A jury in Wabash found Scott Pattison guilty of sffocating his wife Lisa with a barbell on their weight bench. Now his lawyer, in a real stretch, is seeking to have a mistrial declared:
According to the motion, while the jury was deliberating they ran different tests on the weight bench. At one point two female jurors, who presumably weighed less that Lisa, got on the bench to see if there was any way not to get from underneath.
It really is going to be a looooong session:
INDIANAPOLIS — The 117th session of the Indiana General Assembly doesn't open for business for another month, but the process of lawmaking is already under way. More than 900 requests for assistance have been submitted by state lawmakers to the Legislative Services Agency, the bill-drafting and research arm of the legislature.
Some things just aren't meant to be. This might be one of them:
The Alliance of Responsible Alcohol Retailers today is resuming a campaign to change Indiana law so retailers can sell alcohol on Sunday and to expand cold beer sales beyond liquor stores.
Good luck with that:
A law on the books since 1969 requires Hoosiers to pay a use tax, which essentially is a state tax for any purchase where Indiana sales tax is not collected. Online retailers that do not have a physical presence in the state are not required to charge sales tax.
So Hoosiers who buy merchandise and aren't charged a tax must report that on their spring tax returns.
Juxtaposition of the day. From a California case:
A majority of the Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed prepared to uphold a court order that California reduce the population of its overcrowded prisons by more than 40,000 inmates, despite dire warnings that "people are going to die on the streets of California" if the release is approved.
Steve Chapman of Reason magazine on why motorcycle helmets do not constitute a "public health issue," which is the argument being used by the National Transportation Safety Board in urging Congress to make them mandatory:
Will we get to the point where just leaving the house means we are giving our implied consent to be stopped and searched anywhere, any time?
Janet Napolitano hinted this week that the body scanners and "enhanced" pat-downs that have caused a ruckus at airports across the country could be coming to a train station, port or subway near you.
Now that Fort Wayne has joined the "accommodating bicycles" trend, could ugly disputes be in our future?
You remember "12 Angry Men," in which one juror with doubts persuaded all 11 other jury members to switch their votes to innocent. This is the way such things more often happen in real life:
Jurors in the Chandra Levy murder trial could have rendered a verdict as early as Friday, after just two days of deliberations. In fact, all but one of the jurors were convinced that Ingmar Guandique had accidentally killed the young government intern during a robbery.
Today's quiz. Which one of these Supreme Court justices would your rather trust the First Amendment to? First, there's Stephen Breyer, one of the "living Constitution," change-the-meaning-to-suit-the-times guys:
