theweaselking | Mar. 15th, 2007

Mar. 15th, 2007

The unicorn wasn't driving.

In a case of crossed e-mails and misinterpreted attorney slang, Yellowstone County Attorney Dennis Paxinos said this morning that widespread reports of a Billings drunken-driving defendant who told police that a unicorn was driving when his truck crashed into a light pole are inaccurate.

"That did not happen," Paxinos said at a press conference he called to set the record straight.

The mix-up was the result of what Paxinos described as "black humor" among prosecutors who routinely deal with suspects who refuse to take responsibility. In some cases, a defendant can be described as using what Paxinos called the SEDI defense, an acronym for the claim that "somebody-else-did-it."

In this case, a man arraigned Tuesday in District Court on charges of felony criminal endangerment and DUI asserted what prosecutors sometimes call the unicorn defense, which suggests that some mythical person was driving at the time of the incident, Paxinos said.

The trouble started when a deputy prosecutor arguing for a high bond during the arraignment told the judge that when the defendant was he arrested, he claimed that a unicorn was driving.

"It's kind of code (between prosecutors), and the code was misinterpreted," Paxinos said.

The defendant, Phillip Carston Holliday Jr., 42, told police that a woman was driving when his truck ran into a light pole, but he did not tell officers that a unicorn was driving, Paxinos said.

"Mr. Holliday has other serious problems, but this is not one of them," the county attorney said.

Paxinos said he wanted to apologize "to the public, the court and to Mr. Holliday" for the confusion. He also said he wanted to put a quick stop to the story.

"I wanted to stop the misinformation that was generated from my office immediately," he said.

The story in The Billings Gazette was picked up by news outlets across the country.

"It's a great story, it just isn't correct," Paxinos said.

Paxinos said he has chastised the deputy prosecutors involved, and will contact Holliday's defense attorney to explain. He said Holliday may wish for a rehearing on his bond, which was set at $100,000.

At the arraignment, Judge Gregory Todd said he set the high bond because he was concerned that Holliday has five previous DUI convictions and dozens of misdemeanor and traffic convictions, including 28 for driving with a suspended license.

Holliday was arrested March 7 after a one-vehicle accident near the intersection of Ninth Avenue North and North 27th Street. Two police officers witnessed the crash, which occurred when a pickup truck drove through a red light and nearly struck another vehicle.

The driver of the pickup then suddenly made a U-turn through a gas station, crossed North 27th Street and crashed into a light pole. In court records, prosecutors said the driver got out and fell down and then ran about 30 feet before falling down again. Holliday was then arrested.

Holliday first told an officer that his left leg was broken, and then said he panicked, court records state. He also told the officer that he fell asleep, and then provided another version that named his girlfriend as the driver in the accident.

That's where the unicorn defense came into play, Paxinos said. The deputy prosecutor who wrote the charging document sent an e-mail to the prosecutor who appeared in court to argue Holliday's bond. The e-mail described Holliday's "unicorn" defense, which was misinterpreted as an actual statement from Holliday by the attorney who appeared in court, Paxinos said.

Khalid Mohammed confesses to 9/11, shoe bombing, Cole bombing, London bombing, assassination of Kennedy, assassination of Lincoln, assassination of Clinton, collusion with Atlantis over fishing disputes, and everything else his interrogators say they want him to confess to after torturing him for four years.

EDIT:

ludickid correctly notes that he also confessed to the disappearance of Judge Crater, the suppression of the electric car, the Black Plague, and the Holocaust

Crystal Brown's world was turned upside down a month ago when Chevy, her 4-year-old Australian shepherd mix, didn't come home.

"I told him everything and he never shared any of my secrets," said Crystal, 17, who has had some troubled times in her young life. Chevy was her therapy dog, and she leaned on him for comfort and support.

Two weeks ago, a gift-wrapped box was left at the house where she lives with her grandmother in St. Paul's Rice Street area. Inside the box, Crystal was horrified to find her dog's head.

The incident is considered so shocking that the Humane Society of the United States announced Wednesday that it was offering a reward of up to $2,500 for information leading to an arrest and conviction.

Shirley Brown, Crystal's grandmother, said that Chevy wandered off after she let him out one night in mid-February.

Crystal peppered the neighborhood with "missing" posters, and went door to door with two photos of Chevy in hopes that someone had spotted him. She rode the bus countless times to the St. Paul animal shelter and called there "thousands of times," she said.

"I felt empty," Crystal said. "I couldn't talk to anyone. He was my dog. It was just me and him."

Then Shirley Brown came home one day and found a box wrapped in red paper on her front steps, with batteries taped to the box. "Congratulations Crystal," the note said. "This side up. Batteries included."

Shirley Brown placed the box on her granddaughter's bedroom dresser. "I was surprised and excited," Crystal said. "I thought it was a gift from my cousin."

She tore off the paper and ripped open the box. Inside, she found valentine candy and a black garbage bag. And then she saw her dog's face.

Crystal screamed and ran to the kitchen to find her grandmother: "Is this my dog, Grandma? No! That's not my dog? Is it my dog?"

Chevy, Crystal said, was the best friend she ever had.

"He was more patient than any person I ever met. That dog waited for years for me to get myself together," said Crystal, who began to cry.

"That dog didn't care what I did, what I didn't do ... what anyone did to me. He didn't care about any of that. He just wanted to love me the way I loved him."

A few days ago I was looking for a way to script edits to the system path on a set of Win2K and WinXP boxes. Specifically, I wanted something I could run as a part of a batch job to add an item to the system Path and have it stay past the closure of the window in a way that a simple path=%PATH%;$NEW_ENTRY does not.

So I asked

cerebrate, and his solution is simple, well-documented, works, and is easily modifiable once you read it to see how Registry read/writes work in VBScript.

For someone (like myself) who knew he wanted to do registry read/writes but had no idea of a practical way how and was hitting a wall in finding a tutorial, it's genius.

And so now I share it for anyone else in the same boat.

Michael Crook, the man behind a string of meritless online copyright complaints, has agreed to withdraw those complaints, take a copyright law course, and apologize for interfering with the free speech rights of his targets.

Underage political prisoners in the Guantanamo prison camp:

As for the juveniles, there were at least three boys in Camp Iguana between 12 and 14 years old. There were at least 6 others, by the way, who were 15 or 16, definitely younger than 18, in general population. The three in Camp Iguana I met weekly. We were led to believe they were "hard core terrorists" but this was utterly ridiculous. The guards in charge of them would frequently discipline them with "time-outs" just as many American parents discipline their own children.

I spent a fair amount of time with the youngsters; they learned to throw footballs, and I watched them kick soccer balls- occasionally over the fence and into the ocean. These kids were not the hard-core super-terrorists capable of slitting anyone's throat, as we were led to believe, and as portrayed by our military and governmental officials. Nevertheless, it was no fun and games for these pre-teens boys. They were subjected to harsh interrogations just like the other prisoners

From an interview with Captain James Yee, former US Army chaplain - honourably discharged after accusations of treason for treating Muslim captives like people fell apart.