xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Registered sex offender James Andrew Crawford, 35, was arrested in May in Perris, Calif., after having camped for two weeks in a theater line that was waiting for “Star Wars: Episode III” to open. According to a Riverside County deputy sheriff, Crawford was in violation of a state law that requires sex offenders to notify the government if they adopt a new “domicile” for more than five days.
In June, Marc Ferrara, 43, was convicted in Jersey City, N.J., in the 1982 hammer-beating death of his girlfriend, but perhaps because of testimony that the victim had hit Ferrara first, the jury found him guilty only of aggravated manslaughter instead of murder. However, unknown to the jury, the state supreme court had ruled in 1993 that the manslaughter statute in effect in 1982 was subject to a five-year statute of limitations (since changed), which meant that Ferrara could not be convicted, and, thus, he walked free.
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