Today in Haiti the United States plans to open a police academy to train selected Haitian soldiers and officers in law enforcement. The United States hopes to have three thousand men trained in international police standards by mid-December.
President Clinton winds up a three day campaign swing for the Democratic congressional candidates in Ohio today. Clinton complained that Republicans were blurring the true picture of the economy at rallies in western Ohio.
The search for 12 impartial jurors to weigh the fate of O.J. Simpson continues today in Los Angeles. Judge Lance Ito had demanded that juror prospects keep away from news reports and bookstores. Some prospective jurors reported that there was talk in the jury room of the new book about Nicole Brown Simpson which Ito had instructed the prospects to not discuss.
Highs in the low-80s with partly cloudy skies today; tonight foggy and mild with lows in the 50s. Currently it’s 67 degrees.
Shortly after the school year began that rainy autumn an article appeared in the Screed about the arrest of a semi-prominent professor. There was a minor uproar about the ordeal, partly because the professor remained on staff and continued to teach and partly because of what the arrest involved. In short, someone had been caught exposing himself where he shouldn’t have been. As if there was a good place for this to happen, anyway.
The story was this: Dr. Devon Henbane was arrested in mid-August for indecent exposure, a Class B misdemeanor, following a five day sting operation at a Highway 242 rest area. Henbane was one of 20 people picked up by the Morra County Sheriff’s Office after there were numerous complaints from travelers about “open acts of homosexuality,” said the sheriff. Because it was only an arrest, and Henbane had no prior records, the university took no action and a plea was expected to be made between the District Attorney and Henbane. The Screed said maximum punishment would be a six-month jail term and a $2000 fine.
Indecent exposure complaints were apparently not new to the rest area, as the sheriff said he’d been with the county for two decades and seen it prior to Henbane’s arrest: “we’ve run them out before.” This was one of the aspects of the story that sort of wowed me: if it has been going on before, why only now was the sheriff’s department making a big deal out of the case? Was it the first “high-profile” arrest associated with rest area sexual activity? I really don’t see how a 20-year career professor is high-profile. You would think that if this was a known lair for such goings-on that Henbane (and the other 19) might have been more careful.
Anyway...what really made for some fun was that Henbane had been a professor in the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice for the last 20 years. The Screed article made mention of the “District Attorney” and possible “plea” and “maximum sentence” and other “law and justice” terms that made it sound like an example in the Introduction to Criminal Justice textbook as to one of the many ways the law and court system works. Instead of quoting examples in the text perhaps Henbane could just “make up on the fly” an example of...oh, say...someone named "Rod" and his encounter with the law. Maybe Henbane could say “Rod” was his cousin.
Right.
This point was not lost on the hosts of the morning shows that freshman year (talk about show prep being handed to you a silver platter...). There were a few jokes cracked about Henbane’s arrest by both Hodge Podge and Mike, varying from about getting caught in public with your pants down, about being able to teach from “fist-hand” experience, and that when all was said and done that the guy was still on the schedule to teach for the upcoming fall semester. As someone in the District Attorney’s office said, “the public embarrassment will be worse” than any sentence that would be filled against him.
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Every Saturday Night
(Silas Hogan/Jerry West)
Maceo Parker
From the album Southern Exposure
1993