xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx - 2

Written by American City & County Administrator

Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

The Gilgit tribe beat Chitral, 9-6, this year in the annual, bloody, take-no-prisoners, referee-less polo match on a remote, 2-mile-high field on a mountain in Pakistan, an event that, despite its viciousness, some observers credit with forestalling actual war between the tribes. According to a May dispatch in ESPN The Magazine, clubbing of opponents is rampant; horses are treated more reverently than players; and when a star player was thrown and landed on his head, motionless and thought perhaps even to be dead, fans screamed for him to be cleared from the field quickly so the match could continue. (He only had a broken neck and concussion.)

In May, a U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled that Scott Panetti remains eligible for execution in Texas despite his delusional and schizoaffective disorders and the opinion of one law professor that Panetti is the “gold-plated craziest” death-row inmate he’d ever seen. Charged with murder after having been drug-addicted since childhood and in mental institutions 14 times, Panetti was nonetheless permitted by his trial judge to act as his own lawyer (and employed a “strategy” of claiming to be under the control of a “Sarge Ironhorse”), and not surprisingly, he lost the case.

Cleveland judge Eileen Gallagher abruptly dismissed child-rape charges against Norman Craig, 22, in June when the prosecutor was 45 minutes late for a hearing, and she further scolded the lawyer, warning him, “Don’t treat me like a punk.”
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD