The past few days have finally seen some justice served in part to a couple of wrongly arrested people as well as one that was gunned down in his own bed. We'll start with the tale of the teenager who was facing a year in prison for wearing a t-shirt with a gun on it to school.
According to The Huffington Post:
A criminal charge has been dismissed against a West Virginia middle school student who refused a teacher's order to remove a National Rifle Association T-shirt he wore to school.
Logan County Circuit Judge Eric O'Briant signed an order dismissing an obstruction charge Thursday against 14-year-old Jared Marcum stemming from an April 18 incident at Logan Middle School.
Marcum was charged after a police officer told him to stop talking, but the student didn't.
Marcum's attorney, Ben White, says Marcum was exercising his free speech rights and his support for the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms. After a review of statements from the officer and the school's principal, White says he and a prosecutor agreed that creating a criminal record for Marcum wasn't a good idea.
The next story is about a man who was shot 16 times while lying in his own bed. The cops had no reason to be in his room and no reason to think that he was armed. An NBC affiliate covered the story earlier in the week:
A man who was shot 16 times during a police raid in Auburn will be paid $3 million under a settlement reached Thursday.
The case involves a February 2012 incident where 28-year-old Dustin Theoharis was shot 16 times while in bed.
Theoharis had not committed a crime-- a team of King County deputies and a state corrections officer entered his room to search for weapons after arresting someone else at the Auburn home where he lived.
Two officers -- corrections officer Kris Rongen and Deputy Aaron Thompson -- fired nearly 20 times after entering Theoharis' room, hitting him 16 times.
Miraculously, he survived, but was left with a shattered jaw and shoulder, a fractured spine, and damage to his limbs and organs.
Lastly a story I've been following all week but avoided writing about because I wanted to see what the outcome was and because I've written about chalk vandalism in the past. Thank goodness in this case sanity prevailed. LA Times reports:
A jury Monday acquitted a 40-year-old man of all charges connected with writing protest messages in chalk on the sidewalk outside branches of the Bank of America.
The case has exacerbated the already tense relationship between Mayor Bob Filner, who called the case "stupid" and a "waste of money," and City Atty. Jan Goldsmith, who defended it as a legitimate prosecution for graffiti vandalism.
Deliberating for only a few hours, the jury apparently agreed with Filner -- declaring Jeff Olson not guilty on all 13 misdemeanor counts filed by Goldsmith's office.
Olson, who said he was inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement, never denied writing the slogans.
One slogan said, "No thanks, big banks." Another, "Shame on Bank of America." And in yet another, the bank was portrayed as an octopus grabbing at cash with its tentacles.
"It's chalk," Filner told reporters last week in an exasperated tone. "It's water-soluble chalk. They were political slogans."
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