lets all go home and lock our doors

Prominent novelist Michael Peterson was convicted in 2003 of
beating his wife to death with a fireplace poker, but he, assisted by a
former neighbor, has maintained since then that she was killed by a
rogue owl. In 2008, for the first time, North Carolina state
investigators acknowledged that a microscopic feather was indeed
found in her hair, and in December 2011, Durham County Judge
Orlando Hudson granted Peterson a new trial. Although several owl
experts have declared that the wife's head trauma was consistent
with an owl attack, the judge's decision was based instead on a
finding last year that the state crime lab had mishandled evidence in
34 cases and specifically that an investigator in the Peterson case
had exaggerated his credentials to the jury.

Keith Savinelli, 21, was arrested in Gallatin County, Mont., in December and charged with attempted burglary involving a woman's underwear. When the resident caught
Savinelli in the act, he attempted to talk her out of reporting him by  apologizing and handing her his voter registration card, but she  called police, anyway.
A 25-year-old man was rescued by fire crews in Tranent, Scotland, in December and taken to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. According to police, four men were attempting to
steal an eight-ton steamroller when the 25-year-old got his leg trapped underneath. The other three fled.

According to police in Bellingham, Wash., William Lane, 22, had yelled slurs at a lesbian couple in the early morning of December 11th and smashed the car window of
one of the women, but she immediately chased him down, tackled him, and held him until help arrived.


Anthony Miranda, 24, was arrested and charged with armed robbery in December in Chicago after unknowingly choosing as his victim an "ultimate fighting"
champion. The "victim" gave Miranda two black eyes and a heavily lacerated face, and, as Miranda drew his gun, overpowered him in  such a way that Miranda wound up shooting himself in the ankle.

Janet Knowles, 62, was arrested in January in Jupiter, Fla., for
aggravated assault after allegedly bludgeoning her housemate, 65,
with a hammer as they watched television. The victim said only
that Knowles was "upset with Judge Judy."

 Michael Monsour, the former CEO of Monsour Medical Center in Jeannette, Pa., was
charged with assaulting his brother, Dr. William Monsour, in their father's home on New Year's Eve. In an argument, Michael allegedly bit William's nose so hard that he required cosmetic surgery. (Michael's temper remained untempered. The next day,
according to police, Michael sent William an e-mail threatening to
beat him "into blood pudding.")

Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme cost 16,500 investors a total of as much as $18 billion, according to the court-appointed trustee, but at  least Madoff is not on death row. In Hangzhou, China, in  November, Ji Wenhua and his brother and their father (who were
managers of the Yintai Real Estate and Investment Group) were
aentenced to death after their convictions for cheating 15,000
investors out of the equivalent of $1.1 billion. Prosecutors said the
men had continued to collect money by claiming profits while
losses mounted.

Anti-Theft ID Breakthrough: For people who become stressed
when asked to prove their identities by biometric scans of
fingerprints, hand prints, or eyeballs, Japan's Advanced Institute of
Industrial Technology has developed a chair frame that
authenticates merely by sitting down: a butt-scanner. Professor
Shigeomi Koshimizu's device produces a map of the user's unique
derriere shape, featuring 256 degrees of pressure at 360 different
points and could be used not only to protect vehicles from theft but
also, when connected to a computer, to prevent log-ons by those
with unauthorized posteriors. [TechCrunch blog via PhysOrg.com,
12-26-2011]