Month: September 2012

“For me, you’re somewhere between a cockroach and that white
stuff that accumulates at the corner of your mouth when you’re really thirsty.” – Cyrus Grissom

Next logical number in this sequence: 1, 2, 1, X

Next logical word in this sequence: Emptiness, Form, Emptiness, Y

Scroll down for the answers!

A
N
T
I
C
I
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X = 2, Y = Form

Conclusion: Life is a circle, not a line.

“You know what?  I don’t fcken give a sh1t…(He) shouldn’t be doin that.” – D. Vinyard

Just because it was said by a (then) horrible person doesn’t mean it can’t be used for Good.

-Puppy >.< Yip!

When you dance with Puppy, Puppy don’t change…Puppy changes you.

-Puppy >.< Yip!

“My plan is to help the middle class” – Mitt Romney

“Middle income is $200,000 to $250,000” – Mitt Romney

See ‘Exchange Of The Day’

“Oh wow, a neuraly…”
*BLINK*

-Puppy >.< Yip!

“A Philadelphia judge on Friday granted a condemned man a rare
hearing to weigh whether prosecutors failed to disclose key
evidence indicating the true motive behind a grisly killing
nearly 30 years ago.

The ruling is a major break for Terry Williams, 46, slated to be
the first prisoner in more than 50 years to be executed in
Pennsylvania while still appealing his sentence. Attorneys for
Williams say his life should be spared due to his traumatic and
violent childhood, and the fact that he was sentenced to die for
killing a man who sexually abused him and other teenage boys.

Judge Teresa Sarmina, of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas,
did not stay Williams’ execution, which is scheduled for Oct. 3,
but allowed a hearing next Thursday that opens the door to that possibility. His attorneys want Williams’ sentence reduced to
life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Williams was sentenced to die for murdering Amos Norwood, 56, a
chemist and church volunteer, whose body was found stabbed,
bludgeoned and partially burned in a Philadelphia cemetery in
June 1984. Police traced Norwood’s stolen credit card to Williams
and Marc Draper, a childhood friend who pleaded guilty to murder
and implicated Williams in the crime.

His arrest and trial shocked the city. A college freshman, Williams
was the star quarterback of his championship high school football
team, and a popular and academically gifted student.

Prosecutors argued at trial that the murder was a robbery that
went wrong. Williams’ attorneys now say the killing was motivated
by rage Williams felt toward Norwood, who Williams said started
paying him for sex when he was 13.

But jurors never heard Williams’ claims that he and Norwood were
involved sexually, or that Norwood was implicated in the sexual
abuse of underage teenage boys in his church congregation. The
jury also did not hear Williams’ claims that he had been sexually victimized by neighborhood men and older teens from early
childhood through adolescence. Williams was three months past
his 18th birthday — the legal cutoff for execution in the U.S. —
when Norwood was killed.

After his arrest in the Norwood murder, Williams was charged and
convicted of third-degree murder for the savage stabbing death of
another man, later identified as a prolific abuser of teens. The
man’s body was found in room scattered with dozens of Polaroid
photographs of nude teenage boys.

State and federal appellate courts found that Williams’ attorney
in the Norwood case was negligent in not presenting evidence of
abuse at trial, but rejected his appeal anyway, ruling that the
negligence did not materially impact the jury’s verdict.

Mamie Norwood, the victim’s widow, has pleaded for clemency for
Williams, but Philadelphia prosecutors are pushing hard for his
execution, recently filing a 107-page brief opposing defense
motions for a stay.

The approaching execution has touched a nerve in Pennsylvania,
where several high-profile child sex abuse trials this year have
forced widespread soul-searching over the failure by church
leaders and educators to root out and report sexual predators in
their ranks.

“If any state should know what sexual trauma does to somebody,
it’s Pennsylvania,” said Marc Bookman, executive director of the
Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, an anti-death penalty
group. “And this is the person that gets executed?”

In July, a senior priest with the Catholic Church’s Archdiocese
of Philadelphia was sentenced to three to six years in state
prison after being convicted of allowing a priest known to him as
a sexual predator to maintain extensive contact with children. Judge Sarmina, who ordered the new hearing for Williams, oversaw the trial.

In June, Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant coach at Penn State
University, was convicted of 45 counts of child sexual abuse
over 15 years. Testimony at Sandusky’s trial established that top university officials were repeatedly told of the abuse but did not
report it to police.

Next week’s hearing will feature testimony from Draper, who
pleaded guilty to acting as Williams’ accomplice in the murder of
Norwood and is serving a life sentence without the possibility of
parole. Andrea Foulkes, the Philadelphia assistant district attorney who prosecuted Williams and Draper, also was called to testify.

In sworn declarations to Williams’ defense team, Draper described
the events of Norwood’s murder and said that Philadelphia
prosecutors told him not to discuss sexual involvement between
Williams and the older man.

According to his declarations, the night of the killing, Draper
and Williams were hanging out on a street corner when they were
approached by Norwood in his car. Norwood picked up the two
boys and drove to a nearby cemetery. “Norwood was very
comfortable,” Draper wrote.

At the cemetery, Williams and Norwood went off alone,
presumably to have sex, according to Draper. “After some time
passed, Terry came back to the car and told me to come with
him,” Draper wrote. “Terry was acting crazy. He started yelling
stuff and began hitting Norwood with a tire iron.”

“He was yelling ‘so you like boys, so you like boys’ as he hit
Norwood.”

Draper’s statements about Norwood having sex with Williams were
never disclosed to the defense or at trial, according to Williams’ attorneys. “Neither Ms. Foulkes nor the police wanted to hear
anything about the case having to do with Norwood having sex
with Terry,” Draper said in his statement.

Foulkes, who now works as a federal prosecutor, told the
Philadelphia Enquirer Friday that she could not comment
on the case.

Williams’ defense team also wants to present affidavits indicating
that Norwood propositioned and molested teenage boys he
oversaw as a youth leader at a Philadelphia church.

In February, the Rev. Charles Poindexter, 80, pastor at St. Luke’s
Church in Philadelphia for 33 years, provided a signed statement
for Williams’ defense and an investigator, describing his
suspicions that Norwood was abusing teenage boys in the
congregation. Norwood spent an inordinate amount of time with
the teens, lent them money and let them sleep over at his house,
Poindexter said.

In his statement, Poindexter also said that several years before
Norwood’s death, the mother of a 15-year-old boy told him that
Norwood had fondled her son’s genitals while driving him home
from a church event.

“She also told me that Amos had inappropriately touched a number
of other boys at the church,” Poindexter said in the statement.
“The mother and her son eventually left the church.”

Reached by phone at his home in Virginia, Poindexter denied
making any incriminating statements about Norwood to the
defense team. But the signature at the bottom of the defense
affidavit is identical to the one at the bottom of a police statement
Poindexter gave police in 1984, days after Norwood’s murder.”

– John Rudolf, HuffPost Crime

Joe Castiglione = Class Act.

Thanks for the memories, Joe.

-Puppy

“Well I may look like I’m crazy…I sure know right from wrong.” – Led Zeppelin, “Custard Pie”

I am He and He is Me and She is We and We are All together.

-Puppy >.< Yip!