Replies

Haleigh Poutre saga update...(No updates at the moment on Javona...)

................................

SPRINGFIELD - The lawyer for Jason D. Strickland, accused of assaulting his 11-year-old stepdaughter in 2005, is asking that a judge be assigned to his client's case, after one judge was replaced and another took himself off the case in December.

The request is the latest chapter in a long legal saga that began when Haleigh Poutre, then 11, was hospitalized in September 2005.

~Snip~

Strickland was arrested by Westfield police Sept. 20, 2005 and arraigned in District Court there.

He was later indicted in Hampden Superior Court on two counts of assault and battery on a child with substantial bodily injury and three counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. He pleaded innocent to those charges in Superior Court on Aug. 8, 2006. He is free on $5,000 bail.

The weapons listed in the indictments were a shod foot, a bat and "a wand, a stick or tube." At the time of his indictment, Hampden County District Attorney William M. Bennett said Jason Strickland was being prosecuted under the joint venture theory with Holli Strickland, even though Holli Strickland was dead.

He said that meant Jason Strickland can be held responsible for any acts of Holli Strickland because he allowed someone else to assault the girl.

In addition to the changes in judges, Strickland's lawyer Greg T. Schubert withdrew from the case in August last year and Black became the defense lawyer. Richard J. Rubin joined Black on the defense in October.

There have been requests for continuances on both sides as well as various motion hearings and rulings.

The Strickland case has received much attention, because initially Poutre was the subject of an attempt by the state to remove a feeding tube that was keeping her alive. State officials said medical advice showed no chance of recovery.

Poutre stepdad requests judge

8mm

Annalex posted a discourse from a Bishop on the Sanctity of human life from beginning to end, a penetrating passage at the core of our theme. Thanks, wagglebee, for the ping...

BALTIMORE, Maryland, JAN. 25, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Here is the address Bishop Samuel Aquila of Fargo gave Nov. 15 to Loyola College in Baltimore, titled "The Sanctity of Human Life from Conception to Natural Death." The presentation was part of the Loyola Alive Seamless Garment Series.

~Snip~

The Culture of Death

Let us now turn to the culture of death in which we find ourselves as Catholics today. In "Evangelium Vitae," No. 3, John Paul II cites the Second Vatican Council's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, "Guadium et Spes," and its strong condemnation of attacks against the dignity of human life.

Though the quote is lengthy, it helps us to understand that the culture of death existed even in 1965, and indeed well before then, and has only grown deeper in our times. The Council Fathers stated: "Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or willful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere instruments of gain rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others like them are infamies indeed. They poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practice them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonor to the Creator" (No. 27)........

Bishop Aquila's Address on Absolutes in Life Issues

8mm