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Earlier this year Michael Eugene Price was granted retrials in two armed robbery cases after an Oklahoma appeals court ruled that trial judges had erred in telling juries that defendants are “presumed not guilty” instead of “presumed innocent.” Price had been serving 32 and 35 years, respectively. He was retried, found guilty in both cases, and sentenced to 60 years for the first and 65 for the second.
In September police in Meadville, Pennsylvania, announced that the summer drought was responsible for their success in finding marijuana farmers. A police spokesperson said most vegetation was brown because of the drought, but marijuana plants stayed green because the owners took such good care of them.
In September police in Gadsden, Alabama, were able to arrest suspected bank robbers Bobby Joe Dedeaux and Anitra Freeman after the two stopped at a nearby strip mall for a haircut and a little shopping during their getaway.
Poland’s leading “playwright of the absurd,” Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, was buried in Soviet territory when he committed suicide in 1939. In 1988 his casket was sent to his beloved Polish mountains for reburial. In May 1995 a special commission celebrating Witkiewicz’s work somehow discovered that Witkiewicz’s casket contained the body of a woman.
