8A NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
CRIME
FRIDAY,OCTOBER 6,2006
Prosecutors drop porn suit State drops charges ex-JonBenet Ramsey suspect Karr
BY KIM CURTIS ASSOCIATED PRESS
SANTA ROSA, Calif. — A judge dismissed child pornography charges Thursday against former JonBenet Ramsey murder suspect John Mark Karr after prosecutors said they didn't have enough evidence to take the case to trial.
Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Rene Chouteau ordered Karr released immediately, bringing an end to his two-month odyssey in the U.S. criminal justice system after he was extradited from Thailand on suspicion of killing the 6-year-old beauty queen
Karr, 41, was returned to California last month to face the five-year-old pornography case after DNA evidence cleared him of killing the girl in her Boulder, Colo., home in 1996.
The misdemeanor pornography case fell apart almost as quickly, as investigators admitted losing vital computer evidence that was seized from Karr in April 2001 when he was working as a substitute teacher in Sonoma and Napa counties.
Defense lawyers tried twice unsuccessfully to get the charges dismissed and were seeking to have evidence barred from trial when prosecutors gave up. They said they couldn't establish when the child porn images had been downloaded on Karr's computer.
Prosecutors acknowledged that if Karr were convicted he would not have served any additional time in jail, because he spent several months behind bars awaiting trial in 2001. They said they were seeking to have him register as a sex offender.
Karr was not in court for the hearing. He was expected to be released from jail later in the day. It was not immediately clear where Karr would go or what he might do.
Karr had fled the state after being released from jail in 2001 and had been on the lam until his arrest in Bangkok. He first came to the attention of Sonoma County officials after an informant told authorities about alarming e-mails he had been sending her.
Investigators looked at Karr in
connection with the unsolved 1997 murder of 12-year-old Georgia Moses, whose body was found dumped along a highway in Sonoma County, Karr's lawyers said.
The sexually explicit pictures of children were later found during a search of his home, authorities said.
His arrest led school officials to strip him of his teaching credential, and his marriage ended in divorce later that year.
In hearings over the past two weeks, the defense accused prosecutors of misconduct for failing to alert the judge sooner that evidence was missing, and they questioned the strength of the evidence that remained. The defense also said the search warrants were based on an unreliable witness with a history of mental illness.
Sheriff Bill Cogbill said he accepted the prosecutor's decision to drop the charges.
"We're conducting an internal affairs investigation into these issues, and we're continuing an audit of our evidence handling procedures," he said in a statement.
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BUSINESS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Topeka Goodyear Rubber and Tire Company employees Mike Munoz, left, Ernest Allison, center, Ron Thomas, right, stand outside the gates of the Topeka Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company just after noon Thursday. Thousands of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. employees nationwide went on strike after rejecting the company's latest contract proposal.
Goodyear workers walk out
Topeka employees among nationwide strike in company
BY CARL MANNING ASSOCIATED PRESS
TOPEKA — Like many co-workers on the picket line, Steve Huston wasn't happy Thursday about going on strike at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. plant, but he felt there was no other option.
"Nobody is glad to be on strike, but we're trying to hold onto what we have and they are trying to take more benefits and wages from us," said Huston, of Topeka, who has worked at the plant for 36 years. "We're trying to keep benefits for the retirees, too."
Huston was among 1,300 to 1,400 members of United Steelworkers Local 307 striking, joining workers at 15 other Goodyear plants in nine other states and Canada after talks broke down between the world's third-largest tire maker and the union, which represents some 15,000 workers at all the plants.
The union said the company's latest proposal would have included two plant closings, although the company refused to say whether its latest offer involved plant closings. The Akron, Ohio-based company
said it would keep its plants open.
About 20 workers formed a single-file picket line outside the plant, many holding signs declaring they were on strike for "unfair labor practices." A trucker drove to the plant entrance, saw the picketers, turned around and left as several strikers cheered.
Workers said they will maintain the picket line around the clock outside the Topeka plant, which makes tires — some as big as 12 feet tall — for commercial vehicles such as dump trucks and tractor-trailers and for Humvee military vehicles.
The company contends the offer rejected by the union protects jobs and secures pensions while mirroring agreements other companies have.
But Huston said workers are concerned about proposals that would have them paying more for health insurance, losing a cost-of-living adjustment and accepting a pay plan that could result in some workers earning less.
The strike was no surprise for the workers, many sporting blue T-shirts with a slogan on the back "Unity today. Protection for retirees.
Security for the future."
The old contract expired July 22 and both sides agreed to an indefinite day-to-day extension. On Monday, the union served notice it would terminate the contract at midday Thursday if no agreement was reached.
As the noon hour approached, union stewards told workers to pack up their tools and clock out. Bob Dolezilek, who has been at the plant 39 years, said he shut down his tire-making machine and left.
Dolezilek, of nearby Holton, said he has some savings stashed away and his wife works. But like other strikers, he will pinch pennies and look for part-time work. Still, he has no regrets with walking out.
"This time, they asked for the moon," he said.
"They sacrificed in past strikes to get us what we've got. I'm an old-fashioned guy. If somebody does you a favor, you do them a favor," he said.
Lloyd Brown, of Topeka, a sixyear veteran at the plant, said he's striking for more than any personal gain — it's because of other workers who went on strike in the past.
HEALTH
BY LISA LEFF ASSOCIATED PRESS
Spinach inquiry begins in California
SAN FRANCISCO - In opening a criminal investigation into two produce companies involved in the contaminated spinach outbreak, federal agents are following a script first written a decade ago to hold companies responsible for mass food poisoning.
Federal officials do not think anyone deliberately contaminated the spinach with E. coli, which has killed two and sickened at least 190 others. Instead, the probe is focused on whether the companies took appropriate steps to make sure their products were safe to eat.
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FBI and Food and Drug Administration agents spent 11 hours Wednesday searching Natural Selection Foods LLC and Growers Express, sifting through records for evidence indicating the spinach producers skirted proper food-handling procedures.
Also Thursday, health officials in Idaho confirmed that the death of a 2-year-old boy was caused by tainted spinach. Test results showed that Kyle Allgood was infected with the same E. coli strain that also killed an elderly Wisconsin woman.
Legal experts say the companies do not need to have known that their products were contaminated to be convicted of criminal charges, only negligent in their duties to keep tainted foods from the market.
Lawyers involved in previous food-poisoning cases said the government will likely try to charge the companies under the 1938 Federal Food Drug and Cosmetics Act, which makes it a crime to sell or distribute "adulterated" products — any item deemed unsafe for human or
Tests on spinach recalled from grocers point to nine spinach farms that supplied produce to Natural Selection, one of the nation's largest distributors of bagged salads. The company issued a statement Wednesday saying it was confident in the cleanliness of its plant and pointing the finger at growers.
"The result of prosecution under this statute is that you can be considered a criminal, and you may even go to jail, and it may simply be because you made a mistake, or one of your employees made a mistake," said Eric Greenberg, a law professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
animal consumption.
Companies involved in tainted food cases are not always prosecuted. In 1993, a major E. coli outbreak sickened about 700 people and killed four who ate undercooked Jack in the Box hamburgers. That outbreak led to tighter Agriculture Department safety standards for producers and the chain paid millions to victims' families to settle lawsuits.
ALL WARE FOOD & MICROWAVE SAFE • SCULPTURES
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