Lead Stories
Court Docket
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In January Edmond James Ramos saw his first-degree burglary charge (burglary of an occupied dwelling, a more serious crime than burglary of a vacant dwelling) thrown out by an appeals court in Los Angeles. Ramos’s lawyer had demonstrated that the only occupant in the dwelling that night had passed away of natural causes minutes prior to Ramos’s entry; thus, it was legally empty.
In Santa Cruz, California, Danis Rivera, 25, rejected a plea bargain in February that would have sent him to prison for one year for having sex with underage girls. At the ensuing trial he constantly spit at court personnel and finally had to be outfitted with a Hannibal Lecter-type bonnet over his face. He was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison. And in a Providence, Rhode Island, courtroom in April, Latin King gangster George “Animal” Perry, on trial for murder and racketeering, grew frustrated at the length of the prosecutor’s closing argument, which was denying him a much-needed rest room break. Perry rose from his chair, unzipped his fly, and took one anyway.
Saint Charles Catholic Church in Picayune, Mississippi, and nearby Saint Margaret Mary Church in Slidell, Louisiana, posted security ushers at their doors in February to make sure that parishioners were not pocketing communion wafers. Devil-worshiping ceremonies often involve the symbolic desecration of wafers, and the churches’ leaders began to fear a local satanic conspiracy after six people were seen leaving Saint Charles in December with their wafers.
In March a busboy at a Marriott resort in Key West, Florida, allegedly shot and killed a supervisor who had apparently criticized his method of loading the dishwasher. And in May, police in Helena, Arkansas, detained a 15-year-old boy they suspected shot his older sister to death after a dispute over which one of them would wash the dishes.
