cat is called for jury duty and the owner is running around trying to make the judicial system understand that this is an animal, not a human being (link to article):

Mrs Esposito had included a letter from her vet confirming that the cat was "a domestic short-haired neutered feline".
Tabby Sal had been entered by Mrs Esposito under the 'pets' section of the last census. "When they ask him guilty or not guilty? What's he supposed to say - miaow?" She said.
"Sal is a member of the family so I listed him on the last Census form under pets but there has clearly been a mix-up."

Weird news - Considering how to deliberately cause paralysis in Saudi Arabia

People are generally shocked when they get to know about some of the punishments that they see or hear about in areas governed by a harsher versions of Islam, such as stoning for adultery, or cutting off hands or feet for theft, or the many punishments carried out by the Taliban in the areas under their control. However, this is not something that happens infrequently, it is part of the system of jurisprudence, where a crime can be punished by a similar punishment as the crime. However, it still feels very shocking, especially when one reads of cases such as this court in Saudi Arabia wanting to know whether paralysis can be a punishment for somebody who caused paralysis in somebody else (link to article):

Saudi media are reporting that a judge has asked several hospitals in the country whether they could damage a man's spinal cord as punishment after he was convicted of attacking another man with a cleaver and paralyzing him. Saudi Arabia enforces Islamic law and on occasion metes out punishments based on the ancient code of an eye-for-an-eye.
The unidentified defendant hit Abdul Aziz Al Mutairi, another Saudi, with a cleaver during a fight more than two years ago and the trial has been delayed because Mutairi is insisting that his attacker suffer the same injury.

Man hits infant son on the face, ordered to pay 50 pounds as compensation besides other damages

A baby is very fragile, needing constant protection and care from parents. It is also true that when a baby is born, the hormone systems of the parents push hormones through the body, imparting a protecting emotional feeling (much stronger in the mother), so one wonders what is it that makes a person be able to hit a 10 month old defenseless baby; hard enough that it left a mark on the face and also needed medical attention. Well, the case was as simple as something that babies do, knock things around. The after effects ? The father is now estranged from the mother and the son (the mother and father were not married) and defending himself in court (link to article):

A Briton, who slapped his 10-month-old son after he knocked down a photo frame, has been ordered to pay the baby 50 pounds in compensation, a media report said Thursday. The 24-year-old man lost his cool when his son hit the TV while jumping up and down in his baby bouncer, Daily Mail reported.
Rachel Bentley, defending the accused, said the man was now estranged from his partner and son after the incident, which happened two days before Christmas, and he was "sorry". He was also directed to complete 60 hours of community service, be supervised for a year, deal with his anger management and pay the baby 50 pounds in compensation.

Banning very long names - the German Court makes a decision

Have you ever wondered about some names of people from South America, they can be pretty long, and similar is the case with some names of people from South India (while American and British names can be very short - consider the name Joe Smith). However, have you heard of a court intervening to decide how long names can be ? Well, the German constitutional court has banned long names where a couple hyphenated their already hyphenated names, to make names with 3 words or more (link to article):

It was not the first time the court was forced to weigh in on the subject of names, which are regulated start to finish, fore to family, in Germany. This time, it was a Munich couple who decided to challenge the constitutionality of a 1993 rule limiting the names of married people to a single hyphen and two last names.
Frieda Rosemarie Thalheim, a Munich dentist, wanted to take the last name of her husband, Hans Peter Kunz-Hallstein, to become Frieda Rosemarie Thalheim-Kunz-Hallstein. The case brought Germany’s minister of justice before the court in Karlsruhe for oral arguments in February to defend the ban on what the Germans call “chain names.”

Being lashed for drinking alcohol

A lot of you would have seen revelries and festivals in many countries. Along with the carnival type of atmosphere, alcohol consumption is an intrinsic part of such celebrations. However, such is not the case everywhere. Alcohol is considered illegal and against religion in many Islamic countries, and people indulging in alcohol can be punished. This happened earlier in Malaysia, and now in the African country of Sudan, a Nigerian footballer was convicted of driving while drunk, and got a double sentence - one for driving drunk, and the other for drinking alcohol (link to article):

The 20-year-old forward, who joined the northern Sudan outfit in October 2008, was found guilty of drinking alcohol and driving under the influence by an east Khartoum court. Alcohol is illegal in the Muslim north of Sudan according to Article 78 of the penal code, although it is not in the semi-autonomous and largely non-Muslim south.
The forward's lawyer has appealed against the punishment for the player who had previously admitted in interviews that he had struggled to adapt to the different culture and religious life in Sudan.

Being lashed for drinking alcohol seems pretty weird, although being punished for driving while drunk is common and should be enforced.

13 year old Dutch girl wants to sail around the world

The craze to create records can make people do all sorts of things. But the expectation is that parents are there to control and guide the lives of children until they are capable of making their own decision. However, this does not always seem the case.
If you consider the art of sailing, it seems all fun and pleasure, out on the blue waters, under a nice sun, enjoying. However, if you consider a much longer journey, then not everything is such smooth sailing; you have storms, harsh weather, hot burning sun, engines break, and so on. Hardly something a 13 year old girl can manage alone, and yet her parents are fine with her attempting this. It took a court to bring some sense into this issue (link to article):

A Dutch court intervened Friday to stop a 13-year-old girl from attempting to sail around the world by herself, stripping her parents of sole custody. Laura Dekker's parents support her round-the-world ambition, which sparked concern from child protection officials because of her age. They took the case to court to prevent the solo trip.
Social workers took the action to stop the teen from attempting to become the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe because they believe the voyage would be too dangerous. "It's really more a question, is that person, that young person, mature enough to be able to look after themselves and deal with everything that's going to come at you when you get out alone at sea?" he said.

Seems more like an attempt to make a name for a person, or else a strong wish, not founded on more logical thinking, in some quarters, this could be called a 'death wish'.

Man sent to jail for yawning in courts

One knows that judges treat the courts as their domains, not letting anything happen in their can that could be seen as dis-respecting, or as subverting the majesty of the law. The law of contempt of court is made so that if a person acts in a way that could lower the dignity of the judge or the courtroom, then the person can be punished. For the whole judicial system to work, it is necessary that the entire judicial system is held with respect and seen to be efficient and un-biased; equally important is that judges do not misuse this facility and send people off to jail if they feel offended by something.
In this particular case, a person in the courtroom yawned loudly, to the extent that the judge felt that it was a deliberate attempt at being dis-respectful, and the person was sent off to jail for 6 months (link to article):

Drowsy spectators in one suburban Chicago courtroom might want to stifle their yawns from now on. Clifton Williams, 33, of Richton Park, is facing six months in jail for making what court documents call a yawn-like sound in Will county judge Daniel Rozak’s court last month. The yawn happened as Williams’ cousin, Jason Mayfield, was being sentenced for a drug charge.
Rozak found Williams in contempt of court and sentenced him to six months in jail. However, Rozak could free Williams after a status hearing, if Williams apologizes and the judge accepts.

Saudi professor to be lashed for meeting woman alone

Read this article, and was revolted by what I read. You do read from time to time that people have different cultures and social norms, but there must be some amount of humanity to all norms. Saudi Arabia has strict interpretations of what a female can do and cannot do (more controls on what she cannot do), but the bottom line is that freedoms that others take for granted are not available to her. In this case, a professor in Saudi Arabia is going to be in prison for 8 months and be lashed 150 times for the big crime of meeting a woman alone:

A Saudi Arabian man is to get 150 lashes and spend eight months in prison after he was caught meeting a woman without a chaperone in a coffee shop.
Muhammad Ali Abu Raziza, a psychology professor in Mecca, was arrested by the Kingdom’s feared religious police, the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. He was accused of breaking the Islamic injunctions under the Khilwa code, which restricts the independence of women. It stipulates that women must not meet men alone, other than relatives.

Now, there are many people who would say that this is the way that the society over there is governed and this is the choice that people have made, but that is nonsense. Just because some societies had the policy of apartheid does not mean that the world let that continue; and further, Saudi Arabia is not a democratic country where people have made this choice - this is a decision by the rulers to have such laws so that they get the support of the religious clergy.

Client-attorney privilege keeps man in prison

Imagine that you have been prosecuted for a crime that you did not commit; and then you discover that there were people who knew that you could be innocent, or that there was enough information that could be available that put your trial in question and the legal matter of attorney-client privilege was the reason that you spent so many additional years in prison. This is a case that shows how a regulation can end up harming the life of a human; but in the end, the person would have been happy that he eventually got out of prison:

A man locked away 26 years for murder was granted a new trial and freed on bail Friday with the help of two attorneys who came forward with a client's confession after the client died in prison. Two attorneys recently revealed that their former client, Andrew Wilson, admitted committing the crime that sent Logan to prison, but attorney-client privilege had kept them from coming forward.
Wilson's death last year allowed the attorneys to unseal an affidavit stating that Logan was not responsible for the fatal shooting of security guard Lloyd Wickliffe at a McDonald's restaurant in January 1982. Dale Coventry, one of the attorneys who signed the affidavit, said Friday night that he hopes prosecutors will acknowledge that they went in the wrong direction with the case.

It was good for Logan (the wrongfully sentenced person) that he finally got a chance to get out of jail and enjoy life again, although one is not sure whether he will get compensation for wrongful imprisonment. And even though the attorneys did the wright thing, maybe they could have explored some actions to take the right action earlier.

Horrific crime: Cooking a baby in a microwave

A father was sentenced to 25 years in prison for badly hurting his daughter in a microwave; yes you read that right - a father actually put his baby girl in a microwave in a hotel and cooked her for 10-20 seconds, causing so much harm that the infant, now in the custody of a foster mother, has spent a prolonger period under treatment. How more horrific can this get ? The father claimed that he was insane at that time, a defense not bought by the jury (given that he first hit his own daughter, put her in a safe and then a refrigerator, before actually putting her in the microwave):

His daughter Ana's foster mother fought back tears as she detailed how after being injured, the girl's left hand was so burned that there was no skin, no muscle, no fat, only tendon and bone. Ana suffered second- and third-degree burns to her left ear, cheek, hand and shoulder and has required several skin grafts. Part of her left ear had to be amputated.
Prosecutors said Mauldin hurt his daughter because he was angry that he was in a loveless marriage and he didn't want to take care of the infant. They also said Mauldin had a history of violence and of lying about being mentally ill to get out of trouble. Cammack said Mauldin has been wracked by mental illness since he was 10. Mauldin claimed he started hallucinating when he was left alone in the hotel room with his daughter, feeling like mud was running up his body and consuming him.

Maybe what the defendant, Joshua Mauldin said was true. How can any sane person actually put his own daughter into a microwave ? You have to be mentally ill to do something like that.

Cruise ship debt leaves people stuck midway

Imagine going a cruise, having spent anywhere between $ 10,000 - $40,000 per person for this cruise. You are having a nice time, traveling to exotic islands on the cruise in fine weather and having fun on a great ship as well. You are almost done with the cruise, with the last leg, and you are looking forward to another great time. And then suddenly, you find yourself nowhere because the cruise ship has been seized. This actually happened, if you read this story.

Several hundred passengers on a luxury round-the-world cruise-ship tour were stuck Thursday on an island in the Atlantic Ocean after the vessel's owners ran into legal troubles. The 460 passengers and 200 crew members were marooned after their cruise ship sailed into a port in the Madeira Islands, a Portuguese archipelago about 684 kilometers (425 miles) west of Morocco.
Portuguese authorities detained the ship -- the Van Gogh -- on Tuesday because of a legal claim against the ship's owners, said Marcus Neal, operations manager for Van Gogh Cruises. They seized it in the port of Funchal, a city of about 100,000. The passengers were making their next-to-last stop on a 93-day cruise around the world. They paid between $12,000 and $44,000 for the voyage.

So even though the passengers can leave, most of them are staying on, hoping for the situation to get resolved. And of course, there is a sense of puzzlement as to why the legal action happened during the cruise, putting passengers to some trouble (although by doing so, there is a higher amount of pressure to get this situation resolved).

British Man jailed in Slovakia for jumping nude into a fountain

Well, he was actually jailed in May end, sentenced to 2 months in prison for jumping naked into a fountain during drunken revelry, was released early (after 10 days).
What happened earlier ? Well, this guy was due to be married on June 15, so during some pre-marriage celebration in Bratislava near the end of May, he obviously had too much to drink, and then jumped naked into a fountain. This sort of display was obviously not appreciated by the Slovakian police, who arrested him, and he was then sentenced to a 2 month prison sentence.
He looked all set to miss the marriage date, and then his parents rushed to Slovakia to help him, and the British Foreign Office intervened as well, and he was finally released a few days ago; presumably his marriage date stands.

Peeking at roommates through hidden cameras

Technology works in strange ways, it can assist criminal activities by misuse of available technology. For example, the technological drive towards making things smaller makes it far easier to conceal cameras in inconvenient ways. So, camera phones are now banned from a lot of gyms and public swimming pools.
In another incident, a voyeur placed a small camera concealed in a shampoo bottle inside a bathroom used by female roommates so as to be able to take pictures and videos of them when they were undressed. He was caught only when another roommate got curious about the shampoo bottle and noticed wires trailing from the back (does that mean if he used a wireless camera, he would never have been caught ?). When police were called in to investigate, they found the wires eventually leading to another roommates TV.
Now the fellow is sitting in jail with numerous charges on him. However, what he has done will make the other roommates more paranoid, and far less willing to trust someone or share with another person. Such invasion of someone's privacy and betrayal of trust needs to be severly punished.

A peculiar gift item

What people will do to impress their loved ones ? In an unusual trial, a young New Jersey doctor was accused of cutting a hand from a body that was scheduled for cremation. He wanted it for purely personal reasons. A stripper he had met earlier wanted a hand, and he eagerly complied.
However, it is very clear that you just cannot cut a hand from a dead body, and is illegal. The doctor's defense is that he was immature and did not know that it was illegal. He was sentenced to 15 months probation, which means that if he does this again in the time period of 15 months, he could be sentenced to 5 years in jail. In a slap on the wrist, he was fined $5000. The stripper was also charged with the crime, and was sentenced to counselling. Read the full story.

Police officer tickets himself

In an interesting touch about honesty, a police chief in Wisconsin (US) had committed a traffic violation by driving past a stopped school bus that had lights flashing. No one seemed to notice, except for this guy's honesty, since he wrote himself a ticket, fined himself $225 and docked some points off his driving record. And the way the story seems to originate is through court records and getting slowly picked up by the media.
This has naturally put a lot of people interested in such a honest person. He has got emails from far and wide, and got offers by people to pay off the fine as well. Read the full news here.

Sex with dead deer not illegal

Legal cases can take on a lot of different varieties. This is a very interesting case. A man admitted to having sexual relations with a dead deer. In the face of it, in Wisconsin, US, there is a law called "crimes against sexual morality" that disallows relations with animals. It seems so strange; first a person having intercourse with an animal, and that too, a dead animal.
The defence lawyer claims that a carcass is not an animal any more. So, the entire case is hinged on the question of whether a dead animal is indeed an 'animal' as per the law. Subsequently, the judge has to decide on whether the dead animal is an animal as per the law. Lucky judge.
The prosecutor though pointed out an example of a dead pet dog still being referred to as a pet, indicating that common language does not distinguish between a dead animal and a living animal. Whatever be the case, the judge has promised to deliver a judgement by the next session.