02-07-03

Man Takes Out Road Rage on the Wrong Person

A New Orleans driver experiencing some road rage on a Chalmette street allegedly chose to yell an obscenity and extend a middle finger at another motorist -- who turned out to be a St. Bernard Parish sheriff's deputy in an unmarked car.

To make matters worse for him, the angry man also had two partially burned marijuana cigarettes in his vehicle, was driving with an expired license and didn't have any proof of insurance, authorities said.

Eric Kurtz, 33, 7564 Mackenzie St., was booked Tuesday with possession of marijuana and disturbing the peace by road rage, as well as charges involving the expired license and lack of proof of insurance, according to a sheriff's report of the 2:30 p.m. incident.

The sheriff's report said Deputy Richard Jackson, of the sheriff's special investigations division, was on patrol in an unmarked car on Paris Road when Kurtz allegedly pulled out in front of Jackson's vehicle, realized he couldn't enter the lane safely and slammed on his brakes, yelled an obscenity and gestured toward Jackson with a raised middle finger.

Jackson called for a marked patrol car and Kurtz was stopped on Paris Road and arrested.

A man who erased his drunken-driving record from a police computer and replaced it with a winking "smiley face" graphic ended up with a suspended license and a fine when police failed to see the funny side.

The 19-year-old computer whiz had been arrested for drunken driving and summoned to appear in court in Besancon, in eastern France, the French daily Liberation reported Tuesday. Finding an unmanned computer as he arrived at the police station for his hearing, the man decided to test the good humor of the court by sneaking into the database.

He deleted his file from the computer's hard drive and inserted ";)" -- the text message shorthand for a winking smiley face -- in its place.

But rather than smiling at the prank, the judge handed the man a three-month suspended prison sentence, a $425 fine and suspended his driving license for three months.

You Will Not Be Forgotten

Legal Issues - Search and Seizure

EVIDENCE DEVELOPED DURING TRAFFIC STOP JUSTIFIES CONTINUING DETENTION OF PASSENGER.

The defendant was a passenger in a car that was stopped for running a red light. The officer who made the stop asked the driver to get out of the car, and explained to him why he had been stopped.

In response to a question from the officer, the driver said he was coming from El Paso, where he had left a car he rented in Lubbock, and was headed toward Brownfield. Apparently, the defendant followed the driver from Lubbock to El Paso in the car in which the men were stopped.

When the defendant was asked for identification, he was “extremely nervous,” breathing in rapid, shallow breaths and answering questions evasively. He told the officer that the address on his driver’s license was not current.

As the officer was checking on outstanding warrants and requesting backup, he realized that the driver was the brother of an acquaintance of the officer’s. The acquaintance had told the officer that his brother was “heavy” into drugs and had been threatened concerning a drug matter by someone in El Paso. The dispatcher reported that one of the men in the car had been arrested twice for drug offenses.

The officer informed the driver of the citations he was going to issue, and asked if there was any contraband in the car. The driver denied having drugs, but refused consent to a search of the car.

As the officer was returning the defendant’s license to him, the man gave information about the car rental company that conflicted with the driver’s story, and the defendant admitted that he previously had been involved in a drug transaction.

A second officer arrived on the scene, and the driver was frisked and told that a drug dog was on the way to smell the car. When the defendant was removed form the car and told about the drug dog, he admitted that he had a “baggie” in his pocket.

The defendant was charged with possession of the drugs found in his pocket, and moved to suppress the evidence. He claimed that it was unlawful for the officer to detain him; that he did not consent to the search of his pocket; and that it did not qualify as a pat-down. The motion was denied, and the defendant appealed his conviction.

Holding: When the officer saw the driver of the car run a red light, he had reasonable suspicion to believe that a crime had occurred, and was justified in conducting a traffic stop. During that stop, he was entitled to obtain information about the driver’s license, destination, and purpose of the trip.

That information could be used to assess whether reasonable suspicion warranted a continued detention. The officer recognized the driver as the brother of an acquaintance, who was supposed to be a “heavy” drug user, and he remembered that the man supposedly had been threatened by someone in El Paso regarding drugs.

The officer determined that the men were coming from El Paso after returning a rental car, which struck the officer as peculiar. He noticed the nervousness and evasiveness of the defendant, and discovered that one or both of the men previously had been arrested for drug offenses.

“Collectively these indicia would permit not only a police officer to reasonably suspect that [the driver] and his companion had engaged or were engaging in criminal activity involving drugs, but also detain them for further investigation.” The continuing detention of the driver and the defendant was not improper on these facts.

Consent is not necessary for a search when probable cause exists to believe a person has contraband on his person. The trial court reasonably could have found probable cause based on the defendant’s statement to the officer that he had a baggie in his pocket.

There was no evidence to support the defendant’s claim that the statement was involuntary. Based on the testimony and a videotape of the incident, there was a minimal show of force by the officers; a calm, formal tone of voice was used in speaking to the defendant; and only a minute or two elapsed from the time the defendant stepped from the far before he made the statement

The evidence supported the trial judge’s denial of the suppression motion, and the contraband was admissible. Nuttall v. State, No. 07-010250 (Tex. App. – Amarillo, 10-11-02).

You Know You Are Living in the Year 2003 When...

1. Your reason for not staying in touch with some family and friends is because they do not have e-mail.
2. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of three.
3. Your grandmother asks you to send her a JPEG file of your newborn so she can create a screen saver.
4. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home.
5. Every commercial on television has a web site address at the bottom of the screen.
6. You buy a computer and 3 months later it's out of date and sells for half the price, or less than you paid for it.
7. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn't have the first 20 or 30 years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go get it.
8. Using real money, instead of a credit or debit card, to make a purchase would be a hassle and take planning.
9. You just tried to enter your password on the microwave.
10. You consider second-day air delivery painfully slow.
11. Your dining room table is now your flat filing cabinet.
12. Your idea of being organized is multiple-colored Post-it notes.
13. You hear most of your jokes via e-mail instead of in person.
14. You get an extra phone line so you can get phone calls.
15. You disconnect from the Internet and you get this awful feeling, as if you just pulled the plug on a loved one.
16. You get up in the morning and go online before getting your coffee.
17. You wake up at 2 AM to go to the bathroom and check your e-mail on your way back to bed.

    

What's in a Name?

Q: Why is the sallyport called a sallyport? Who is this Sally person and what does she have to do with it, anyway?

A: A port is simply a doorway or gate, from the French port, "door" and originally from Latin portus, "a harbor" (a country's harbors are, in a sense, its doorways). Latin also has the verb salire, "to leap", which is the ancestor of our word sally, meaning an armed military excursion.

So, what's this got to do with jails? Well, most medieval cities were built with substantial fortifications so that they could withstand a siege, but what if those within the city wanted to attack their besiegers? There was a very real danger that the act of opening the gate to let soldiers out would also give the besiegers an opportunity to enter. The solution was to construct a sallyport, a heavily fortified, double-gated portal. The force of soldiers would enter the sallyport through its inner gate which would then be closed behind them. When the outer gate was opened they would sally forth, then that gate would be closed. When they returned, the opposite procedure was observed.

The sallyport used in jails is constructed similarly to its medieval namesake, with two strong gates enclosing a small inner area.

From the Chaplain

A boy once asked, “Dad, how do wars begin?”

“Well, take the First World War,” said his father. “That got started when Germany invaded Belgium.”

Immediately his wife interrupted him: “Tell the boy the truth. It began because somebody was murdered.” The husband drew himself up with an air of superiority and snapped back, “Are you answering this question, or am I?” Turning her back on him in a huff, the wife walked out of the room and slammed the door as hard as she could.

When the dishes stopped rattling in the cupboard, an uneasy silence followed, broken at length by the son when he said, “Daddy, you don’t have to tell me any more; I know now!”

***

Anger is often more harmful than the injury that cause it. There is a story about the time when Leonardo da Vinci was working on his painting “The Last Supper” and became angry with a certain man. Losing his temper, he lashed out at the fellow with bitter words. Returning to his canvas, Leonardo attempted to work on the face of Jesus but was so upset he could not compose himself for the painstaking work. Finally, he put down his tools and sought out the object of his wrath and asked his forgiveness.

The man accepted his apology and Leonardo was able to return to his workshop to finish painting the face of Jesus!

Punxsutawney Phil