Category: Law

There is no statute of limitations on murder, so police will be showing up at the Bowie High School’s Class of 1973 to talk about the night one of their graduates disappeared, only later to be found in a local swamp. Donna Dustin was celebrating her recent graduation when things turned a bit ugly.

The next time Donna was seen, later that day at around 10:30 a.m., she was a corpse, beaten savagely to death off Meyers Station Road near Bowie Race Track, an after-hours hangout for local teens. Her body was found on the Anne Arundel side of the woods.

David Cordle, an investigator with Anne Arundel County’s State’s Attorney’s Office, will speak at the reunion, asking attendees to tell him anything they saw or heard about Donna that Nov. 17.

Reunions, Mr. Cordle said, “bring a lot of people together who normally don’t come together. If you ask (them) the right questions, maybe you’ll get the kind of answers you need.”

I doubt we’ll see someone stand up and confess, but you never know what people have thought or said over the years thinking they were safe and far away from a tragic murder scene. DNA evidence is far more refined than it was 35 years ago.

But here’s an interesting stat on life in the suburbs of the big city. Of the 700 or so graduates, 39 have died.

“Three were murdered, three committed suicide and others died in car crashes, overdosed or died of alcoholism. Three died while waiting for transplants or after getting transplants, three from breast cancer and three from AIDS,” Ms. Nusser said.

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The Houston Chronicle has pretty interesting article about the Texas execution of Jose Medellin for the rape and murder of two girls in Texas in 1993. Most of Mexico right now is focused on the kidnapping of 14-year-old Fernando Marti, so much so that the execution was almost a distraction, while in Europe and in the International Court of something or another there have been demands that the US halt the execution and review the case. (For those who are wondering why, when you are arrested in a foreign country you are supposed to be allowed to talk with the embassy/consulate, an option which Mr. Medellin was apparently not given. Of course the Embassy folks can’t do much more than basically say ‘you’ve been very very bad and don’t bend over to pick up the soap’ but it’s the principle of the thing).

Crime in Mexico is not getting much better, so much so that advocates for the death penalty in Mexico are starting to get their voice. Of course that would mean the death sentence would be handed out by the pearly clean and non-corrupt Mexican judiciary. Maybe not.

Bonus: Is Mexico a “failed state” ? Read for yourself.

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The part time mayor (Cheye Calvo) of the small town of Berwyn Heights, MD was awakened the other day to the Prince Georges County SWAT team kicking in his door after he brought in a package containing 32 lbs of marijuana addressed to his wife. They shot his dogs and interrogated him as if he was a drug dealer, but did not arrest him.

My government blew through my doors and killed my dogs,” Calvo said. “They thought we were drug dealers, and we were treated as such. I don’t think they really ever considered that we weren’t.”

Memo to mayor: anyone with 32lbs of pot should be thought of as a drug dealer first, innocent victim of a UPS error second.

God knows if that happened in DC they probably would have shot more than dogs.

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