Perspective
Jeff Mizanskey, 61, is a poster child for one well-known criticism of mandatory-minimum sentencing laws — that nonviolent marijuana users (and small-time sellers) may wind up doing decades of hard time and, in fact, more time than some sociopathic offenders serve for heinous offenses. Mizanskey is 20 years into a life sentence with no possibility of parole for several violations of Missouri’s “prior and persistent drug offender” law, and his only chance for freedom is a clemency plea now under consideration by Gov. Jay Nixon (and still opposed by Mizanskey’s prosecutor).
Weird old world
Unconventional Food Prep: Leaked photographs taken by an undercover health and safety officer at China’s Tongcheng Rice Noodle Factory in Dongguan city in June show workers in street clothes casually walking back and forth atop piles of vermicelli noodles about to be packaged for shipment to stores. Some workers were even seen lounging or sleeping on the mountains of noodles. (In 1992, News of the Weird noted that health officials in South Dennis, Massachusetts, had closed the Wing Wah Chinese restaurant for various violations, including the restaurant’s habit of draining water from cabbage by putting it in cloth laundry bags, placing the bags between pieces of plywood in the parking lot and driving over them with a van.)
Unclear on the concept
Werner Purkhart, who has been running a “silent disco” in Salzburg, Austria, for four years, was denied renewal of his business permit in July, supposedly because his parties were too loud. At a silent disco, each dancer wears headphones to hear radio-transmitted music; to those without headphones, the roomful of swaying, swinging dancers is eerily quiet. Salzburg Mayor Heinz Schaden said it was still too loud. “The noise … is keeping (the neighbors) up.”
Police report
Alonzo Liverman, 29, was arrested in June in a Daytona Beach, Florida, police sting on prostitutes’ johns. “I’m hungry,” was the female officer’s come-on. Responded Liverman, “I got a salad.” Even though no salad was found on Liverman, police determined the banter constituted a sufficient offer for paid sex.
The Justice Angle
Ms. Ajanaffy Njewadda and her husband recently filed a lawsuit against New York City’s transit authority (MTA) following her tumble down some stairs at a subway station (which caused a broken ankle, concussion and lingering trauma that has required psychiatric care). The MTA had placed a large ad for the serial-killer TV series “Dexter” on station stairs, positioned to be seen just as visitors left the subway. Ms. Njewadda said she was momentarily terrified by the ad and lost her balance. …
Oh, Dear!: A man whose name was withheld (“D.B.”) filed a lawsuit in April against medical clinics and physicians who performed his colonoscopy in Fairfax, Virginia, in 2013, based on what the patient learned from audio his smartphone recorded while he was unconscious. Though he originally intended to record only doctors’ instructions, he was dismayed to know that they began “mocking” him the second he went under, making disparaging and untrue statements about his health, feigning disgust at his body (“Oh! Oscar Mike Goss!”) (slang for “OMG” — oh, my God), threatening to “fire a gun up his rectum,” “diagnosing” him with syphilis or “tuberculosis in the penis,” and threatening to (falsely) note hemorrhoids on his record — all done amidst gales of laughter.
Recurring themes
The most recent murder suspect to whine about his oppressive jail conditions appears to be Adam Landerman, 21, awaiting trial in the grisly 2013 murders of two people. In July, his patience apparently exhausted, he filed court papers in Joliet, Illinois, complaining that the jail’s towels are too small, the jail offers no barber or beautician services or shaving cream, and the food is “monotonous and undiversified,” among other inadequacies. CV
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