While Parents Drink, Baby Dies

     A 9-month-old baby in Prince William County, Virginia was pronounced dead after being left unattended in a crib for 16 hours…Avarice Alexander was in her crib from 8:30 PM October 15, 2014 to 12:30 PM the next day…

     Police took the 21-year-old parents, Adam and Jasmyne Alexander, into custody. They were charged on October 16, 2014 with child neglect. [Child neglect? What about criminal homicide?] Police allege the baby was left in her crib while the parents were drinking.

     A Gofundme.com page was created by the mother, claiming that her daughter had died of SIDS. [SIDS is a description of death, not a cause.] An aunt has since taken over the fundraising account, claiming the funds will be used so her niece can have a proper burial. The aunt says that the parents will have no access to any of the donations.

"Baby Left in Crib For 16 Hours Dies," Dayton Daily News, October 18, 2014 

Thornton P. Knowles on Being an Obscene Writer

A seventh grade teacher called a short story I wrote "obscene." I went home and bragged to my parents that I was an obscene writer! I didn't know what the word meant. Fortunately for me, they didn't either.

Thornton P. Knowles 

When a Professional Athlete Steals, It's a Mistake. For the Rest of Us, It's Criminal

     Saying it was "the biggest mistake I've ever made in my life," Dallas Cowboys running back Joseph Randle apologized to teammates after getting arrested on shoplifting charges. [How about an apology to the store he ripped-off?]

     Randle, 22, a backup tailback in his second season with the Cowboys, was accused of attempting to steal $80 worth of cologne and underwear from a Dillards' Inc. store in the Dallas suburb of Frisco. Cowboys coach Jason Garrett told reporters on October 15, 2014 that Randle will be fined, but not suspended for this weekend's game against the New York Giants.

     "The actions that we're going to take is to fine him significantly and move forward," Garrett said in a news conference…[I don't think it's a good sign that people are always "moving forward."] Randle will be fined at $29,117, the amount he earns each week on his scheduled $495,000 base salary this season. [He can't afford cologne and underwear on that salary? This kid needs a raise.]…

     "I just made a huge mistake," Randle told reporters. "It was hard coming back in the locker room and looking at people who care about me in the eye, knowing that I did something stupid."…

"Cowboy's Randle Charged with Trying to Steal Underwear," bloomberg.com, October 16, 2014 

Reverend Creflo Dollar: Megaproblems at the Megachurch

     In 1986, prosperity minister Creflo Dollar started World Changers International Church in suburban Atlanta's College Park, Georgia. Housed in the World Dome, a golden-domed structure that houses a 8,500-seat sanctuary, the megachurch boasts a membership of 30,000. Through his Creflo Dollar Ministries, the silver-tongued pastor had become a wealthy man with his real estate holdings, a stable of breeding horses, and thirty books to his name. Reverent Dollar charged up to $100,000 for one of his rousing, motivational talks.

     In 2007, United States Senator Charles Grassley launched a congressional investigation of Creflo Dollar and five other wealthy televangelists to determine if these preachers were using church-owned airplanes, luxury homes, and credit cards for personal use. While no tax evasion charges were filed in connection with the inquiry, senators decried the lack of governmental oversight of these religious goldmines.

     Pastor Dollar's problems became more personal, and hit closer to home on June 8, 2012. His 15-year-old daughter called 911, and reported that the reverend had assaulted her. Deputies with the Fayette County Sheriff's Office who responded to the mansion spoke to the daughter and her 19-year-old sister who said she had witnessed the incident.

     According to the older Dollar sibling, her father and the alleged victim had been arguing over whether the girl should go to a party. The witness told deputies that Pastor Dollar grabbed his daughter by the shoulders, slapped her in the face, choked her for five seconds, then threw her to the floor. The officers noticed fresh scratch marks on the complainant's neck. The police handcuffed Reverend Dollar and hauled him off to the Fayette County Jail. ( On January 25, 2013, after Pastor Dollar completed an anger management program, the Fayette County prosecutor dropped the assault charges.)

     Just before ten in the morning of October 24, 2012, 51-year-old Floyd Palmer, a former janitor at the  World Changers International Church, walked into a chapel where 25 members of the congregation were being led in prayer by Greg McDowell. Palmer calmly walked up to the stage where the 39-year-old volunteer staff member stood, and shot him dead. After murdering this husband and father, Palmer walked casually out of the World Dome, climbed into his black Subaru station wagon, and drove off. Reverend Dollar was not in the church at the time, and no one else was shot.

     A few hours after the church killing, local police and U.S. Marshals arrested Floyd Palmer outside a Macy's store in a shopping mall in the upscale Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta. The police had spotted Palmer's vehicle in the parking lot. Taken into custody without incident, the suspect was placed into the Fulton County jail where he was held without bond.

     Floyd Palmer was a psychotic and violent person in what seems to be a growing population of dangerous nut cases. In June 2001, when Palmer was part of a security detail at a Baltimore mosque, he shot a fellow employee named Reuben Jerry Ash. After shooting Ash in the back, Palmer tried to fire again, but his handgun jammed. Bystanders ran toward Palmer to disarm him. He fired at them but the gun still didn't work. Fortunately no one was killed, but the shooting left Reuben Ash paralyzed.

     At his pretrial psychiatric examination, Palmer said that members of his family, and Ray Lewis, a linebacker with the Baltimore Ravens, were out to get him. Palmer pleaded guilty to attempted murder, and was committed to a mental hospital. Three years later, Palmer shot and wounded another Baltimore man. For that attempted murder, Mr. Palmer spent 18 months in a psychiatric hospital.

     In September 2015, a Fulton County judge ruled Floyd Palmer mentally competent to stand trial for murder.

     A Fulton County jury, in May 2016, found Floyd Palmer guilty of first-degree murder but mentally ill. The judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

     When violent mental cases like Floyd Palmer are allowed to live among us, no one is safe, not even a man inside a church leading a prayer service. I can't imagine that Mr. Palmer would have been hired to clean the church if the people who employed him knew of his violent background. If they did, and hired him anyway, they are fools who will have to answer for their bad judgment.  

Courtroom Impostor

     A bizarre case in Summit County, Utah has led to the arrest of a woman who police say was impersonating a Utah attorney and handling cases in court, representing real clients under the attorney's name. Karla Carbo, 29, of South Jordan, Utah was arrested on December 30, 2014 and booked into the Summit County Jail for investigation of identify theft, two counts of forgery, and communications fraud. Investigators say she represented herself as an attorney in several jurisdictions and will likely face more charges.

     Carbo allegedly opened her own law office and hired a man who recently pass the bar but had no idea he was being hired by a fake attorney…On December 23, 2014, Carbo was allegedly in court representing a suspect in a 2008 criminal case…Carbo said her name was Karla Stirling Fierro. Karla Stirling is an actual attorney from Bountiful, Utah certified by the state bar association. Carbo allegedly used Stirling's real bar number…Stirling, while licensed in Utah, mainly practices in California…"I don't do any criminal work or personal injury cases," she said. "I've done business contracts, real estate…There shouldn't be any court files with my name on my bar number in Utah whatsoever."

     When the court contacted Stirling on December 23 with a question regarding the recently completed court matter, she had no idea what they were talking about…The Summit County Attorney's Office got a phone call from the Utah State Bar Association explaining that Fierro was not an attorney….

"Woman Accused of Impersonating Attorney in Court," ksl.com, December 31, 2014 

Thornton P. Knowles on Writing as the Self-Delusion Advocation

Writers must delude themselves into believing that what they have to say is either important or entertaining, that people will actually want to read what they write. Man, how we kid ourselves.

Thornton P. Knowles, The Psychology of Writing, 1976 

Heroin Overdose Deaths: Give Cops Naloxone

     With deaths from heroin and opioid prescription pills soaring, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman on April 3, 2014 announced a push to have law enforcement officers across the state carry a drug that is effectively an antidote to overdose. The program, to be funded primarily from $5 million in criminal and civil seizures from drug dealers, would help provide a kit with the drug, naloxone, and the training to use it to every state and local officer in New York. [Drug dealers, I image are behind this program. Fatal overdosing costs them customers.]

     The authorities have increasingly seen naloxone, also known under its brand name Narcan, as a potent weapon against a national surge in drug overdoses. Last month, the Justice Department encouraged emergency medical workers across the country to begin carrying the drug. The move to broaden access in New York is the latest tactic employed by state officials to combat abuse of pills and the rising specter of heroin use….In New York City, there was an 84 percent jump in heroin overdose deaths between 2010 and 2012….[While naloxone may save lives, it won't play a role in reducing drug abuse.]

     The drug naloxone, which has been available for decades in emergency rooms, works on the opiate molecules that attach to the brain and, during an overdose, fatally slows a person's breathing. Naloxone effectively bumps them away, restoring breathing in minutes and giving medical workers time to get a hospital.

     For years only paramedics carried the drug. In 2012, a pilot program in Suffolk County, New York trained emergency technicians and half the police officers to administer the drug….Last year, the New York Police Department trained some 180 officers to use the drug on Staten Island, which has the city's most acute problem with heroin and pill overdoses, saving three people in the first three months. The department is currently looking to expand the program across the borough and around the city.

     The state's Good Samaritan law protects those who call the police during an overdose, even if they too were using illegal drugs. Those who administer naloxone are also protected from liability. The drug, which is not habit forming and gives no high to an overdosing user, is nontoxic….

David Goodman, "New York Program to Help Police Get a Kit to Combat Overdoses," The New York Times, April 3, 2014 

Thornton P. Knowles onThe Urge to Write

Any writer with an I.Q. over 100 must know that the urge to write is an illness cured only by death. Perhaps that's why so many authors kill themselves.

Thornton P. Knowles, The Psychology of Writing, 1976 

Life is Good in a Pennsylvania Prison

     The Mercer Regional Correctional Facility in western Pennsylvania looks like a small college campus, with tidy brick buildings scattered across expansive, manicured green yards. The prison superintendent, a self-described "liberal," told me he tries to make the prison experience for inmates "as much like the street as I can." At one point, he referred to them as his "clients," adding, "Inmates aren't evil, by and large. Many just did not have good life circumstances, and have reacted inappropriately." He concluded: "The public needs to know that modern corrections is not like the Jimmy Cagney movie."

     That is an understatement.

     The only building with actual cells is the Restricted Housing Unit, where a handful of troublemakers are locked up all day. But the rest of the inmates wander freely among the two-story, brick dormitories. One holds rapists, child molesters, and HIV-positive inmates. Though small, it has two separate recreation rooms, so that inmates watching TV don't distract those who wish to play cards. Individual inmate rooms are about 8 by 10 and have no bars--just doors with glass windows. In one, the only occupant lounges comfortably on his bunk, reading a book. Around him are a desk, bookshelves, lots of magazines, and his own TV.

     The prison's thieves, rapists, and killers are indulged with a very good library, a separate law library, and a beautiful chapel. The prison offers them GED and art classes, electrical and mechanical training, even night college courses in classrooms filled with books and computers--all for free. Inmates can visit the infirmary and dentist offices for free medical care on demand, while those with emotional problems have access to four staff psychologists and ten counselors--again, at no charge.

     One of three "activities directors" leads me from a commissary stocked with amenities to the gymnasium. A volleyball net bisects the gleaming floor of the full-sized basketball court. At one end, nine cycling machines and four "stepper" aerobics machines face a TV. These, he explains, are for the inmates' "leisure fitness program." Two rooms are jammed with weightlifting equipment; from another, current movie videos are broadcast nightly to the TVs in the inmates' rooms. "Nothing cheap here," my guide says proudly.

     Outside, there is a softball field with bleachers, and a running track circling an outdoor weightlifting pavilion, exercise stations, five horseshoe pits, two bocci courts, a handball area, and more basketball hoops. My guide rattles off some of the other pastimes available: tennis, racketball, ping-pong, football, chess, checkers….[What? No golf?] Inmates even have their own leagues for baseball, softball, volleyball and power lifting. Teams of felons are squired around in prison vans, by guards and activities directors to compete at other state prisons.

     Contrary to the claim of Mercer's superintendent, this does not mirror life on the outside. For most housed in modern prisons, life is far better than it is on the streets.

Robert James Bidinotto, "Crime and Moral Retribution," in Criminal Justice?, Robert James Bidinott, editor, 1994