Drunk Lawyers in the News--Sleeping In Court Is No Way to Build a Practice

Scott Margherio is out of jail and on his way to some serious disciplinary problems with the Illinois Bar if not outright loss of license.  Margherio, according to a Complaint by the Illinois disciplinary authorities showed up for court blitzed and after lying to the judge about his state of inebriation, ended up in jail.  What follows is from the complaint (via the Legal Profession blawg):

"At approximately 9:00 a.m., on [Friday] October 1, 2010, [attorney Margherio] appeared in the circuit court of Hardin County, Illinois, with the intention of entering his appearance for a defendant in a criminal case.   [ . . . ] When [Mr. Margherio] entered the courtroom, he smelled of alcohol. While waiting for the defendant’s case to be called, Respondent slept at counsel table and then staggered when called to the bench by the presiding judge, the Honorable Paul Lamar.

[ . . . ] Judge Lamar questioned [Mr. Margherio]  about his alcohol use and Respondent denied using alcohol that morning. Respondent agreed to submit to a Breath Alcohol Content ("BAC") test, which showed a breath alcohol content of .06.

[ . . . ] Judge Lamar subsequently held a contempt hearing and found Respondent in direct criminal contempt. The judge sentenced Respondent to be held in the Hardin County jail until Monday, October 4, 2010, at 10:00 a.m. The judge subsequently modified the contempt order to allow Respondent to be released on Sunday, October 3, 2010, at 4:00 p.m."
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The ethics complaint against Margherio (at the link his website) also alleges that he lied on his Application to take the Illinois Bar Exam by failing to disclose a DUI conviction.  If sustained this latter "count" will probably cost Margherio his law license under the character and fitness requirements of the the state.  Although in OurCounty there is a sitting judge and former flame-throwing prosecutor who long ago was revealed to have done precisely the same thing.  Different era, I guess.

Annals of Social Networking: Don't Be Braggin' About How You're Kickin' It When On Home Confinement

Brent Lamar Davis struck and killed a Charleston, WV motorcyclist last year.  While on home confinement awaiting sentencing, Mr. Davis, (pic) was providing details on exactly how he does his thing.  The victim's family as you might imagine have been keeping a close eye on Mr. Davis and turned the gangsta's posts over to the court.  Here's Cheryl Caswell's story for the Charleston Daily Mail:

"A man who pleaded guilty Monday to hitting a motorcyclist last fall, killing him, has now been arrested and incarcerated for drinking and using drugs while on home confinement.   Brent Lamar Davis, 25, of Charleston was put in South Central Regional Jail the day after his court hearing, after prosecutors received a tip from the victim's family that Davis had referred to those disallowed behaviors on Facebook.

Assistant Prosecutor Dan Holstein said Davis will now remain behind bars until his sentencing in June, and he intends to recommend a prison sentence. He faces a possible two to 10 years for driving under the influence causing death.

Michael Frame, 60, of St. Albans was killed in that accident last Labor Day weekend. Davis, driving a 1997 Ford Crown Victoria on MacCorkle Avenue, struck Frame on his motorcycle at the Montrose Drive intersection. He then abandoned his car and fled the scene. 

The rules of the county home confinement program prohibit the possession or use of controlled substances, narcotics, alcohol and drug paraphernalia.

Frame's daughter, Anita Henson of South Carolina, attended Davis' plea hearing Monday and said afterward she wasn't happy the man was permitted to be on home confinement and feared he could still be using alcohol. When alerted to the Facebook posts, Holstein requested officials investigate and Davis admitted to the drug and alcohol use. In fact, he said he smoked ten joints of marijuana and drank tequila the day before his hearing.

Davis accepted a plea deal from prosecutors, who agreed to drop a charge of leaving the scene of the accident.   In October, Hurricane resident David Michael Haning posted property in Poca assessed at nearly $77,500 for Davis' bond. He was released, but ordered to be on home confinement at his West Side house at 1730 Kemp Ave.    Davis at first said he went to the Liquor Mart on Patrick Street to buy the alcohol, which would also have been a violation of home confinement rules. He later changed that story and said a friend brought the alcohol to him.

Harry Carpenter, chief of the home confinement program, sent a letter to Holstein, saying, 'It is my request that prosecutors request that Mr. Davis' bond be revoked. Due to the serious nature of the crime to which he pled, and the fact that he admits to using not only alcohol but illegal substances, add this to his Facebook postings and it seems that Mr. Davis not only shows no remorse, but clearly does not take the authority of the court and this program seriously.'

Upon a motion from Holstein, Kanawha Circuit Court Judge James Stucky revoked that bond and ordered Davis' incarceration immediately.

Court documents include Davis' Facebook posting within the past week, including:

'Getting ready to go to court hope for the best,' 'On some sh—,' 'Drinkin the pain away lets get it,'  'Getting ready to do this 2-10' and 'Livin life to the fullest.'  Also found on his Facebook page, Holstein said, was a photograph of a hand holding a glass with what appeared to be liquor in it.

Holstein said, 'I was going to recommend prison from the get-go, and I think this adds fuel to that. This makes it pretty clear in my mind that he can't obey court orders.'
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This story has so much to recommend it: social networking obviously, home confinement, alcoholism and drug addiction tragedies, and victim impact.   It goes without saying that the rage the victims family must feel is at a level of intensity that goes beyond words.  But if you need any further proof that alcohol (and drug addiction) is cunning, baffling and powerful look no further than Brandon Lamar Davis.   Here's a guy who had every reason to abstain, but did not or could not.  Not only that but to brag about it online. 

It would be easy to claim that this example is just some stupid gang banger,  But a study from Loyola Health Systems in 2009 indicated that Facebook was cited in 1 out of 5 divorces.  My guess is that that number is now considerably, higher.  On Bad Lawyer in the past year we saw numerous instances where texting, Facebook and other social networking created an evidentiary foundation for all sorts of litigation mayhem for juries, lawyers and judges.

Addiction, Strange Twists of Thinking, and Tikkun

The Ohio State Buckeyes under the late-Woody Hayes featured the stand out quarterback Art Schlichter (pronounced, Sh-lees-ter);  in fact, Schlichter threw the interception that prompted Woody Hayes assault on Clemson linebacker Charlie Bauman in the 1978 gator Bowl game leading to Hayes' dismissal.

Schlichter is a remarkable example of someone so addicted to gambling that it destroyed his career and his life.   The Columbus Dispatch is reporting that Schlichter is again under indictment on 13 felony counts relating to a ticket selling scheme and fraud.  Schlichter is blaming his addiction (on gambling?)  Here's an excerpt from reporter Mike Wagner's report:

"Art Schlichter, the former Ohio State quarterback and one of the nation's most notorious compulsive gamblers, was indicted today on 13 felony counts in connection with the ticket-selling scheme that swindled people out of more than $1 million.

A grand jury handed up the indictment to the Franklin County Prosecutor's office after Schlichter and Prosecutor Ron O'Brien failed to reach a plea agreement since Schlichter surrendered to authorities more than two months ago.

The most serious charge filed against Schlichter includes one rooted in the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which alleges a pattern of corrupt activity and is typically used to prosecute organized crime. The RICO charge involves Schlichter and five associates, who are not named in the indictment, and accuses them of scamming people out of their financial assets beginning in 2009 and continuing for more than 18 months. In some cases, the schemes involved cash accounts, credit cards, loans and other investments.

Schlichter, 51, an All-American at OSU more than 30 years ago, continues to be held in the Franklin County jail. If convicted on the charges, Schlichter could face a maximum of 30 years in prison.

In each of the 12 felony theft counts, Schlichter is accused of deceiving people and stealing from them. Schlichter is accused of telling people that he could make money by selling tickets to Ohio State football games and the Super Bowl. But in many cases, those who lent him money were never repaid, and others did not receive the tickets they were promised. The indictment also contains an allegation that Schlichter sold memorabilia that had already been sold years ago."
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You'll notice that one of the elements of the story is the selling of memorabilia.  In the scandals swirling around Coach Jim Tressel are allegations that Tressel covered up for Ohio State players who were selling memorabilia or exchanging memorabilia for tattoos from tattoo parlor operator who was under investigation by the FBI.  Instead of Tressel reporting the violations by his players to the NCAA as he is obligated to do, he lied. 

There it is again, misplaced values.

These strange twists of thinking can be indicative of a severe addiction as in Schlichter's case, or of a fundamental life correction or redemption.   These flaws, failure and falls of mankind effect me profoundly.  Of course I see myself in them and I am striving mightily to effect my tikkun, my correction.  It's why I write Bad Lawyer.  Bearing in mind that in classic Kabbalah mysticism, the Tikkun ha-Olam is the command that humanity must restore and redeem a broken and fallen world. 

No Matter How Far Down the Scale We Have Gone . . .

Bobby Luke was drunk and speeding on his motorcycle and popping wheelies when he crashed into a car and killed Lynda Colegate, 55. Mr. Luke was in the wrong lane, passing other cars in the no passing zone when he smashed into Colegate's car. The motorcycle engine from Luke's Honda "crtoch rocket" hit Colegate in the head killing her.

According to a report at the Cincinnati Enquirer, Mr. Luke pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a charge or aggravated vehicular homicide.   Luke will get at least two years in prison and possibly as much as 13 years.  He is slated to be sentenced September 8th  by Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Jerome Metz.

The news report indicate that at the time police tested Mr. Luke for alcohol, his BAC was .079 percent  which is .001 percent below Ohio's legal limit for driving apparently he had vomited. Later blood tests demonstrated BAC of .104 percent, which is well above the legal limit.

Other interesting facts are that at the time of the crash, Mr. Luke lived in Indiana but had Kentucky plates and of course, the accident happened in Ohio. Luke's Indiana license was suspended.  How much chaos can anyone maintain in their lives?  Luke is an example of full-on chaos directly attributable to his use and abuse of alcohol.  His actions are those of an alcoholic tornado in a suicide dance along the roads and avenues of the tri-state area around Cincy. 

There is an AA "promise" that has come true in my life--no matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.  As awful as this story is, this promise and many others can come true for Bobby Luke.

Drunk Driving Death--4 Year Sentence, Cunning, Baffling & Powerful

The Miami Herald reports on the sentencing of a former law student, Stephen Spencer in the drunk driving death of his dear friend Scott Brenner.  Here, once again is an object lesson on driving drunk and for those of us who are alcoholics, there-but-for-the-Grace-of-God moments; the story is by reporter David Ovalle:
"Five years after he killed a pal in a drunken-driving wreck in North Miami-Dade, former Nova Southeastern law student Stephen Spencer made no excuses for the crash.  In a Miami-Dade courtroom Tuesday, Spencer turned away from the judge, faced the family of Scott Brenner and tearfully stammered his best.

'I was friends with your son,'' he said, tears trickling down his cheeks. 'There is nothing I can say, nothing to make you understand how much I loved your son.'

Spencer's apology was short but effective. Circuit Judge Antonio Marin, citing Spencer's remorse, sentenced him to what amounts to four years in prison on charges including DUI manslaughter and vehicular homicide. 'My heart is thoroughly torn,' Marin said. `It's a tragical situation.'

The sentencing capped a frustrating five years for the Brenner family, which lost Scott in October 2005 and has long bristled at the glacial pace of his case through the legal system.  Spencer, with a blood-alcohol level twice the legal limit, was driving a Ford Explorer crammed with five friends on their way to watch a University of Miami football game at the Orange Bowl. The car crashed on Interstate 95, critically injuring two young men and hurling Brenner from the vehicle, killing him.  At the time of the crash, Scott Brenner, 26, of Pembroke Pines, was a senior at Florida International University and had hoped to continue school in Israel. FIU awarded him a degree posthumously.

[Note:  Spencer was arrested for DUI and charged a second time in 2007!  Alcoholism is cunning, baffling & powerful, never doubt this assertion.]

Spencer has been sober since [since his 2007 DUI for which charges are still pending], said defense attorney Edward O'Donnell, who added that Spencer had trouble coping with the death of his father, John Spencer, a well-known forensic psychologist.  Spencer had faced at least 14 years in prison. But prosecutors Tim VanderGiesen and Luis Perez-Medina lobbied for a lesser sentence because Spencer had no prior convictions and pleaded guilty.

`He was twice the legal limit. He should have known better,' VanderGiesen said of Spencer's blood-alcohol level. `However, he can't be locked up the rest of his life . . . These are young guys who all had something going for them. Everybody lost here.'"
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Alcohol: Cunning, Baffling and Powerful

The Des Moines Register is reporting on the former Muscatine County Judge who has been jailed for the second time for violating his parole for drinking following multiple DUI conA former Muscatine County judge convicted of drunken driving three times is back in prison for violating his parole again.  Here's the summary:

James Weaver was ordered back to prison last week.

The Iowa Board of Parole will determine how long he will remain in custody. Weaver was arrested June 16 at his home in Davenport. Officers were sent to his home for a safety check, and they found him intoxicated.  Weaver had been paroled on June 9, and his parole conditions prohibit drinking alcohol.

It was the second time Weaver has violated his parole since he pleaded guilty in August 2009 to a third offense of drunken driving.  Weaver’s other convictions were in 2002 and 2004. He was an associate judge from 1982 to 2004.
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Alcoholism is in the words of Alcoholics Anonymous, "cunning, baffling and powerful," it is one of the few known diseases inflicted on human kind that actually whispers in the ear of the alcoholic that he or she does not suffer from the disease.  It is both a disease of physical compulsion for the addiction and in my case it was a mental illness that unchecked led me to make a series of decisions that have destroyed my former professional life and imperil my very freedom.  On the other hand, recovery form alcoholism is an amazing adventure even with the damage done and consequences to be addressed.  I pray for Judge Weaver and the still suffering alcoholic that they also can find a new freedom and a new happiness. 

David Brooks on Bill Wilson and Alcoholics Anonymous

Tuesday morning, the NYT columnist David Brooks had a wonderful essay on Bill Wilson and Alcoholics Anonymous.  As readers of Bad Lawyer know, I am an alcoholic and I attend AA meetings sometimes twice a day--and, previously for many years beginning in the mid-1980s.

David Brooks' summary of the history of AA is by necessity, cursory, of course, nonetheless Brooks' summary unforgivably ignores the role of Dr. Bob Smith (pic, left with Bill Wilson right) and others who co-founded the movement 75 years ago this month.  Still, Brooks' column is excellent especially in the sense that it draws lessons which bear learning.  Brooks credits an essay in Wired Magazine on the AA movement which Brooks observes:

"The first implication of [the Wired Magazine] essay is that we should get used to the idea that we will fail most of the time. Alcoholics Anonymous has stood the test of time. There are millions of people who fervently believed that its 12-step process saved their lives. Yet the majority, even a vast majority, of the people who enroll in the program do not succeed in it. People are idiosyncratic. There is no single program that successfully transforms most people most of the time.

The second implication is that we should get over the notion that we will someday crack the behavior code — that we will someday find a scientific method that will allow us to predict behavior and design reliable social programs. . . Each member of an A.A. group is distinct. Each group is distinct. Each moment is distinct. There is simply no way for social scientists to reduce this kind of complexity into equations and formula that can be replicated one place after another.

Nonetheless, we don’t have to be fatalistic about things. It is possible to design programs that will help some people some of the time. A.A. embodies some shrewd insights into human psychology.

In a culture that generally celebrates empowerment and self-esteem, A.A. begins with disempowerment. The goal is to get people to gain control over their lives, but it all begins with an act of surrender and an admission of weakness.  In a culture that thinks of itself as individualistic, A.A. relies on fellowship. The general idea is that people aren’t really captains of their own ship. Successful members become deeply intertwined with one another — learning, sharing, suffering and mentoring one another. Individual repair is a social effort.

In a world in which gurus try to carefully design and impose their ideas, Wilson surrendered control. He wrote down the famous steps and foundations, but A.A. allows each local group to form, adapt and innovate. There is less quality control. Some groups and leaders are great; some are terrible. But it also means that A.A. is decentralized, innovative and dynamic.

Alcoholics have a specific problem: they drink too much. But instead of addressing that problem with the psychic equivalent of a precision-guidance missile, Wilson set out to change people’s whole identities. He studied William James’s 'The Varieties of Religious Experience.' He sought to arouse people’s spiritual aspirations rather than just appealing to rational cost-benefit analysis. His group would help people achieve broad spiritual awakenings, and abstinence from alcohol would be a byproduct of that larger salvation.

In the business of changing lives, the straight path is rarely the best one. A.A. illustrates that even in an age of scientific advance, it is still ancient insights into human nature that work best. Wilson built a remarkable organization on a nighttime spiritual epiphany."
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Let me make a further point or perhaps a clarification that I made on Bad Lawyer a short time ago;   the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous is absolutely explicit:  alcoholics suffer from a mental obsession that is characterized by drinking alcoholically.  In other words there is: (1. a drinking problem;  and, (2. a thinking problem.  It is simplistic to think that arresting the one problem solves the other problem.  People active in AA know that you get sobriety only when both problems are addressed in tandem--and this can only be accomplished by following a "program of recovery" that consists of nothing short of cognitive restructuring.  In sum:  stop drinking, and change your whole life.

Alcoholism and the Bad Lawyer

I am an alcoholic.  If you read the Bad Lawyer, this is not surprise I've written about this many times since I launched this blawg last summer.  Local websites and professional blawgs are full of funny, tragic, and disgusting stories of alcoholism and it's effects including domestic violence, injury, disgrace and death.

I've related many stories of lawyers and lives ruined by alcoholism.  Alcoholism is a mental illness of which a symptom is drinking excessively and obsessively.  Stop the drinking, and you are still and alcoholic.  I still have the mental illness.  I'm afraid despite 24 years of not drinking (with, let me acknowledge 3 brief ill-advised relapses), I have not recovered from alcoholism.  My grandfather on my mother's side was a notorious alcoholic if I can trust my memory of my family history--and, my gandmother on my mother's side died an alcoholic. 

According to the family history I recall hearing, my mother's father, who I have no recollection of but there is an old family photo of him holding either me or my brother--was a regional salesman for the Del Monte Company out Indianapolis in the 1940s-50s.  According to family lore he was a charismatic man, but a doomed alcoholic.  I've outlived him, he died of a heart attack changing a tire.  My mother told me that he was "in and out of sanitariums" to dry out, "get the cure."  The cure never stayed around. 

So I was intrigued by a story in the NYT this AM about the Charles B. Towns Hospital in NYC that opened in the early 19th century.  This story is very cool, it actually talks about "the cure," which was thought to be a pharmacological mixture of belladonna (nightshade extract) and other chemicals.  The pharmacology turned out not to effect an overall good outcome for patients.  Except, perhaps, in the view of the article's author, Howard Markel, M.D. for one very special patient--the legendary Bill W. 

Dr. Markel's remarkable account suggests that Bill Wilson, an east coast stockbroker who would later connect with Dr. Bob Smith in the gatehouse at the famous Seiberling mansion (Stan Hywet Hall) in Akron, Ohio--may have been in the throes of a belladonna hallucination when Wilson experienced the ecstatic calm, that Wilson and Smith later described in the "Big Book" as the spiritual experience that some alcoholics experience prior to or immediately after achievin sobriety.

Personally I don't buy Dr. Marke's speculation because my own personal experience and that of so many others that I met, not under the influence of the AA "kool aid" or legend is remarkably similar.  I had this soul shaking moment, a genuine spiritual experience. I feel goose bumps as I write about even now.  The challenge for most alcoholics is to remember this experience, to remember the way out of the morass of their own disorder.  I admit that I have been lost again, too. I have been hiding for so long, like Adam in the Garden when he recognizes his nakedness before God.  

Fortunately, I have an appointment with the OurState Lawyers' Assistance Program people for a mid-day meeting tomorrow.  I'll keep you posted.  I have a long road back, but what options do I have?  Suicide is not an option if you are genuinely a parent--and, I genuinely love my children.  Or as my friend the R-man says, suicide is the supreme act of selfishness.  Let me visualize the death of the angel of death--that Angel (my ego) has been stalking me.  Not today, dammit!

Driniking Games--Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker on Alcoholism

Malcolm Gladwell author of the Tipping Point and numerous other best-selling collections of essays is also a staff writer for the New Yorker.  In the current edition (Feb. 15 & 22, 2010)  Gladwell has a provocative contribution on the subject of alcohol consumption, abuse, and alcoholism.  Gladwell's article, Drinking Games, How Much People Drink May Matter Less than How They Drink It, is unique, as most of his essays are;  because having read it, I don't think there was one mention of "recovery," treatment, or AA.  The focus of the piece was entirely on the way we drink and abuse alcohol from a cultures perspective.  The thesis is that alcohol abuse and the effects of drunkeness is culturally-shaped for example wild and crazy college kids will behave like wild and crazy drunken college kids.  Likewise, Gladwell cites a 1940s study of ethnic Italians in New Haven, Conneticut  who in certain insular communities who reported daily drinking often to the point where you would expect inebriation but without the obvious ill-effects that you see in others. 

Gladwell is notoriously perverse, in the sense that his fascinating take on any subject can leave you spinning sophist syllogisms trying to draw a lesson.  So it's fair to ask, what do we make of Drinking Games,  Mr. Gladwell.  Maybe Gladwell doesn't mean much of anything.  People from certain cultures drink, get drunk, and don't act like assholes--while others do.  Even within these cultures where people routinely drink to excess and don't act like assholes--some do.  Gladwell talks about the various theories of alcoholism, although I'm not real sure what if any conclusions he draws.  Are drunks disinhibited or myopic?  Who cares.  Is Gladwell saying that in those societies where persons drink culturally-responsibly there isn't a physical, familial, or social toll?  Really, I don't know.  The danger in thinking that Gladwell has hit on anything new other than an interesting "aside" to the discussion of alcoholism is that some might think license is granted to abuse away although that would not be Gladwell's fault.  The essay's only apparent conclusion is that there might be a healthier approach to introducing our children to the consumption of alcohol apart from total abstinence followed by drunken debauchery at school. 

Bad Lawyer followers know that the Bad Lawyer is an ex-drinker, and a fomer vice-chair, and chair of the OurTown Bar Association Assistance to Lawyers' Committee.  In my twenty-plus years of reading on the subject of alcoholism, every once in awhile an article or book gets published that has "recovering alcoholics" buzzing.  Is this article or book a new insight, is this a refutation of accepted dogma?  Can an alcoholic ever go back to healthy drinking?   These debates peter out pretty quickly with people needing help getting help, while many others needing help--saying no, no, no... keep on keeping on often unto tragic ends. 

The fact of the matter is, all sorts of things happen under the sun, every imaginable variation.  But alcoholism destroys health, ruins families, and more urgently drunks operating machinery, especially cars kill themselves and others.  All the special insights into the marvelous myriad worlds of our cultural diffences won't change that outcome one little bit.

Stephen Bruton's Estate

The New York Times had an article this week which covered the "will contest" between the ex-wife of the late guitarist and songwriter, Stephen Bruton, and Bruton's brother, the major beneficiary under the a new will drawn up in the wake of Bruton's work on the film Crazy Heart which is up for a number of Academy of Awards.  This story is remarkable because of the nature of Bruton's involvement in the film, the dedication by the filmakers of their work to the memory of Bruton, and the producers' alleged enmeshment in the Bruton divorce and new will according to the Times article.  

A couple of the filmakers are heroes of mine, especially T Bone Burnett who's 1992 album Criminal Under My Own Hat  was an inspiration for this Blawg.  You may also recognize Burnett's name from his production and score for the box office hit, O' Brother Where Art Thou which is a retelling of the Odyssey.  The other Crazy Heart film maker (and a co-star of the film) is the great actor Robert Duvall.

This afternoon, my pal Chris and I caught a showing of Crazy Heart.   The mvie (which is an update of Tender Mercies which won Duvall the Best Actor Oscar in 1983) deals with a bottom alcoholic country and western entertainer working the small club/bowling alley venues.  Jeff Bridges has received all kinds of accolades and deservedly so for his performance as "Bad Blake."  I actually met Johnny Paycheck in one of these real lowbrow venues (a converted bowling alley) shortly before Paycheck's mini career resurgence and shortly before his death--and, Bridges's performance embodies this classic Country Outlaw archetype. 

Of course the music and musical values were fantastic;  you would expect nothing less from a T Bone Burnett production.

The treatment of "Bad Blake's" alcoholism was graphic and disturbing for me.  It hit way too close to home, particularly making me relive the last days of the lives of now dead friends, paticularly my dear lost friend Carter who I've talked about on the blawg.  Carter put together long periods of sobriety, followed by his premature death to a heroin overdose.  There is a powerful scene in the movie after the character goes to treatment in which he furiously cleans his pig sty house--this was a scene right out of my time with Carter.  He lived above a bank in one of the bohemian neighborhoods.  His apartment was pure filth, deep disgusting filth.  Empty vodka bottles in ever crevice.  Dried mystery-organic material everywhere, when we cleaned his place I felt like I needed a hazmat uniform and a decontaamination shower. 

Knowing the final outcome for Carter, Crazy Heart might not have been the best choice for me in my present state of mind.  The film was so effective that I spent the better part of the movie in a borderline anxiety attack.  While Bad Blake's inner life is not explored except indirectly, I supplied the interior dialogue from my own psyche and the effect was chilling.  Great movie, don't miss it.

Oh, and the Bruton will contest--sounds like the classic no good deed goes unpunished scenario as it pertains to the filmakers.  Some of the bankers and insurance companies need to get together and push these feuding family members into mediation, like Monday morning. 

Dacula Drug Haze Killing--an Acquittal

Kent Alexander, a former minor league pitcher in the Chicago Cubs organization died of knife wounds on December 8, 2007.  Monday a Gwinnet County, Georgia jury after a 3 hour deliberation, acquitted his widow, Laurie of the charges she murdered her husband. 

The report at the Atlanta Journal Constitution is astounding.  The back story is even more amazing.  It is cliche` to say that truth is stranger than fiction, here's the evidence for the adage. 

This is a blawg, not a crime blog, but every once you come across a crime story that has everything, in this case a jury that may have thought that Kent Alexander might have needed a little stabbing.  Judge for yourself: 

"The marriage of Laurie and Kent Alexander was in tatters – rocked by adultery, lies, debt, prescription drug addiction and alcoholism. It all came to a head on Dec. 8, 2007, when 44-year-old Kent Alexander, a former Chicago Cubs minor league baseball pitcher, was found dead of a knife wound on his kitchen floor. Laurie Alexander, 47, is on trial for murder in Gwinnett County this week, accused of stabbing her husband in the abdomen after she caught him sending text messages to a married lover.

'This case is about a marriage that was in turmoil,' Assistant District Attorney Rich Vandever told the jury during his opening statements Tuesday.

Alexander told police she took two prescription anti-anxiety pills after arguing with her husband and went to bed. She said she remembered nothing until she came downstairs to find her husband dead on the floor the following morning.  No one disputes that Kent Alexander's life was spiraling out of control. He recently had been fired from his job as a medical recruiter after a supervisor discovered he was drinking on the clock and swapping prescription pills with co-workers. Defense attorneys say he drank as much as a liter and a half of vodka every other day.  He had a blood alcohol level of .341 -- over four times the legal limit to drink and drive -- - when he died, according to prosecutors. His wife also was heavily medicated much of the time, having suffered injuries in a car wreck about a year prior to the alleged slaying and having undergone two recent heart surgeries.  Defense attorney Jeffrey Sliz said there are many questions surrounding Kent Alexander's death. It could have been a drunken accident, a suicide or a case of self-defense, but it was not a murder, Sliz told the jury.  'My client is not guilty of any of these offenses,' Sliz said."
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This case came with built in "reasonable doubt."