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Drinking & Being Stupid Is A Crime.
-Stupid as stupid does Sir, um, I mean Officer!

Lake Worth, Florida - A Lake Worth woman was arrested last night when deputies responded to a Marathon grocery store Tuesday evening to reports she was driving around the parking lot with a small child on the roof of her car. Brenda Bouschet, 54, told deputies she didn't understand why she was wrong to place the three-year-old girl on the roof of the car and drive around the parking lot.

India - "When I woke up, I was in the middle of a row of bodies waiting for postmortem," the 19-year-old said, shivering, "my throat was parched and I asked for water. Towering over me the doctors and nursing staff at Anandpur Sahib Civil Hospital looked dazed. They must have been surprised to see a dead man come alive like that. But when was I dead?"
"Good thing he woke up before the autopsy. I hear it is real hard to wake up after one."

"They were trying to pass him off as still being alive," a police spokesman told reporters.

The suspects left the corpse of 66-year-old Virgilio Cintron, on the street, as they sent inside the check-cashing service and when they came outside a crowd had gathered, piquing the interest of a security guard, who brought the little episode to a dead end.
 

The ruling puzzled attorneys on both sides.

"The Legislature has made it very clear that they don't want people who kill people to profit from it," said Mark Leemon, who represents Hoge's uncle, the executor of his sister's estate.

Kissinger's family wants all the money to go to her third son in Oregon, who is also mentally ill and will need lifelong care, Leemon said.

But many of the details surrounding the case rest on complex legal definitions of what it means to be a killer, and what type of killer Hoge is.

The Slayer Statute is designed to prevent those guilty of two key things — a "willful" and "unlawful" killing — from profiting from their crimes. So, for example, a person who accidentally hit a family member with a car wouldn't necessarily be prevented from collecting life insurance because, although the killing could have been unlawful, the killer didn't necessarily intend to do it.

Hoge's attorney, Jean O'Loughlin, argued that the June 23, 1999, slayings of Pamela and Zach Kissinger, Hoge's 49-year-old mother and 19-year-old brother, weren't legally unlawful because Hoge was found

not guilty. Therefore, the Slayer Statute should not even apply, she said.

John Strait, a Seattle University associate professor of law, agrees.

"For all intents and purposes, there is no crime. We don't punish people for being really sick. We don't impose criminal culpability on people who are mentally ill," he said. "It's nutty logic."

But the appeals court said that while Hoge might not be criminally responsible under the law because he was insane, the killing was still unlawful.

Whether the killing was "willful" — the second point required under the statute — is murkier.

The appeals court sent the case back to King County because the judges said the wrong standard was used when determining that Hoge's act was willful.

O'Loughlin could also ask for consideration by the state Supreme Court — a tactical move she is not sure she'll take.

Wherever it lands, the case will rest heavily on Hoge's tortured mental history.

Long, troubled history

Long before the slayings, Hoge's behavior and beliefs caused alarm among his family members and earned him a series of diagnoses, commitments and heavy drug prescriptions, according to court documents describing his medical history.

A mental-health summary says he was physically abused as a young child and began sleeping with a knife at age 9. He used alcohol and drugs and got into criminal trouble as a teen and was finally diagnosed with schizophrenia while in juvenile detention.

Hoge often heard voices, lived on and off with his mother or father, and did not hold a job.

When he was hospitalized, he often threatened to kill staff and had threatened his mother and brother, according to court documents and medical reports.

Hoge was eventually diagnosed with Capgras delusion, whereby he believed family members were replaced by identical impostors. He believed he could use magic and fly into space to prevent people from harming him and that others were trying to use their magic on him, according to his court documents.

Two days before he killed his mother and brother, Hoge went to Northwest Behavioral Services, a King County-contracted clinic where he was an outpatient, and requested a prescription for an antipsychotic medication, according to court records. The nurse practitioner told Hoge he could not have the medication until June 30 and wrote him a postdated prescription.

On June 23, 1999, Walter Williams, Pamela Kissinger's boyfriend, returned to the Renton-area home he shared with Pamela Kissinger to find Hoge waving an ax. Hoge chased Williams and hit him in the head with the ax. Williams made it back outside the home and called police.

When officers arrived, they found Zach Kissinger lying under a pile of clothes and covered with stab and head wounds. Pamela Kissinger's body was downstairs, stabbed and wrapped in a comforter. She had been positioned holding a photo of her sons.

After his trial, Hoge was sent to Western State, where he could spend the rest of his life unless it is proved to the court that he is not a danger to the community.

If that happened, he could get a conditional release, starting out in a separate, independent-living facility at the hospital before moving into the community, O'Loughlin said. At that point, she said, the estate money would be useful to pay for continuing therapy and treatment.

Is it fair?

Though it's not part of the legal determinations, one might wonder whether it seems fair, or moral, for Hoge to inherit money from the mother he killed.

It is, O'Loughlin says.

Hoge's mother, though burdened by her son's mental illness, loved and supported Hoge, said his attorney.

"She knew how disabled he was, how his life was basically a living hell," O'Loughlin said. "Think of your worst nightmare. That's what it's like for people with mental illness, but they're awake. Morally, it's not their fault.

"But I guess everyone would have to decide that for themselves."
 
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Mexican soldiers enter Arizona - Hold U.S. Border Patrol agent at gunpoint

TUCSON, Arizona - Four Mexican soldiers crossed into a remote area of Arizona and briefly held a U.S. Border Patrol agent at gunpoint before realizing where they were and returning to Mexico, U.S. authorities said. She said the soldiers lowered their weapons after about four minutes when the agent convinced them who he was and where they were, then retreated into Mexico.