Soul Snatcher Productions ™ & Law Library ****************- Democracy Wall -***************

Terra K. Dittmer, a hometown young woman raised in Mason County died in an automobile accident on Tuesday. The driver and his 2 male passengers survived. Terra was DOA after the car he was driving crashed into a tree north of Shelton. The driver is expected to appear in Mason Co. Superior Court on suspicion of vehicular homicide.

One male passenger was airlifted to Harborview Hospital in Seattle with a broken leg and internal bleeding. The other was taken to Mason General with head and leg injuries. The driver turned himself in after being released from a hospital on Wednesday.

Terra was well liked in the community by all who knew her. She ran an unsuccessful campaign for County Commissioner (Dist. #3) in 2010, ultimately endorsing Brenda Hirschi in the final election.

Terra had worked for the Port of Shelton during Jay Hupp’s tenure and filed a promising lawsuit against the Port for unlawfully dismissing her–an apparent pattern complained of by other litigants as well. Her executor may pursue the suit for her estate.

Terra’s Facebook page w/many tearful farewells can be seen by clicking HERE.

UPDATE:

The Mason County Sheriff’s Office was notified just four minutes after midnight on Tuesday morning, May 15, 2012, of a traffic accident on E. Mikkelsen Road, just north of Shelton.  Responding Deputies, Firefighters and Emergency Medical workers found that the single vehicle with four occupants had left the roadway.  Three occupants sustained different stages of injuries while one female occupant had died.

Deputies Identified the male occupants as Dylan J. Burke, age  24, Jason J. Brown, age 31, and Cody R. Laney, age 21.  The deceased female was identified as Terra K. Dittmer, age 38.  All four occupants resided in Mason County.

According to witness statements, the four had been celebrating Laney’s 21st birthday at the Towne Pub in Shelton and Burke was to be the designated driver.

The vehicle, a 2003 silver Mercedes Benz was registered to Dittmer.  Burke was identified as the driver by his injuries as well as witness statements.  Brown and Laney were passengers.  Laney was transported via helicopter to Harbor View Medical Center in Seattle for a broken leg and internal bleeding; and Burke was transported via ambulance to Mason General Hospital for leg and head injuries.

May 16, 2012, Burke left Mason General Hospital, but later turned himself in to Deputies at the Mason County Jail.  Burke will appear before a Mason County Superior Court Judge sometime this week.

As of 5-22-12, the Mason County Prosecutor’s office reports no criminal filing in the case.

Once a pond rich with food and simple Frogs playing became ruled by an amphibian King. Soon enough there was much croaking and complaining for it was within their nature to be noisy. The uproar continued unabated until one night, a great Stork came, took up residence and ate the frog King. Afterward, the pond was very…very…quiet!

Considering the Alternative

It ain’t the religion, Sis. That’s a pretext. There’d be another reason people killed each other or treated each other badly. The problem isn’t religion so much. In a world of finite resources, it boils down to survival. If you believe in God, He/She doesn’t love any group of people, as a group, more than any other group. If you don’t–no group of people, as a group, is inherently more virtuous than the next. Religion and pedantry are the last refuge of weak minds.

“I have seen the enemy…and it is US!” -Pogo-

Click THE ABYSS 

(Thoughts Of A Dead Athiest)     Dante got it all wrong. Hell is a state of mind…the deteriorating climate notwithstanding. The feathered boa smacks a little too much of Thurston County’s Detective Roland Weiss, if a little brighter and more creative. Still…

Increasingly violent young Anarchist dilettantes are advocating attacking journalists while vandalizing property during street demonstrations. Their screeds can be found on numerous local area blogs dedicated to promoting destruction of property, threats, intimidation, and assault. The following article was posted on pugetsoundanarchists.org, a blog whose participants insist on speaking only to themselves…anonymously…preferring to ban/block opposing viewpoints. It’s a toss up as to whether journalists today are at greater risk from street elements (including the homeless), police ignorant of the laws they’re sworn to uphold, selective law enforcement, or those engaging in the politics of destruction–i.e. Anarchists. Comments will be interlaced as the particular blog site would otherwise censor such critical remarks.

Seattle Anarchists 5-1-12

Wed, 05/09/2012 – 9:49pm — Anonymous (of course)

By Fred Grimm, The Miami Herald, May. 16, 2006

Our Judiciary Has Divided Mental Disorders into Two Stark Categories: Ours and Theirs.

Judge John Sloop Clearly Suffers from a Mental Defect under the Heading of Ours.

Sloop has described a kind of self-diagnostic epiphany one night last year while watching a TV bit on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Good thing he was paying attention. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has become the bulwark of his argument that the Florida Supreme Court ought to let him keep his $131,000-a-year job.

The famously mean Seminole County judge told the Judicial Qualifications Commission that his latest fit of nastiness — tossing 11 people in jail after they had been directed to the wrong court — was due to his newfound mental disorder.

Sloop, 16 years on the bench, has previously been rebuked for waving a pistol around his courtroom, verbally abusing defendants and charging defendants $50 for each night they spend in jail. He had promised the Judicial Qualifications Commission in 2002 that he would cause no more problems.

A burst of ill temper on Dec. 3, 2004, got him in trouble again. He ordered the arrests of 11 defendants, all facing minor misdemeanor traffic charges, who missed their court dates. Sloop was told by deputies and two other judges that, in fact, the 11 had been directed to the wrong courtroom that morning. Sloop signed the arrest warrants anyway.

The 11 were led away in chains, strip-searched and tossed in jail for eight hours. Judge Sloop explained to the qualifications panel that he now knows it was that damned ADHD causing him to misbehave. ”I was struggling with an undiagnosed disorder,” he said at a hearing in March.

His deposition is laden with enough language of self-realization to land him a guest appearance on Oprah.

He now speaks as an ADHD survivor. He explains his long history of bad behavior as ”coping skill,” albeit one unappreciated by the 11 folks he tossed in jail.

Suffering from ADHD, said the judge (who has been transferred to civil court until the Supreme Court decides), has been “like living in a fog where you don’t feel quite in sync or connected.”

Poor Judge Sloop. Though one wonders how many of the 10,800 mentally ill inmates languishing in Florida’s jails might argue that they, too, have been living in a fog and not quite in sync. Except, of course, the judiciary files those disorders under theirs.

Sloop’s fellow Florida judges are notoriously unsympathetic to defendants whose mental disorders contribute to criminal transgressions.

Eddie Cryczan, known as Crazy Eddie, suffered a long history of mental illness. He was suicidal, and he told doctors about a fantasy to kill his mother.

Right after he was released from a mental hospital, he did just that. But when he was tried on first-degree murder charges in Broward County 10 years ago, his craziness was not crazy enough to sustain an insanity defense. He was convicted of first-degree murder (though the jury rejected his demand for a death sentence.)

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case of Eric Michael Clark, a paranoid schizophrenic who believed his parents to be space aliens. His long history of mental illness didn’t matter at his murder trial.

Florida judges in particular pack prisons and jails with pathetic, lost, delusional, raving mad inmates, until county jails house three times more mentally ill inmates than the state’s psychiatric institutions.

Like Dana Clyde Jones, 44, who has been in a coma since he was beaten up in the Broward County Jail on Dec. 16.

The plight of Jones, whose mental illness became tantamount to a death sentence, and so many other truly disturbed prisoners makes a jarring contrast to the psychological defense offered by Judge John Sloop.

The Florida Supreme Court will decide whether a TV-inspired diagnosis of ADHD excuses a judge of downright meanness.

A new exhibit featuring Washington’s NW Tribes has just been completed in the Secretary of State’s office in the Legislative building of Olympia’s Capitol Campus. A ceremony conducted by members of local tribes celebrating the exhibit will begin @ 5:00pm on 4-24-12 under the rotunda and last about 45 minutes. Billy Frank is unable to attend, but his son will.

A recent visit to the Capitol Campus revealed spring was well under way; budget shortfalls had eliminated the traditional blooms of daffodils and tulips on the grounds. The view of Capitol Lake remains magnificent and there was ample parking now that the legislature had completed its business.

A reception will follow the opening ceremony. Visitors will be permitted to enter the exhibit area. Many native artifacts, artwork, and historical photos are on display. It has been expertly and tastefully executed. A biography documenting Billy Frank’s life is expected to be available in June from the Capitol gift shop.

Jacob Kyle Fisher was a young unwed father of a 2 year old boy in 2010 involved in a bitter dispute over custody/visitation with his even younger ex-gf. Both parties acted pro se in the evidentiary hearing that ensued after the young woman filed a Domestic Violence (DV) petition in a transparent bid to gain complete dominion over the father’s visitation/relationship with his son. (Thurston Family Court #10-2-30118-3)

The 2+ hour audio can be heard through the link below as an example of how Commissioner Indu Thomas conducts such hearings (often prompting and leading witnesses from the bench) along with such pro se errors as inadequate preparation, poor cross-examination techniques combined with a poorly articulated theory of the case, and obtuse closing arguments. A series of lectures on proper cross-examination techniques presented by one of the country’s leading public defense attorneys can be found by clicking HERE.

In the following video, Commissioner Indu Thomas ignores all the tells of a manipulative young mother set on dominating the unwed father’s relationship with his young son during this Custody Dispute masquerading as a Domestic Violence Hearing in Thurston #10-2-30118-3:

The mother can be heard (near the end) objecting in the audio to the following pictures.

A being of vast ability and unlimited potential–with a brain capable of complex and soaring self reflection…legs made to dance and run…fingers nimble enough to weave a basket, play a violin, caress a face–if nature teaches us anything, it is that life is meant to work…and that like every living thing, our purpose is to thrive. And yet, for the majority of people on the planet, life is not about thriving. It’s about surviving…just trying to hang on. Is this really the best we can do? Did the universe labor for nearly 14 billion years only to bring forth a species that would end up as an enemy to life itself…and its own home?

THRIVE is a stunning, lyrically composed video addressing this issue:

ps: Within memory, there was a time when the sky seen in the background would have been blue. The haze you see is a direct result of industrial and vehicular pollution.

Has it been that Long? When did I grow old? It seems like only yesterday when this primeval lullaby rocked me to sleep in my youth…a condition, I might add, wasted on the young.

Much older than man, these sounds may not survive him. Mason County is among the least healthy in the State–and the frogs have noticed. Nature’s aquatic canaries are displaying birth defects and skin abnormalities given they breathe through it. Treasure this chorus of bells and amphibians because when they’re gone, we’ll have only our recordings to remember them by. Rachael Carson was right–our sins will echo in a silent spring.

Click HERE and HERE to hear the 2012 Skokomish Spring amphitheater.