You?re sane! Now we?re going to kill you
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.
Government in Action
The newly installed municipal sewer system in the Florida Keys town of Islamorada was scheduled to go on line in May, but the real test will come shortly after that if the town cannot hook up a threshold number of residents to allow the system full, efficient functioning. The fallback plan, according to the town government, will require it to buy enough out-of-town sewage to boost the weak flow that would be running through the system.
? Are We Safe? To free up soldiers for war-zone duty, the Army hires contractors to man the gates at 57 domestic installations, including Fort Bragg and West Point, but in April, the Government Accountability Office announced that, despite three warnings, some of the contractors continue to hire an alarming number of convicted felons as security guards.
? Last year, New York Gov. George Pataki, criticizing the legislature’s spending priorities, deplored wasting money on trivial state projects like “cheese museums and pro wrestling halls of fame.” In 2006, however, another $5,000 of state funds went to the Cuba (N.Y.) Cheese Museum, from a fund nominally controlled by Pataki. The Cuba Cheese Museum is not to be confused with the New York State Museum of Cheese in Rome, N.Y.
Great Art
? 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 Continuing Campaign to Make Everything Perfect
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.
Least Competent People
In Red Deer, Alberta, in April, Jesse Maggrah, 20, listening through earphones to heavy-metal music while walking on Canadian Pacific Railway tracks, was hit from behind by a train moving at about 30 mph, but survived. In his hospital bed (broken ribs, punctured lung, other injuries), Maggrah said he remembers the immediate aftermath: “I thought, ‘Holy crap, dude, you just got hit by a train.'” “Maybe the metal gods above were smiling on me, and they didn’t want one of their true warriors to die on them.”
? Least Competent Pervert: Benjamin Thornton, 20, was charged with impersonating a police officer and attempted kidnapping in Pearland, Texas, in April, after he allegedly confessed he had tried ruses to molest adolescent girls more than 100 times, “all unsuccessfully.” In the latest case, he tried to convince a 9-year-old girl that the toy she had could not legally be held by anyone waiting for a school bus, but the girl was too smart for him.
Update
The annual for-real crucifixion rituals in San Pedro Cutud, Philippines, took place again this Easter, with at least nine martyrs allowing themselves to be nailed to crosses. Among those scheduled was Scottish media personality (and lapsed Catholic) Dominick Diamond, who publicly vowed in February to endure the 4-inch nails this year as a way of respiritualizing himself. However, when his time came, Diamond knelt before the cross, prayed, contemplated the blood and pain of those before him, started crying and was taken away in an ambulance, as the unforgiving crowd jeered.
Prodigies
Budhia Singh, 4, of Bhubaneswar, India, has been a runner for two years, and on May 2 (under the watchful eye of his coach) ran 40 miles in about seven hours (but doctors quoted in a Reuters dispatch severely criticized the coach for setting Singh up for cartilage damage and other ailments).
And Terry Durham of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has been preaching since he was 4, and now at age 8, in his suit and alligator shoes, holds forth at the True Gospel Deliverance Ministry church and elsewhere in the state. Durham, described in a South Florida Sun-Sentinel profile, kicks his leg in the air and wails, “The Lord makes you feel good. He says, ‘Who am I?’ I am Doctor Feelgood.’ Yeah!”
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.