Well, not much time for blogging these days - - - but to update the Aides Task Force story I covered previously, William Selkirk was finally convicted and sentenced on the Fayette County criminal charges. The entry from the court, reported on Doxpop, reads as follows:

Sentencing - State appears by Bette Jones; Defendant appears with David Butsch; Def is convicted of Forgery, C Felony; Credit Card Fraud, D Felony & Check Deception, an A Misdemeanor;Def sentenced to 6 yrs on Forgery concurrent to 2 yrs on Credit Card Fraud concurrent to 1 yr on Check Deception; $164 Court Costs A Judgment of restitution entered against def payble to C & P Engineering in the amount of $2,792.72;IPUF$50 MPUF$20,ADM FEE $$100. 40 hours comm service Sentence to be served on Home Detention.

This entry was for a sentencing that, reportedly occurred on November 21st. The entry inputted into Doxpop this morning.

From reading it, I think I know what it means - He was convicted of 2 felonies and sentenced to a total term of 2 years in prison. However, I don’t understand the final phrase “to be served on Home Detention.” Does this mean that the entire 2 year term is on home detention?

For the history on this issue see these posts: Aids Task Force: Update and Wayne County Aids Task Force: Prosecution Time.

William Selkirk faced 10 felony counts in Wayne County arising out of his time as the director of the non-profit. HE plead guilty back in 2007 to 3 D Felony Theft charges, got no time in jail, 1 year of probation, and was ordered to pay restitution of about $8,000.

He finished off his 1 year on probation, paid the restitution and the court dropped the felony convictions down to misdemeanors on July 18, 2008, per the agreement of the parties.

He also faced a set of charges in Fayette County, Indiana, filed back in February of 2006. That case had been set for trial for October 27, 2008, but Mr. Selkirk plead guilty as charged on October 23, 2008. He plead guilty in to a C Felony forgery charge, a D Felony credit card fraud charge and an A misdemeanor deception charge - sentencing is set for November 23, 2008. With no agreement on file, this would appear to be a “mercy plea,” meaning the trial judge would determine the sentences based on the statutory ranges.

Whitney L. Stump of Muncie gained some recognition when he was arrested for criminal mischief up in Delaware County after he repainted his own crosswalk on the street near his home.

He grew frustrated with motorist who blew through a stop sign at a nearby intersection, and the City’s refusal to install a fix, so he painted his own crosswalk.

Well the prosecutor has  dismissed the case. [Star Press]

The Indiana Gov. just signed House Bill 1271 (PDF). For those of you (most, I assume) not following that particular measure, it takes criminal offenders in a certain category and effectively raises their sentences.

How? Currently, in Indiana, a prisoner gets “2 for 1″ credit time, meaning - if they mind their manners, they will only serve 1/2 their stated sentence: Two days credit for 1 day served. This upsets people all the time, but in the system, we have already adjusted our heads to it, so we know going into a case how much time is actually at stake. What the 2 for 1 gives us is great incentive to get prisoners to stay out of trouble in the joint - if they get in trouble, they can loose their credit time.

The Department of Correction keeps track of where people are on their credit status by assigning them classes: Credit class I is 2 for 1, credit class II gets 1 day credit for 2 days served, etc, all the way up to class IV, in which you have to serve 6 days to get 1 day credit.

What the new law does is say that certain child molesters (kids under 12 or injury/death results) and certain murderers (again, victim of sex crimes or witnesses to sex crimes) can only get credit class IV. If you or someone you care about is facing one of these cases, they might want to hurry up: the new law goes into effect for convictions after June 30, 2008.

Alexander maintains innocence is the title of the follow-up piece in the Star Press on Michael Alexander’s arrest:

“I did not conspire to bribe any witness and I never conspired to bribe a witness in my entire career, ” said Alexander, who has practiced law for 33 years. “There is no reason why a defense attorney ever would.”

The article has additional background on Alexander’s investigator, Jeff Hinds, who was subject to an investigation in relation to a guy who was killed outside of Alexander’s law office in 2000:

Henry County Prosecutor Kit Crane - appointed special prosecutor in that case last June - eventually concluded “that Jeff Hinds was justified in using reasonable force against Scott Bartlett to protect himself from what Jeff Hinds reasonably believed to be the imminent use of unlawful force.” Police raided Hinds’ Hamilton Township home in February 2005 and said they seized approximately a half pound of marijuana, several vials of steroids, $10-$15,000 in cash and several guns. Charges stemming from the raid were ultimately dismissed after a judge ruled the raid had been improperly conducted.

Story sort of reads like a Nero Wolf novel gone wrong. . . .

Former Delaware County Prosecuting attorney, Michael J. Alexander, who now apparently does criminal law, was arrested yesterday at his office by county and federal agents. He is accused of witness tampering, bribery and/or conspiracy for these offenses - The Star Press says he was charged with bribery as a class C felony (Ex-county prosecutor, private investigator charged in bribery probe). Delaware County shows that James D. Luttrull, acting as a special prosecutor, filed for an arrest warrant on Tuesday. The case is pending in Delaware Circuit Court III before judge Robert L. Barnet.

The account of the crime in the Star Press is a little to circuitous for me the follow, but at heart, Alexander is accused of employing a private investigator to act as a go between to funnel payments to a witness in one of his client’s case. I say the story is not clear in that is start out saying that Alexander’s client (Bryant) was paying a guy, Stanley Chrisp and his 2 sons $20,000 to change their testimony-which had been against Bryant, but the story ends with Chrisp recording a conference with Alexander in which Alexander is request for an accounting of his $50,000 (!) fee, at which point Alexander allegedly agrees to refund $5,000. I just can’t see how it was that Chrisp paid $50K when he was getting bought off for part of $20k, but I am probably missing something.

Apparently some discussions happened between the PI working for Alexander, without direct involvement of Alexander - sounds like a lot of folks with felony convictions and/or pending charges making accusations of payoffs against an attorney - Should be interesting to watch.

What I found interesting about this case is that this Michael J. Alexander is the same attorney who made an appearance in the Indiana Supreme Court case Outback Steakhouse vs. Markley (PDF -856 N.E.2d 65 (IND. 2007)). This is another case involving funny business with a witness: A waitress at Outback was interviewed by Alexander and his investigator, but never disclosed to the other side. This later caused the verdict to come undone:

The alleged injured parties were hit by a person served alcohol at the restaurant. Their counsel did not reveal that the restaurant’s waitress said she served the person alcohol when intoxicated. She then deposed that he was not intoxicated, after which she testified, at trial, he was intoxicated. The supreme court held not identifying her in response to the restaurant’s interrogatory as one with knowledge of relevant facts breached discovery duties, whether or not counsel intended to call her, and, with a closing argument that the restaurant did not keep its promise that the waitress would say the person was not intoxicated, was misconduct allowing relief from judgment, as the restaurant’s defense was prejudiced.

(Lexis case summary).

Attorney for Randolph County, John Tanner, is not commenting on the lawsuit filed by Maxwell, Inc. against the county. The county has yet to formally answer the lawsuit, and Tanner cited the pending litigation as the reason he could not further elaborate on the issue of the legality of the county’s CAFO moratorium.

House Bill 1276 has cleared the Indiana Senate Judiciary Committee and it on its way to the full senate (it’s already cleared the house). This is the so-called “Tarra’s bill,” which I have previously commented on here.

An aside, I always get a kick out of strange sentencing provisions, like when judges sentence defendants to to put a sign in their yard, or hang a picture up of someone they have hurt. In Valparaiso, Porter County Superior judge David Chidester ordered a woman to keep the remains of her totaled vehicle in her front yard during her 3 years of probation for OWI - She hit another driver and tested .317. link (Indy Star).

Keeping the price of pot in Pittsburgh nice and high:

Police recovered almost 15 pounds of marijuana Tuesday afternoon that they said had a street value of $37,500 after stopping a Pennsylvania man for what they said was unsafe lane movement. A vehicle driven by Shawn Wormack, 34, of New Salem, Pa., was stopped on Interstate 70 near the Centerville rest area, said Scott Owens of the Richmond Police Department.

Police make I-70 drug bust (Pal-Item)

A grad student from Ball State, up in Muncie decided to take matters into his own hands when the city refused to put in a pedestrian crosswalk on the street in front of his house: He went to Wal-Mart, got some paint and put in in himself. He was arrested by city police and charged with Criminal Mischief. After he was charged, he went back to touch up the paint on the crosswalk and the state hit him with a second count. Ultimately, he missed a court dated and ended up with 10 hours in jail.

He is unrepentant: He plans to install 3 more crosswalks at the intersection.

Man Jailed For Creating Crosswalk, Vows More (WRTV Indianapolis).

House Bill 1276 passed the Indiana House, says the Pal Item. My previous comments on this provision are available here.

The Pal-Item has an article about House Bill 1276, a bill introduced by Rep. Pflum in response to a local murder. It’s a good example of how bad cases make trouble in the law.

Every statutory code, from Indiana’s to the federal code, is choked full of junk that came about because of odd circumstances or one-time interests of important people. The hard thing is that this leads to the rest of having to wade through statutory muck on every routine matter.

Tarra Pickett of Cambridge City, Indiana was murdered in 2007. The man charged with the crime was, at the time of the killing, a convicted sex offender and out on bond for a pending sexual offense. Many people were outraged that a convicted sex offender could get bond on a new sexual offense and blamed the murder on the justice system leaving this man out among us. The trouble is, the man is entitled to bond under Indiana’s constitution, and the setting of bond must be done in a rational matter.

The new bill - if passed - would actually give a benefit to the very people it is aimed at: sexually violent predators. Why? In the basic criminal case, the judge reads the affidavit of probable cause and determines the bond without any hearing. Generally, the bond is set according to a stated schedule, based on the pending charge and other factors. If the defendant does not like the bond, they have to file a motion to modify the bond and wait for the judge to get an opening on his or her calendar to hear it. HB1276 would give people charged with sex crimes and who already meet the requirements for being a sexually violent predator an automatic bond hearing.

Presumably, the judge, in a “public hearing” (what other types of hearings do we have in criminal cases?) will be pressured by the public opinion and impose a high bond, but I doubt the public nature of the hearing will impact a judge’s calculus on this issue. Other than put in the requirement of the hearing, the law does not otherwise alter the standard for the setting of the bond. So in the end, it makes the code a little longer for a pretty rare circumstance, and doesn’t have much practical impact, other than give these “predators” an automatic bond hearing. . . .

A 50 year old man is arrested for failing to register as a sex offender because, 31 years ago, when he was about 18 or 19, he committed rape. This is breaking news? :Violent sex offender arrested in Muncie - Pal-Item.

Also in today’s morning news update at the Pal-Item is a report on a brilliant piece of criminal work. NPR does a report today on Infamous hijacker D.B. Cooper, rumored to have pulled off the crime of the century and gotten away (or, he might have died, who knows) and a Muncie man holds up a convenience store use a note written on his own ATM receipt:
Man in custody after writing holdup note on his ATM receipt.

Back in law school, we studied the ins and outs of criminal culpability under the always entertaining Henry Karlson.The professor took us through the complexity of a possession case. Possession, under the criminal law, is more that the fact of possession: In order to be “in possession” of something (like drugs or a gun), you must have knowledge of your possession. Not only that, possession can include items within your zone of control, like the vehicle you are driving, or the apartment you are renting.

So the question he posed was, can 2 people be charged with possession of the same thing? The answer, yes, if both are in the vicinity of the item and both have knowledge of the item. So if the police bust in and you and your buddy are sitting at a table with a marijuana cigarette on it, you both could be charged and convicted of possession, or as Prof. Karson put it “joint Possession.”

Clearly, more than one person can do things like rob a bank, but this pair breaks new ground in the area of joint responsibility:

Two Dorchester men were arrested for operating the same vehicle while intoxicated in the Abbotsford area. Harvey J. Miller, 43, who has no legs, was steering the 1985 Chevrolet truck from the driver’s seat while Edwin H. Marzinske, 55, operated the brake and gas pedals, according to the Colby/Abbotsford Police report.

Miller admitted he was too drunk to drive but argued he wasn’t operating the vehicle because he couldn’t push the pedals. Miller was issued a citation for a third drunk driving offense, while Marzinske was cited for a second. Both men were also cited for operating after revocation.

Link.

The conservative came to Ball State University in Muncie to speak, only to have 2 students try to hit him with a pie:

One student quickly approached Horowitz in a doorway during an interview with NewsLink Indiana and attempted to hit him with a cream pie. The pie missed Horowitz and instead hit Gene Burton, the university public safety director and Horowitz’ bodyguard for the night.

Link. (Newslink Indiana)

The author was also nice enough to throw some words at a university professor, George Wolfe, one of Horowitz’s “101 Most Dangerous Academics” and the university president Jo Ann Gora.

The pie technique harkens back to the incident at Earlham College involving conservative William Kristol (see: YouTube - Bill Kristol Gets What’s Coming To Him).

Wabash Environmental Technologies, LLC, received a NPDES permit to take pharmaceutical manufacturing wastewater, treat it, and discharge it into the Wabash River. The permit required the company to test the water coming in and going out, and set limits on pollutants in both. The company had to submit to the results of the testing to IDEM. Allegedly, when the operator found that the results violated the pollutant limitation, he started altering the reports:

Derrik Hagerman, president and owner of Wabash Environmental Technologies LLC, was indicted Wednesday on 36 felony violations of the federal Clean Water Act for creating false reports of analytical results of wastewater discharged into the Wabash River.

Hagerman faces a maximum of 72 years in prison and up to $900,000 in fines. Each violation carries a penalty of up to two years in prison and a fine up to $250,000, according to a news release from U.S. Attorney Steven DeBrota and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney David Mucha, who are prosecuting the case.

Link (Tribune-Star)

So much of our lives are negotiated with strangers on the telephone these days. Customer and technical support calls are a near daily reality, and many of us have lost the ability to maintain that good old telephone courtesy in the face of an endless line of strangers and computers. I know I have talked to hundreds of such folk, with Dell, Verizon and Insight being at the top of the list.

I generally try to keep things on a polite level, but sometimes that is hard to do. A 35 year old Indianapolis resident is learning now that in some arenas, loosing your cool on the phone can cost you big time.

Emmanuel Steele picked up a driving while license suspended charge over here in Wayne County. He was ordered to appear for an initial hearing on June 15th. The Indianapolis father of 3 kids faxed in a request for a continuance on the 14th as he claimed his wife was recovering from surgery. The judge in Wayne Superior Court 3 denied the continuance the same day, and when a member of the court staff called to inform Mr. Steele that he still needed to appear the next morning, something happened during that call that ended up with Mr. Steele in the Wayne County jail.

Steele claims (in a letter in today’s Pal-Item) that the court staffer was rude. The court staffer told her boss (the judge) that Mr. Steele called her a name. The next morning, when Steele showed up (late) for the hearing, the judge handed him 30 days for contempt, and asked for an apology. When Steele instead tried to dispute the nature of the phone call, the sentence was upped to 120 days. Now Mr. Steele writes to the paper, lamenting the fate of his family and employment as he sits in jail until October.

Last week I heard some chatter about this down at the courthouse. It reminded some of the incident a few years back when the former judge of that court handed a college student a contempt sentence for falling asleep in his courtroom. That case got lots of media coverage, and the judge ultimately relented and let her out early. I don’t think Mr. Steele’s case is quit as surprising. The thing is, this court is made up of very nice people. They treat everyone with respect and courtesy. Most people leave the court amazed at how nice everyone was. But there is a limit, and apparently, Mr. Steele managed to find it, right off the bat.

There is an interesting discussion in the comments to my midwife posts (read here and this post) about the legal status of unlicensed midwives in Indiana. So called “direct entry” midwives practice arts aiding women in traditions that go back before written history. Many feel that the government has no role in regulating the activities of these midwives, but that’s not how government works.

Actually, Ms. Williams is a certified professional midwife, meaning that she was certified by the North American Registry of Midwives. But there is no recognition of such a designation in Indiana Law.

In reality, traditional non-licensed midwives operate in a legal gray area in Indiana. Typically, since they do not have offices or advertise, they are under the radar of state officials, operating on word of mouth, and in the privacy of people’s homes. Their activities come to light when there is a problem, as in the Williams case, where a child died in birth.

The article I cited yesterday on the Williams case (link) notes that some state at least recognize non-licensed midwives, limiting them from actually delivering babies. Indiana does not cover this issue.

Instead, Indiana’s regulatory scheme says, in effect, a “midwife” is a licensed midwife, and “practicing midwifery” is the performance of activities by a licensed midwife. This circular definition does not tell us what, if anything, an unlicensed midwife can do. You can read the whole nursing code, which regulates the licensing of midwives, and you will not find an answer to that question. (Indiana Nursing Licensure Laws and Regulations, A Compilation from the Indiana Code and Indiana Administrative Code. PDF). The use of the word “midwife” does not resolve the issue. If we instead call unlicensed midwives “female’s assistants” in Indiana, haven’t we escaped the regulations entirely?

So, the activities of an unlicensed midwife are left to be governed by Indiana’s general medical licensing statute. Indiana Code (IC) 25-22.5-8-1 says it is unlawful to practice medicine without a license. IC 25-22.5-8-2 says it is a class D felony to practice midwifery without a license. IC 25-22.5-1-1.1 defines the “practice of medicine” in extremely broad terms, including holding oneself out to the public as being engaged in:

1. the diagnosis, treatment, correction, or prevention of any disease, ailment, defect, injury, infirmity, deformity, pain, or other condition of human beings;
2. the suggestion, recommendation, or prescription or administration of any form of treatment, without limitation;
3. the performing of any kind of surgical operation upon a human being, including tattooing, except for tattooing (as defined in IC 35-42-2-7), in which human tissue is cut, burned, or vaporized by the use of any mechanical means, laser, or ionizing radiation, or the penetration of the skin or body orifice by any means, for the intended palliation, relief, or cure; or
4. the prevention of any physical, mental, or functional ailment or defect of any person.

Certainly the “treatment” of and “other condition of human beings” would seem to cover a midwife helping a woman with a pregnancy, but this provision is so broad, I would probably be practicing medicine by telling a client to take an Advil for a headache. (aside: Did I practice medicine when I cut the umbilical cord for my son?). The practical effect of such a broad provision is to give the regulators complete discretion as to what to prohibit and what to let slide. The problem with this is that we do not know if something will be unlawful until the regulators come out and say it is.

I assume that the regulators would not stop a mother from telling her daughter things about her pregnancy to help her out. I also assume that, if someone became known as being knowledgeable about pregnancy issues, and friends and neighbors called on her for advice with their pregnancies, the state would not treat this as the practice of medicine. But where is the line in the sand? What specific actions of a midwife are the practice of medicine? Is it the payment of compensation? The statute does not mention that. If so, are volunteer unlicensed midwives legal?

After reading through all of this, I guess I would have to agree with the contention that Indiana law is unclear a to what an unlicensed midwife can do in the State of Indiana.

As an update to this post, the Indy Star reports today that the midwife (Jennifer Williams) has decide to accept a plea:

Jennifer Louisa Williams, 54, Bloomington, will not go to prison, but instead agreed to a year’s probation and to not practice midwifery or medcine during that year, according to Shelby County Prosecutor R. Kent Apsley.

Link.

The article mentions the lawsuit she filed against the attorney general seeking to clarify Indiana law regarding midwives, but does not indicate whether the suit will be maintained by Ms. Williams.

For broader coverage on this issue, I recommend you head over to The Mommy Blawger, a site I discovered when she posted a comment to my last post on the subject.

“The law is a mess,” Williams’ attorney, Michael Ausbrook, told The Herald-Times for a story Tuesday. “Because of the mess, we’re not claiming we know exactly what it is, but we’re pretty sure what it’s not.”

A man who police said waited in a car while an accomplice allegedly robbed a pharmacy faces a murder charge in his partner’s death under a seldom-used Indiana law.

Indiana law says that if a defendant engages in a felony crime and a person gets killed in the commission of that crime, then the defendant can be charged for murder.