I must apologize to you all for not having updated The Crime Blog recently. I have been extremely busy with studying for my mid-term exams. Now that they're over, I will once again be posting starting with the news of the coroners report of Anna Nicole Smith to be released early this week.
Stay tuned for more updates!
Welcome to the second episode of The Crime Blog Podcast.
You may have noticed some new things going on here. Not only will the podcast focus on criminal highlights, but also major issues that are currently in litigation within the court system, controversial issues, and news events that have an impact on society. Music has been added to help polish off the podcast.
Episode 2 - Topics of discussion:
- Jesus costume for Halloween? Not at a public school!
- Obese 8-year old~200lbs. and social services
- Mother coaches children to fake retardation
- Geese speak to a killer, 'They told me to do it'
- CIA Leak deliberations
- Taliban assassination attempt on Dick Cheney (suicide bombing)
- Nicolas Jacobsen, hacker of T-Mobile and The U.S. Secret Service
The Crime Blog Podcast >> Episode 02 (11:14)
A judge has ordered that Anna Nicole Smith's body be given to the custody of the guardian of Smith's infant daughter. Judge Seidlin made no secret of his wishes: "I want her buried with her son in the Bahamas," he told a stunned courtroom. "I want them to be together."
However, the mother of Smith, Virgie Arthur, said she will formally appeal this decision today (Friday, February 23, 2007) in Florida's 4th District Court of Appeals.
"I'm very grateful that Anna Nicole's wishes are going to be carried out," Stern told reporters outside the courthouse. "That's all that matters."
Said Birkhead: "We all loved Anna and it's in her best interest to come together."
The medical examiner, Joshua Perper, predicted the appeal would be dismissed in short order. "Probably in a day or two there's going to be a final decision," he told reporters. "So we'll be able to make the arrangements."After a five day trial, Steven Bixby (39) of South Carolina has been convicted of the shooting
deaths of two police officers that were at his parents home over an argument regarding 20-feet of land that would be used to widen a highway. Bixby's mother (Rita Bixby, 74) was charged as an accessory due to the fact that she had prior knowledge of the father and son threatening to shoot police if they stepped on their land (even though she wasn't home at the time of the murders).
Bixby wrote than 1,500 pages worth of letters to his former girlfriend Alane Taylor with a year of his 2003 arrest. In them, Bixby justifies his actions, calling them "right and correct in God's eyes."
"I started to cry but I got refocused on the job," he wrote to Taylor. "If we had wanted to, that whole day would have been an entire bloodbath."
The letters include ramblings about the significance of some numbers, including mathematical equations involving his birth date, age and length of jail time.
He says God "wants all the evil to be exposed" and mentions a premonition of the shootout: "I saw this in a dream about a month before it happened."
"We the people are a majority," Bixby wrote. "The laws were made to protect us from the police."I'm currently working on the second episode of the podcast, and after getting some feedback on the first, I will be improving it a bit. It will be more dynamic and energetic, I'll write a tighter script to keep myself from saying 'ummm' or 'uhh' and I'll try to do some more things that will hopefully make it a more professional podcast and also more entertaining for the listener.
On another note, thank you for subscribing to the feed and/or podcast. I didn't think The Crime Blog would start taking off the way it has, it's a great surprise!
Here's a run down of subscribers so far, I'm happy to see that there is a wide variety of people reading and tuning in!
Conservative Arizona Senator John McCain said in his latest in South Carolina, "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned..." McCain also stated that he would appoint judges who "strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States and do not legislate from the bench" should he be elected for the presidency in 2008.
Roe v Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) gave women the right to terminate a pregnancy via abortion.
According to the Roe decision, most laws against abortion violated a constitutional right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision overturned all state and federal laws outlawing or restricting abortion that were inconsistent with its holdings. Roe is one of the most controversial and politically significant cases in U.S. Supreme Court history. Its lesser-known companion case, Doe v. Bolton, was decided at the same time in 1973.
The central holding of Roe v. Wade was that abortions are permissible for any reason a woman chooses, up until the "point at which the fetus becomes ‘viable,’ that is, potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid. Viability is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks." The decision prompted national debate that continues to this day about whether abortion should be illegal, about who should decide whether it is illegal, about the role of the Supreme Court in constitutional adjudication, and about the role of religious and moral views in the political sphere. Roe v. Wade reshaped national politics, dividing much of the nation into "pro-choice" and "pro-life" camps, and inspiring grassroots activism on both sides.
Critics describe Roe as illegitimate for straying from the text and history of the Constitution, and imposing abortion policy on the states and Congress contrarily to American principles of federalism and democracy. Another criticism of Roe is that it failed to recognize the personhood of fetal human life, either beginning at conception or later. Supporters describe Roe as vital to preservation of women's equality, personal freedom, privacy, and the primacy of individual rights, although the opposition to Roe often references the primacy of the individual when referring to the fetus.
By declaring that he is against abortion, McCain is alienating himself from many voters that are pro-choice. I believe that this will ultimately hurt his chance for presidency. The last true conservative president was Ronald Regan (40th President of the United States, 1981-1989).
This little piece of news is definitely shocking to hear about.
Georgie Audean Buoy (84), has plead guilty to having sex with an 11 year-old boy who was in her foster care.
Due to the age of Buoy and the lack of a criminal record before this, Buoy will only serve 36 months in accordance to the plea deal. However, she must register herself as a sex offender when she gets out of prison, pay $5,000 in damages to the victim and up to $7,500 to cover counseling fees.
Now, my question here is, why is there a stigma in regards to men vs. women sex offenders, how are women offenders treated in regards to their sentencing and how they're treated in the media? There is no question that male sex offenders receive harsher punishments, as the fact alone that "females comprise only 1.2 percent of arrests for rape and 8.0 percent of arrests for all other sex offenses (U.S. Department of Justice, 2002). Women who are sex offenders are most often convicted of offenses against children (Faller, 1987; Lewis and Stanley, 2000; Rosencrans, 1997; Vandiver and Walker, 2002) or low level felonies (other than rape); because of the latter, female sex offenders are often considered "less serious" sex offenders (Hetherton, 1999)."
"The only assessment to date of female registered sex offenders (Vandiver and Walker, 2002) focused on identifying a typology of offending patterns, including victim and offender characteristics. This review of official records revealed that these offenders were almost all white, with a mean age of 31 at the time of their first sex offense. Females comprised a slight majority (55 percent) of the victims of these female sex offenders. All had juvenile victims and less serious (if any) criminal records than their male counterparts. Vandiver and Walker (2002) were not able to gather complete data on how many of their sample of female sex offenders were related to their victims; from the data available, though, 94 percent of the victims were related to the offender."
Coming to the conclusion that female sex offenders receive lighter punishments due to the fact that there is simply not a high rate of offenders, nor do these offenders commit other violent crimes or serious felonies or even have a past criminal record. Punishment is usually up to the discretion of the presiding judge, unless a case goes to trial, then a jury will decide. In any case, those offenders (female) that have been convicted of sex offenses (usually) get a lighter sentence than what a male offender would receive for the same offense.
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