Scuttlebutt Pipeline

Welcome to Scuttlebutt Pipeline! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or sign up to receive email notifications of new entries.
Also, don't forget to check out Fifty for the Fall, your chance to win $50 cash - no strings attached!

Well, perhaps calling them scam artists might be going a tad too far. Front page of today’s Las Cruces Sun-News¹ reads:

Pizza scam partners: D’ough!
Duo used bad checks to buy pies, then resold by the slice, police say

Las Cruces, NM- Two men have been indicted for allegedly using forged checks to buy Domino’s pizza and the using a Pizza Hut Uniform to resell the pizzas - still in Domino’s boxes - for $5 [a slice].

Adolfo Martinez, 33, and Mark Anderson, 26, both of Las Cruces, were indicted Thursday each on 11 counts of forgery and one count of conspiracy.

According to a criminal complaint, from March 26 through April 2, the men wrote a total of 11 checks to an unspecified Las Cruces location of Domino’s

That is just absolutely brilliant. Let me tell you, there is absolutely nothing strange at all about a couple of guys going door to door, in a Pizza Hut uniform, selling Domino’s Pizza. Nope, nuh-uh, nothing strange there. Hand me a box will you?

Granted, I have seen pizza places have workers, usually equipped with pepperoni pizza, set up a van somewhere and sell pizzas cheap there. At $5 a box though, not $5 dollars a slice! It attracts consumers who normally wouldn’t travel to where their store is located and can drum up new customers as well. But really, someone going door to door to local businesses in uniform and selling a competitor’s product? Did no one’s warning bells go off? Apparently not, because the article goes on to say that these two did make a bit of a profit, though it doesn’t specify how much.

From the sound of it, the only clue that something was up came in when every check bounced and the same two men, with the same number, kept calling in to have the pizza delivered to them. Eventually Domino’s employees caught on that something was amiss.

Martinez and Anderson, both of whom list a lengthy arrest record in their indictments, remain jailed at the Dona Ana County Detention Center on a $60,000 bond each. If convicted, they each face a maximum of 34 and a half years in prison.

The “profit” they made could not have been worth this. Although, you have got to love how their maximum sentence each is twice as long then the sentence men serve for killing their spouses. Oh the irony.

1. I found this in the copy of the Sun-News I picked up today. I haven’t found an online link to the article on their website though. If you have access to print media, you can read this article in it’s entirety on the front page of the Las Cruces Sun-News, Tuesday edition, dated April 29th, 2008. 128th year, No.29 [↩]

The US Supreme Court has upheld the use of lethal injection as a means of execution for prisoners. Two Kentucky inmates challenged the use of lethal injection, citing it as cruel and unusual punishment, which has resulted in executions, nationwide, being put on hold while the court reviewed the case. The court rejected the case by a vote of 7 to 2 however.

Now, if only they would do something about inmates sitting on death row for years (sometimes even decades) before finally getting executed.

States began using the three-drug method in 1978 as an alternative to historic methods of execution such as electrocution.

However, in recent years there have been botched lethal injection executions in Florida and California, in which inmates took up to 30 minutes to die.

A 2005 study also sparked controversy by suggesting the amount of sedation given might not be enough to stop the inmate feeling the painful effects of the other drugs - but would prevent him crying out.

I can understand the concern over their deaths not being quick which essentially results in the prisoner being “tortured” to death. (I confess that a part of me thinks they probably deserve it, but that’s for another time.) However, when it comes to execution, it seems that lethal injection is actually the most “humane” method to date. Death by electrocution, is messy, painful, and takes a long time to be sure the prisoner is dead. Firing squad, also does not ensure that death will come quickly. Unless one of the shooters hits a vital spot, say the heart, there is no guarantee that the prisoner will die quickly and not in severe pain. Hanging/strangulation, again, not necessarily quick either. Unless the neck snaps immediately, they’re going to hanging there for a bit.

Frankly, I can’t help but to wonder if this was really just another attempt to have execution eliminated entirely.

If an animal does something to injure your fragile ego you are in right to retaliate in any way you see fit. At least that’s what some young men in San Francisco thought:

A man was sentenced to five months in jail after he and a friend, acting on wounded pride, gunned down an ostrich that had kicked them as their female companions laughed […]

(full story)

So an animal kicked them and their female friends laughed. Big whoop. How can that possibly justify killing the animal? These guys have serious anger management issues and a low value of self worth if they felt that the murder of an innocent animal that had no malicious thoughts or intentions were justified.

To give them only five months for this is ridiculous. An ostrich kicked them and some women laugh, so they whipped out their guns and opened fire. What’s going to happen when someone cuts these guys off in traffic or a girl turns them down?

It’s always been said that you can find anything at an auction. You’ll find those rare and hard to find items as well as the just plain strange and sometimes grotesque. Here’s one of the later:

Maiden police said the man opened up the smoker and saw what he thought was a piece of driftwood wrapped in paper. When he unwrapped it, he found a human leg, cut off 2 to 3 inches above the knee.

The smoker had been sold at an auction of items left behind at a storage facility, so investigators contacted the mother and son who had rented the space where the smoker was found.

The mother, Peg Steele, explained her son had his leg amputated after a plane crash and kept the leg following the surgery “for religious reasons” she doesn’t know much about.

(full article)

After an hour of brain wracking I still cannot pin down the religious beliefs that say you must hold on to amputated body parts. But hey, to each their own.

I wonder how traumatized the purchaser was?

You see and hear of so many instances where those who make and implement the laws get around them. Hell even celebrities have a habit of getting charges for the most serious of offesnes thrown out the window or doing a small petty amount of community service in compensation for their crimes.

So when someone who is supposed to be enforcing and upholding the laws screws up it’s nice to see thembe held accountable. Even if one would really hope they wouldn’t be breaking the laws to begin with.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The executive director of the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Control faces a drunken driving charge after he was arrested during a traffic stop.

Chris Lilly was pulled over Saturday on U.S. 27 outside Nicholasville because his Ford Explorer was missing a headlight, and because he was weaving and driving slowly, police said.

Police said Lilly smelled of alcohol, lost his balance during a sobriety test and recorded a Breathalyzer reading of 0.181. The legal limit is 0.08.

(full story)