A Light Sentence For Sex With Students

     Meredith Powell began teaching math at Lincoln High School in Tacoma, Washington in September 2012. In January 2014 the unmarried 25-year-old started sending sexually explicit text messages and erotic videos to one of her 15-year-old male students. She followed this up with sexual encounters (oral sex) with this boy and another 15-year-old student. The sexual activity took place in her classroom.

     In February 2014 the police got involved after Meredith Powell wrote a letter to the girlfriend of one of the boys. In that letter she apologized for her "unprofessional" and "drunken" text messages.

     Following a brief investigation Tacoma police officers arrested Meredith Powell for having sex with two of her students. A Pierce County prosecutor charged the teacher with two counts of child rape and several lesser offenses. After her release from the county jail on bond the superintendent of the Tacoma School District placed the accused teacher on unpaid leave pending the outcome of her case.

     In July 2014 Meredith Powell pleaded guilty to two counts of third-degree child rape and one count of communicating with a minor for immoral purposes.

     At Powell's sentencing hearing on August 29, 2014 before Pierce County Superior Court Judge Frank Cuthbertson, Shannon McMinimee, the attorney for the school district, urged the judge to impose a tough sentence. McMinimee reminded the judge that this teacher had committed child rape. (No doubt the school district wanted the judge to send a message to other teachers in the system that having sex with a student was a serious crime.)

     The defendant's attorney, Wayne Fricke, in arguing for a light sentence, called his client "an upstanding individual who went through a rough patch last fall. She didn't handle the situation well and got herself into this situation," he said. (Had the defense attorney said this in reference to a male client who'd had sex with a female student he would have been laughed out of court.)

     The defendant rose to her feet, and speaking to the judge, said, "I feel like words can't even express how sorry I am. I wish I could take back what happened to the students I failed. Sorry doesn't take away anything that happened, but I hope they [her victims] can move forward with as little impact as possible. I pray every day for the two boys. I'm heartbroken over the suffering I caused them and their families."

     When it came time to hand down his sentence Judge Cuthbertson said, "This is difficult, this is different, this is not what we usually see. Everything suggests this is out of character for you. But again, you need to understand the severe impact this case has had not only on the victims but on their families."

     The judge sentenced the former teacher to five years. However, he suspended all but six months of that penalty. As part of the sentence the judge ordered Powell to enroll in a program for first-time sex offenders.

     Upon hearing the sentence, the victims' parents could be heard cursing as they stormed out of the courtroom. The attorney for the school district told reporters that she hoped for a longer period of incarceration. She said the state revoked Powell's license to teach.

     When a male teacher has consensual sex with a 15-year-old female student, he will almost always be sentenced to at least two years in prison, often longer. This sentencing double standard suggests that some judges, in cases where the defendant is a woman and the student is male, believe that boys are crime victims in name only. Girls, on the other hand, are victims of adult male dominance.

The Tania Coleman Murder Case

     Firefighters in Erie, Pennsylvania on May 24, 2011, while on a call on east Eighth Street, detected the odor of death coming from a discarded suitcase. When they opened the suitcase the firefighters found the badly decomposed remains of 14-month-old Alayja Coleman.

     The next day at the Erie Police Department detectives questioned the child's mother, 20-year-old Tania Coleman. The pregnant mother of two lived in a house near the discovery of the suitcase. The dead girl's father, Rahsean Murphy, had been in prison most of Alaja's life. Mr. Murphy had last seen his daughter in late March 2011. Xavier Hollamon, Tania Coleman's 20-year-old boyfriend was the father of her other two children as well as the baby to come.


     During the low-key videotaped interrogation that lasted 45 minutes Tania Coleman said that two months earlier she discovered Alayja dead in her playpen. Panicked, she called Xavier Hollamon who rushed to the house. A high school dropout, he had just completed his Army basic training and feared this situation would land him in military prison.

     Rather than report Alayja's death to the authorities, Tania Coleman and her boyfriend put her body into the suitcase and hid it in the house. Before long the odor became too much. On April 25, 2011 Tania and Xavier, at the cost of $73, purchased a fancy plastic trash bin from Walmart. They placed the suitcase containing Alayja's body into the trash container and set it outside until they figured out how to permanently dispose of the body. (Someone in stealing the trash bin removed the suitcase.)

     Forensic pathologist Dr. Eric Vey performed the autopsy and determined the cause of Alayja's death to be starvation. (Her body had consumed her muscles and organs.) The Erie County Coroner ruled her manner of death as homicide. Due to the condition of the corpse Dr. Vey could not pinpoint the victim's time of death.

     Dr. Vey's review of Alayja's pediatric records revealed that when she was 11 months old she weighed less than she had at the age of 4 months. When examined by a pediatrician 6 months after her birth the doctor declared Alayja's weight in the "danger zone" and recommended that Tania feed her a lot of fruits and vegetables. The little girl missed her 9th and 12th month check-ups.

     Erie County District Attorney Jack Daneri charged Xavier Hollamon with abuse of corpse and tampering with evidence, a pair of misdemeanors that together carried a maximum sentence of 4 years in prison. He charged Tania Coleman with these crimes plus first degree-murder. In Pennsylvania first degree-murder carried a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the chance of parole. To make his case the district attorney would have to prove the defendant deliberately starved her daughter to death.

     In early March 2012 Xavier Hollamon pleaded guilty to the abuse of corpse and tampering with evidence misdemeanors in return for 2 years probation and 250 hours of community service. He had been incarcerated in the Erie County Jail for almost a year. Hollamon, as part of the plea bargain, agreed to testify against his former girlfriend, the mother of his two children and the unborn child. 

     Tania Coleman's first-degree murder trial got underway in mid-March 2012 before Judge Shad Connelly in the Erie County Court House. District Attorney Jack Daneri, on the theory that the defendant killed her daughter because she was not fathered by her boyfriend and didn't fit into the family, put on his circumstantial case of intentional murder.

     Jamie Mead, Tania Coleman's court-appointed attorney, presented the defendant as an overwhelmed single parent who neglected a child who died despite efforts to feed her. Attorney Mead argued that if Coleman had intentionally murdered Alayja she would have come up with a better plan to dispose of her body. The defendant did not take the stand on her own behalf. In the defense attorney's closing statement to the jury, Mead accused the prosecution of manufacturing a motive to support their theory of an intentional murder.

     On March 22, 2012 the Erie County jury found Tania Coleman guilty of first-degree murder. Attorney Mead immediately filed motions to either replace the first-degree murder conviction with a lesser homicide or for a new trial. The defense attorney argued that the jury, in finding her client guilty of intentional murder, relied more on emotion than evidence, citing witnesses who testified that Tania had expressed concern about Alayja's refusal to eat.

     Judge Shad Connelly, on May 17, 2012, sentenced Tania Coleman to life in prison without chance of parole.

     On October 7, 2013 a state appeals court upheld Coleman's conviction. The appellate affirmation meant that Tania Coleman would spend the rest of her life in prison. 

"Upskirting" in Massachusetts: No Crime in That

     In 2010, transit authority police in Boston arrested Michael Robertson for using his cell phone to secretly snap photographs from beneath the dresses of unsuspecting female trolly passengers. This perverted behavior was so common in Massachusetts and other places it had a name--"upskirting."

     A prosecutor in the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office charged the 32-year-old upskirt photographer with two counts of secretly photographing a person in a state of nudity or partial nudity. The statute underlying the charges was intended to criminalize the act of placing hidden cameras in restrooms, shower stalls and other places where people undress. This form of voyeurism in the state is punishable by up to two and a half years in prison. Almost all the perpetrators convicted of this offense were men clandestinely photographing women and children. By any standard this was deviant and unacceptable behavior.

     Following Robertson's arrest, his attorney, Michelle Menken, moved to have the charges dropped on the grounds her client's actions did not fall within the letter of the law. Specifically, the women he photographed were not nude or partially nude as required by the statute.

     The prosecutor in charge of the case, in contesting the motion to dismiss, argued that Robertson's behavior clearly came under the spirit of the law. Certainly the legislators who passed this law would agree.

     A Suffolk County District Judge let the upskirting charges stand. Defense attorney Menken appealed that decision.

     On March 4, 2014 the State Supreme Judicial Court, Massachusetts' highest judicial body, ruled in favor of the upskirt photographer. The justices found that the statute in question did not prohibit the photographing of women who were fully dressed.

     Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley, shortly after the ruling, told reporters that, "Every person, male or female has a right to privacy beneath his or her clothing. If the statute as written doesn't protect that privacy then I'm urging the legislature to act rapidly and adjust the law so it does."

     In the United States, before an act can be treated as criminal behavior, the act and a corresponding state of mind must be specifically defined in the form of a statute. As a result, state crimes codes have to be continually updated to keep up with the ever changing nature of human depravity. For example, the reading of the animal cruelty sections of state crimes codes reveals how many ways people have found to torture animals. The theft section of a crimes code depicts all the methods thieves have devised to steal.

     State crimes codes are essentially catalogues of modern deviant behavior. Not long ago, no one had a phone you could use as a camera and no one heard of upskirting. There was a time when there was no such thing as sexting, cyber bullying or getting high on bath salts. To be effective, criminal codes have to keep up with the times. Given the ability of people to blaze new trails into the dark worlds of deviancy and criminality, this is no easy task. 

The Alton Alexander Nolen Beheading Murder Case

     The 911 call came in at four-thirty in the afternoon on Thursday September 25, 2014 from an employee of the Vaughn Foods distribution warehouse in Moore, Oklahoma located ten miles south of Oklahoma City. The emergency caller, speaking to someone at the scene and overheard by the dispatcher said, "Shut the doors!" Then to the dispatcher said, "We have someone attacking someone in the building. Can you hear this in the background? That's a gunshot."

     When officers with the Moore Police Department entered the Vaughn Foods building they encountered a bloody scene of horrific violence. Coleen Hufford, a 54-year-old employee, had been repeatedly stabbed and beheaded. Traci Johnson, a fellow employee, had been stabbed as well but was still alive. Alton Alexander Nolen, the 30-year-old man holding the knife, had been shot once. He was alive but unconscious.

     Earlier that afternoon after being fired from the food processing and distribution plant, Alton Nolen left the building in a huff, climbed into his car and drove erratically around the company parking lot. With a knife in hand he re-entered the facility through the main entrance. Mr. Nolen walked through the front office into the shipping area then into the customer service office. There he encountered Colleen Hufford and Traci Johnson, employees who he had no reason to hate or punish.

     Mark Vaughn, the corporation's chief operating officer rushed to the scene armed with a rifle. He arrived too late to save Colleen Hufford and almost didn't get there in time for Traci Johnson. Before Nolen had the chance to behead his second victim Mr. Vaughn shot and wounded him.

     Alton Nolen was not a stranger to local law enforcement. In the evening of October 1, 2010, while accompanied by his 29-year-old girlfriend and her 2-year-old son, he drove his white Chevrolet Impala on Oklahoma Highway 33. State Trooper Betsy Randolph pulled him over after she noticed that Nolen's paper license plate looked like a fake. The officer received confirmation of this after she radioed-in the plate number.

     Nolen, when asked by Trooper Randolph to produce his driver's license said he didn't have it with him. "Do you have a valid driver's license," she asked.

     "No," he replied.

     Seated next to the trooper in the patrol car parked along the curb on a residential street, Mr. Nolen said that he didn't want to go back to jail and denied having outstanding warrants for his arrest. When the officer entered his name and date of birth into her computer she knew he lied. There were several outstanding warrants for his arrest including one for failing to appear in court on a cocaine charge. The trooper had no choice but to take Nolen into custody.

     Trooper Randolph, after cuffing Nolen's right hand ran into resistance when he tried to call his girlfriend on his cellphone. As the officer reached for her expandable baton he pushed her away and jumped out of the police vehicle. The trooper chased him on foot but lost him amid a group of houses in the neighborhood.

     Following a 12-hour manhunt that included a helicopter, police dogs and officers from four law enforcement agencies, Alton Nolen was taken into custody. A local prosecutor charged him with assault and battery on a police officer and escape from detention.

     Early in 2011, following a plea deal, the judge sentenced Nolen to six years on the cocaine offense, two years for escaping police custody and two years for assaulting Trooper Randolph. Although he faced up to ten years behind bars he served 18 months in prison followed by six months in a halfway  house.

     While in prison Nolen converted to Islam. In April 2013, a month after leaving the halfway house, he began posting messages on Facebook under the name Jah Keem Yisrael. His postings were clearly anti-American. He ran  photographs of Osama bin Laden and the burning trade towers. He also had several Muslim Facebook friends from the U.S., England and the Middle East.

     Prior to losing his job at the Moore, Oklahoma food processing plant Nolen tried to covert fellow employees to Islam.

      On Saturday September 27, 2014, two days after the workplace murders, detectives questioned Nolen after he regained consciousness. He was charged with first-degree murder and aggravated assault. Until investigators determined the principal motive for the beheading--anger at being fired or striking a terroristic blow against America--the attacks on these innocent women were handled as a criminal matter. For many the fact that Nolen was a militant Muslim who beheaded a woman was enough to justify treating the murder as an act of terrorism.

     In May 2016 Nolen offered to plead guilty to first-degree murder. He said he wanted to be executed by lethal injection. Judge Lori Walkey rejected the defendant's guilty plea and ordered a hearing to determine his mental competency.

     In August 2016 a prosecution psychologist testified that Alton Nolen had a personality disorder and was therefore not psychotic. A neuropsychologist for the defense testified that Nolen was a schizophrenic with a "thought disorder."

     At the conclusion of the mental competency hearing Judge Walkey rejected Mr. Nolen's guilty plea. 

     On September 11, 2017 Mr. Nolen, having been ruled mentally competent, went on trial for murder. The jury on September 30, after two hours of deliberation, found him guilty of first-degree murder. Judge Lori Walkley, following the jury's recommendation, sentenced him to death by lethal injection.

The Urooj Khan Poison Case

     Urooj Khan immigrated to the U. S. from India when he was twenty-three. He worked hard, saved his money and by 2012 the 46-year-old owned three dry cleaning shops on Chicago's North Side where he lived with his wife Shabana Ansari and his 17-year-old stepdaughter, Jasmeen. Mr. Khan also owned five condos worth $250,000 each.

     In June 2012 after returning from his hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia where Mr Khan promised himself he would live a better life--and quit buying lottery tickets--he paid $60 at a 7-Eleven store near his house for two instant scratch-off cards. After scratching off the second ticket Mr. Khan yelled, "I hit a million!"

     On June 26, 2012 at the Illinois Lottery Ceremony Mr. Khan, with is wife, stepdaughter and a few friends looking on, accepted the oversized mock check for $425,000. (After opting for the lump sum payment that's what was left after taxes.) Khan said he'd donate some money to St. Jude's Children's Hospital in Chicago and use the rest of his winnings to pay bills and grow his business.

     On July 20, 2012, the day after the Illinois Comptroller's Office issued Mr. Khan his check, and before he had an opportunity to cash it, the lottery winner had dinner in his modest West Roger's Park neighborhood home with his wife Shabana Ansari and Jasmeen. After dinner Mr. Khan said he didn't feel well and went to bed. A short time later he screamed that he was suffocating. Ambulance personnel rushed Mr. Khan to a nearby hospital where doctors pronounced him dead.

     After a routine toxicological testing of Mr. Khan's blood for narcotics, alcohol and carbon monoxide poisoning (his skin had turned pink), the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office determined his cause of his death to be heart disease. As a result, the manner of Mr. Khan's death went into the books as natural. Pursuant to an internal medical examiner's office rule that dead people over the age of 45 who do not show signs of trauma were not autopsied, Mr. Khan was buried without a post-mortem examination. (The age limit has been since raised to 50.)

     On August 15, 2012 Mr. Khan's widow cashed the $425,000 lottery check.

     Five months after Urooj Khan's sudden and unexpected passing, one of his relatives called the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office. According to this unidentified family member, Mr. Khan had been poisoned to death.

     Acting on what must have been a credible tip, Medical Examiner Dr. Stephen Cina ordered further toxicological testing of Mr. Khan's blood. This led to a rather shocking discovery: Mr. Khan had died from a lethal dose of cyanide. As a result of this finding, the medical examiner's office changed Mr. Khan's cause of death to cyanide poisoning. His manner of death, however, still had to be determined through a homicide investigation conducted by detectives with the Chicago Police Department. (According to reports, investigators questioned Mr. Khan's widow for four hours.)

     Cyanide is an extremely toxic white powder that has a variety of industrial applications. It can also be found in some pesticides and in rat poison. Small doses of cyanide either swallowed, inhaled (gas chambers used it) or injected denies the body's blood cells oxygen. Death from this poison, a form of asphyxia called histoxic hypoxia, while agonizing is quick. To disguise its bitter taste a cyanide poisoner can mix a small amount into a plate of spicy food.

     Poisoning as a mode of criminal homicide was popular in the 19th Century before the dawn of pharmacology. Because there was no way to scientifically identify abnormal quantities of toxic substances in the body no one knows how many wives, prior to 1900, poisoned their husbands to death. (In the era before forensic toxicology homicide cops called cyanide "inheritance powder.")

    In modern times murder and suicide cases involving cyanide and other poisons are rare. In June 2012, the month Mr. Khan won his lottery money, millionaire Michael Markin, moments after a jury found him guilty of arson, swallowed a cyanide pill. Minutes later he died while sitting at the defense table. Markin's death was so unusual it received nationwide publicity.

     On January 8, 2013, the day Medical Examiner Stephen Cina announced the planned exhumation of Urooj Khan's remains, his wife Shaban Ansari told an Associated Press reporter that she wasn't the relative who requested the more sophisticated toxicological test. She said she had no idea who that person was, and that she "...didn't think anyone had a bad eye for [her husband] or that he had an enemy." The widow refused to provide details of the circumstances surrounding Mr. Khan's death. She said talking about his passing was too painful.

     In late January 2013, information surfaced that after Mr. Khan won the lottery his 32-year-old wife, his siblings, a daughter from a previous marriage and his stepdaughter Jasmeen began fighting over the money. According to Mr. Khan's brother Imtiaz and his sister Meraj, after his death Shabana Ansari tried to cash the lottery check to avoid giving Khan's daughter her fair share. In November 2012 homicide detectives searched the West Roger's Park home for traces of the cyanide. The five month period between Mr. Khan's death and the criminal investigation made solving the case difficult.

     In early February 2013 the authorities exhumed Urooj Khan's 5-foot-5, 198-pound body from a Chicago cemetery and transported it to the Cook County Medical Examiner's office. Forensic pathologists collected samples of his hair, fingernails, stomach contents and tissue from his major organs for tests to determine if he had been poisoned to death. Medical Examiner Dr. Stephen Cina told reporters that given the length of time Mr. Khan's body had been in the ground he was not certain that toxicological tests would produce positive results. According to Dr. Cina, "cyanide over the postmortem period can evaporate from the tissues." Dr. Cina said he remained convinced, however, that Mr. Khan had been the victim of a criminal homicide.

     A few weeks after the exhumation Dr. Cina, at a press conference, said that while earlier toxicological tests revealed a lethal dose of cyanide in Mr. Khan's blood, the poison was not detected in his tissues or digestive system. "In this case," the forensic pathologist said, "due to advanced putrefaction of the tissues, no cyanide was detected."

     The fact Mr. Khan died without a will led to a bitter dispute between his widow and his stepdaughter Jasmeen over his estate. In December, 2013, pursuant to a court settlement, the probate judge awarded Shabana the three dry cleaning shops, the five condos and two-thirds of the lottery winnings. Jasmeen got a third of the lottery payoff. No one has been charged in connection with Mr. Khan's sudden and unexpected death.

The Rurik Jutting Double Murder Case

     Rurik George Caton Jutting grew up wealthy in Cobham Surrey, England. He attended the Winchester College Independent Boarding School and in 2007 graduated with a degree in history from the University of Cambridge.

     In 2010, after working a couple of years for the banking firm Barclays, Mr. Jutting joined Bank of America Merrill Lynch in London where he worked in structured equity finance and trading. 

     In 2012 the British woman Rurik Jutting planned to marry left London for a job in New York City. Shortly after leaving England she had an affair with an American and broke off the engagement. Mr. Jutting took the rejection hard. The two of them tried to reconcile but it didn't work out.

     People who knew Rurik Jutting considered him a highly competent employee who was preoccupied with money and power. He once told an acquaintance that he spent thousands of pounds on an ornamental horse's skull that he purchased from a specialty shop. It seemed he enjoyed spending every penny he made on food, entertainment and nonessential luxury items.

     In 2013 the Bank of America transferred Mr. Jutting to its branch operation in Hong Kong. After moving to the Chinese city of 7.2 million he moved into an apartment on the 31st floor of the J. Residence Building in the Wan Chai district of the city. Located in Hong Kong's southern quarter, Wan Chia was known for its high number of restaurants, bars, nightclubs and strip joints. Apartments in the 381-unit complex rented out at between $3,000 and $5,000 a month.

     Hong Kong's red light district, located adjacent to Wan Chai to the north, featured prostitutes from southeast Asia and Africa. Hong Kong, however, with the world's lowest homicide rate, was a safe place to live. During the first six months of 2014 there were just 14 murders in the city. (In New York City during that period there were 120 criminal homicides. 

     At three-forty in the morning of Saturday November 1, 2014, the 29-year-old Jutting called the Hong Kong police to his flat. Upon entering the luxury apartment police officers were immediately struck with the sight of recently spilled blood splashed on the floor and walls of the dwelling. They also were confronted by the stench of a decaying body.

     Police officers at the scene encountered the nude body of an Indonesian prostitute named Jesse Lorena. Among other lacerations, the 30-year-old's throat had been slashed. Investigators would later learn she also worked as a part-time disc jockey at a Hong Kong pub.

     Officers in Mr. Jutting's apartment came upon a black suitcase on the dwelling's balcony. When they opened it they found, wrapped in a carpet, the decaying body of a young woman who had almost been decapitated. This was 25-year-old Sumarti Nighshih, a sex worker from Cilacap, Indonesia who in October had traveled to Hong Kong on a tourist's visa.

     Investigators believed that Nighshih, her hands and feet bound with rope, had been murdered on October 27, 2014. Lacerations covered her naked and decomposing body.

     Police officers placed Rurik Jutting under arrest on suspicion of double murder and escorted him out of the building.

     Crime scene investigators found, on Jutting's Smartphone, 2,000 photographs of the dead prostitutes, shots that had been taken after he had murdered them. Many of the images included close-ups of the victims' knife wounds.

     Security camera footage revealed that Jutting and Jesse Lorena entered his apartment at midnight shortly before he murdered her then notified the authorities. Officers also recovered a small quantity of cocaine from the flat.

     A resident of the building told police officers that he and several others who lived there had recently detected the smell of death coming from the vicinity of Jutting's 31st floor apartment.

     On Monday, November 3, 2014 Mr. Jutting, accompanied by his attorney Martyn Richmond, appeared before a judge in Hong Kong's Eastern Magistrate's Court. Attorney Richmond informed the magistrate that his client had been co-operating fully with the police. Moreover, Mr. Jutting expressed a willingness to re-enact the murders on video, a common practice in Hong Kong, China.

     On November 24, 2014 Judge Bina Chainral, following psychiatric evaluations of the accused, ruled that he was mentally competent. The judge scheduled the murder trial for July 6, 2015.

     In November 2016 a jury sitting in Hong Kong found the defendant guilty of double murder. In a statement at his sentencing hearing, the defendant said, "The evil I have inflicted can never be remedied by me in words or actions." Justice Michael Stuart-Moore, after noting that he did not believe Rurik felt any remorse for his murders, sentenced him to life in prison.

     Although he had promised not to appeal his convictions, Rurik Jutting did in fact appeal his case in September 2017. In April 2018 the justices on the Court of Final Appeal upheld the double murder conviction.

The Angela Nolen Murder Solicitation Case

     In 1995, 30-year-old Angela Nolen married 46-year-old Paul "Jay" Strickler. She taught kindergarten at the Sontag Elementary School in the western Virginia town of Rocky Mount. He worked as an administrator in the Franklin County School System's central office. In 2002 the couple adopted a baby girl.

     After 17 years of marriage Angela Nolen, in October 2012, asked a Franklin County Juvenile and Domestic Relations judge for an order of protection against her estranged husband. Nolen, in asking for the protection order, accused Mr. Strickler of physically abusing her and their 9-year-old daughter. The judge, believing that Nolen had "...proven the allegation of family abuse by a preponderance of the evidence" (a civil standard of proof less rigorous than proof beyond a reasonable doubt) granted Angela Nolen's request. Pursuant to the protection order Mr. Strickler could not have any interaction with his estranged wife and could only contact their daughter by phone for five minutes three times a week.

     Two months after the issuance of the domestic protection order Angela Nolen and Jay Strickler were divorced. The judge granted her full custody of the child and he agreed to sell her his share of the house. Not long after that Angela Nolen decided to have her ex-husband killed.

     Early in February 2013 the kindergarten teacher and her friend, Cathy Warren Bennett, the nurse at the Sontag Elementary School, began plotting Jay Strickler's murder. Like most aspiring murder-for-hire masterminds these middle-class women didn't have a clue where to acquire the services of a hit-man. Cathy Bennett, on Nolen's behalf, reached out to a man she hoped would do the deed. In furtherance of the deadly plot the 37-year-old school nurse handed the candidate for the contract killing a sheet of paper containing information about the target of the homicide.

     As is often the case the man Cathy Bennett approached to commit the murder for money went directly to the police. As a result, on the night of February 19, 2013, the man who accepted Angel Nolen's advance payment of $4,000 for the hit was an undercover police officer. According to the audio-taped murder-for-hire conversation between the undercover cop and the mastermind the hit-man would receive another four grand when he completed his mission.

     Police officers arrested Angela Nolen on the morning after she met with the man she thought was going to kill Jay Strickler. Charged with solicitation to commit murder, the authorities incarcerated Nolen at the Western Virginia Regional Jail. She was held without bail. If convicted as charged she faced a maximum sentence of forty years behind bars.

     The Franklin County prosecutor charged Cathy Bennett, Nolen's intermediary with conspiracy to solicit murder. A judge set her bail at $60,000.

     Both employees of the Sontag Elementary School were suspended without pay. Mr. Strickler, the 63-year-old target of Angela Nolen's alleged murder plot recently retired from the school system. In speaking to a reporter with the Roanoke Times he said his ex-wife wanted him dead so she wouldn't have to pay for her share of the house. "That scares the hell out of me," he said. "I am just so glad the state police found out about this [plot]. I'm afraid for my life. I still feel that way. If someone knocks on my door I won't answer it. I'll call 911. I'm extremely sad and I'm extremely worried."

     On June 26, 2013 Angela Nolen pleaded guilty to solicitation to commit murder.

     On December 23, 2013 the Franklin County judge sentenced Angela Nolen to five years. However, pursuant to the plea bargain the murder-for-hire mastermind would only have to spent 18 months of that sentence in prison.

     The judge, pursuant to Cathy Warren Bennett's guilty plea sentenced her to 18 months behind bars.

     Murder-for-hire cases are not shocking because people hire hit-men. The surprising part often involves who these masterminds are. When we think of kindergarten teachers and school nurses, murder-for-hire doesn't spring to mind. Perhaps it's reasonable to assume that a desperate Angela Nolen felt she had run out of options. But the school nurse, what was she thinking?

     It's a shame that someone didn't convince this amateur homicide plotter that murder-for-hire was not an appropriate remedy for her problem. Aside from the morality issue, amateur masterminds are always caught and convicted. Moreover, in cases where the target is actually murdered they get the longest prison sentences. Judges and juries usually hate the murder-for-hire mastermind more than they do the hit-man. As it turned out, the mastermind in this murder solicitation case got off light.
      

Charles Manson And His Murderous Cult

     In Los Angeles the murders committed by members of Charles Manson's "family" on August 9 and 10, 1969 marked the beginning of a homicidal crime wave that lasted until the early 1990's. Charles Manson became the personification of cold-blooded, ritualistic serial killing. The image of this little man's face came to symbolize demonic evil. While he was not the first insignificant loser to achieve infamy through sociopathic deviancy, his name and his persona have been etched into the annals of murder. Manson's pot-smoking, LSD-taking, hippie followers were the prototypes of today's bath salt, PCP zombies.

     Manson and his murderous crew, inspired by the Beatle's song "Helter Skelter," slaughtered eight people in a plot to start a race war. The man who successfully prosecuted these degenerate misfits, Vincent Bugliosi, wrote a book (with Curt Gentry) about the case called Helter Skelter. The nonfiction book, published in 1974 became a bestseller and won several literary awards. Mr. Bugliosi died in June of 2015 at the age of 80.

     In 2011, cold-case investigators with the Los Angeles Police Department were looking into 12 unsolved murders committed in the LA area during the Manson family killing spree. Pursuant to that investigation the LAPD petitioned a federal judge in Texas for the right to review eight cassette audio-tapes containing hours of conversations between Manson follower Charles "Tex" Watson and his attorney. Investigators believed these tapes contained evidence linking Manson and his people to some or all of the unsolved murders.

     In the spring of 2012 the judge granted the LAPD's request for the audio tapes. Watson's attorney appealed the ruling which delayed the LAPD's access to this information.

     In an effort to get around the legal roadblock, Los Angeles detectives acquired a warrant to search the attorney's office for the cassettes. On October 16, U.S. District Court Judge Richard A. Schell issued an order prohibiting the LA detectives from serving their search warrant. In justifying his ruling, Judge Schell wrote: "This court understands and respects the desire of the LAPD to seek access to the 42-year-old tapes. However, the LAPD has provided no explanation as to why this court should shortcut the usual [appeals] procedure...." In other words, what was the emergency?

     Cold-case detectives, relatives of the victims of the unsolved murders and people interested in Charles Manson and the history of murder were frustrated by the delay caused by this judge's ruling. But in May 2013 Judge Richard A. Schell released the Watson tapes to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office. After the recordings were converted into electronic files the historic legal conversations were given to the cold case investigators looking into the unsolved Los Angeles murders.

     As it turned out the Watson tapes did not produce evidence that led to the resolution of the unsolved Los Angeles murders. But in September 2014 an attorney for imprisoned Manson follower Leslie Van Houten announced that the Watson tapes might benefit his client's bid for parole. In May 2015 the state parole board denied her request.

     Charles "Tex" Watson, serving his time at the Donovan State Prison in San Diego, was denied parole in November 2016.

     In 2016 Leslie Van Houten, in her 21st petition for parole, was recommended for parole by the California Parole Commission. Governor Jerry Brown, however, denied the 68-year-old's release.

     On November 17, 2017, 83-year-old Charles Manson was rushed from his prison cell to Mercy Hospital in Bakersfield, California. He died later that day. 

     On July 8, 2023, Leslie Van Houten, without opposition from the governor, was granted parole.

A Ten-Year-Old's Criminal Justice Nightmare

     While police officers can be helpful, fair and brave, they can also be cruel and mindless. This also holds true for prosecutors. The arrest of a ten-year-old boy in Colorado Springs, Colorado revealed a degree of law enforcement mindlessness that is as inexplicable as it is dangerous. In this case the motto "To Serve and Protect" gave way to "To Intimidate and Terrorize."

     In 2019 ten-year-old Gavin Carpenter lived with his parents and two siblings on the Fort Carson Army base outside of Colorado Springs, Colorado. In the afternoon of July 24, 2019 Gavin was in Colorado Springs playing with his friend outside his friend's grandparents' house. Later, the boys planned a sleepover at the friend's nearby home.

     On the sidewalk in front of the grandparents' house Gavin pointed an orange, Nerf rifle at five or six passing vehicles. He and his companion were playing a version of the video game Fortnite. The driver of an oncoming pickup truck drove a short distance past the boys, slammed on his brakes and with smoking tires backed up and jumped out of the vehicle to angrily confront the frightened kids. When the friend's grandfather stepped out of his house the infuriated driver screamed at him.

     Gavin and his friend took refuge in the grandparents' home as the furious motorist called 911 and falsely reported that Gavin had shot at him with a BB gun.

     When deputies with the El Paso County Sheriff's Office rolled up to the grandparents' house young Gavin and his friend, frightened and in tears, tried to explain that they had no intention of threatening or scaring anyone. They were playing a game with an orange broken toy that could not even shoot Nerf projectiles. The boys' explanation apparently fell on deaf ears because deputies handcuffed the terrified children, placed them into the back of a marked police car and hauled them to the Colorado Springs Police Department for fingerprinting and mugshots. Shortly thereafter Gavin's parents, Chris and Stephanie Carpenter, showed up at the police station.

     Gavin Carpenter and his playmate were not released from police custody until ten-thirty that night.

     For the ten-year-old Nerf gun pointer his surreal ordeal did not end with his arrest. A prosecutor in the El Paso County District Attorney's Office charged Gavin Carpenter with felony menacing. Anyone who has spent a year in law school knows that to commit a crime, the perpetrator must possess some degree of criminal intent. To commit felony menacing the actor must intentionally or knowingly place someone in fear of serious bodily injury or death. In the case of a ten-year-old who thought he was playing a game with a Nerf gun, there was no intent to menace anyone. The charging prosecutor must have known this but didn't care. This was not about the law or criminal justice, this was about making a political point at the expense of an innocent child. This prosecutor should have been removed from office and disbarred. 

     Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter hired an attorney and met with the district attorney who refused to drop the charge. According to a juvenile court judge, before Gavin Carpenter's attorney could petition to have his client's felony record expunged, the boy had to enter a 216-day "diversion program" that required him, among other things, to do community service and submit an apology essay to the court. (If anyone should have apologized it was the idiots in charge of this case.)

     In February 2020, after Gavin's parents spent $4,000 in legal fees, a judge granted their petition for expungement. As difficult as that process was, expunging Gavin Carpenter's fear of the police would be a lot tougher and take a lot longer. Who could blame him if he never trusted the police again. 

The Right to Give Your Child a Wrong Name

     Generally, because of the First Amendment right of free speech, there is nothing the government can do to stop a parent from giving a kid a weird and arguably stupid name. The only remedy for victims of bad names is to legally correct the problem when they become adults. Recent examples of ridiculous names include Ruger, Irelynd, Blaze, Cinsere, D'Artagnan, Abeus, Troolio, and Dusk. (For some reason, movie stars have a tendency to to burden their children with stupid, attention getting names.)

     Several years ago in New Jersey, the parents of a 3-year-old they had named Adolph Hitler Campbell, sued a bakery for refusing to write that name on the boy's birthday cake. While the bakery won the suit, the state of New Jersey did not have the authority to have little Adolph Hitler re-named.

     If you can name an innocent child Adolph Hitler, you can pretty much name a kid anything. There are, however, a few limitations to this right. In most states a name cannot be an Arabic number, an obscenity or a symbol. Names that are extremely long are also forbidden. So, could a mother lawfully name her girl Promiscuous, or her son Fecal? Probably.

     Jaleesa Martin, a resident of Newport, Tennessee, a town of 7,000 in the rural foothills of the Great Smokey Mountains, gave birth to a boy in January 2013. The boy's father, a man named McCullough, wanted his son to have his last name. The mother wanted to give the child her last name. The couple did agree, however, on the baby's first name--Messiah.

     To settle this domestic dispute, Jaleesa Martin, in the summer of 2013, asked child support magistrate Lu Anna Ballew to approve the name Messiah DeShawn Martin. Following the hearing in August 2013 Magistrate Ballew ordered the parents to name their child Martin DeShawn McCullough.

     The magistrate said she disapproved of the child's first name because "the word 'messiah' is a title and it's a title that has been earned by one person and that person is Jesus Christ." Moreover, Ballew reasoned, that first name "could put him [the boy] at odds with a lot of people, and at this point he had no choice in what his name was. (What kid does have a choice in this matter?)

     In announcing that she was appealing the magistrate's decision, Jaleesa Martin told reporters that "I was shocked. I never intended on naming my son Messiah because it means God, and I didn't think a judge could make me change my boy's name because of her religious beliefs." (The mother could have pointed out that in 2012 more babies were named Messiah than Donald, Philip, Bruce or Gary.)

     On September 18, 2013, Judge Telford Forgety overturned the magistrate's ruling. Pursuant to an agreement reached by the parents, the kid's name was changed to Messiah DeShawn McCullough. (The boy had siblings named Micah and Mason.)