Forum Newsfront

Consumer Fraud

Ilford, England--A sex-shop owner has been fined $720 for selling a purported aphrodisiac that produced belches instead of lust. The potion was found to consist of caffeine, citric acid and bicarbonate of soda.

More Female Rapists

Denver--A 27-year-old hitchhiker reported to police that he was picked up and sexually assaulted by three women, including one weighing 180 pounds who held him in the back seat of their car while another took off his clothes. Afterward, the women, between the ages of 20 and 30, put him out on the highway near the place where they'd picked him up.

Tricky Dicks

Los Angeles--The Los Angeles city attorney has refused to prosecute 45 women arrested as prostitutes after they answered a help-wanted ad planted by police. The ad appeared in the Los Angeles Free Press and read, "Sexy hostesses needed for gambling junkets. Entails foreign travel. Expenses paid." About 150 women responded and some 50 of them were sent to a party at which undercover policemen posed as gamblers looking for companions for trips to Las Vegas. The city attorney said that, technically, the police were not guilty of entrapment, but "it would be extremely difficult to convince a jury of that." Two of the women have filed a $1,000,000 civil rights damage suit against the police, charging false arrest and imprisonment.

Adultery Defined

Washington, D.C.--In a complicated deportation case involving a Korean student who had a mistress in Chicago and a wife back home, a U. S. Court of Appeals reaffirmed an old Federal definition of adultery. The issue was whether the student--facing deportation on a technicality--was a person "of good moral character," and the court found that state laws on the subject were confused and contradictory: "A number of states follow the common-law rule that adultery depends upon the married status of the woman without regard to the marital status of the man. Others require open notorious cohabitation. Still others have adopted the ecclesiastical rule that only the married party to the extramarital relationship is guilty of adultery." And still others, sighed the court, "hold that adultery is committed if either party is married." Finally, the court went back to an earlier Federal case and found adultery to be "extramarital intercourse that tends to destroy an existing viable marriage, and that would represent a threat to public morality." The student's relationship didn't do either of those things, the court decided, and so he is eligible to leave the country voluntarily rather than be deported, which would preclude his ever returning.

The Long Nose of the Law

San Francisco--In its first interpretation of California's right-to-privacy law, the state supreme court has ruled that police cannot pose as students merely to compile intelligence reports on other students and university professors. The court held unanimously that, in the absence of a "compelling state interest," such undercover surveillance violates state and Federal constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech, as well as the state's constitutional amendment on privacy, passed by popular vote in 1972. The ruling came down in the case of a UCLA history professor who had charged in a taxpayer's suit that police spies had been attending his classes, going to campus meetings and infiltrating university-recognized organizations. The court's decision sends the case back to trial to determine if the surveillance is justified. The court expressed a "strong suspicion ... that the gathered material, preserved in 'police dossiers,' may be largely unnecessary for any legitimate, let alone 'compelling,' governmental interests."

Oversearch

Brooklyn--A 26-year-old mother of three, arrested for nonpayment of a $15 traffic ticket and forced to strip for a vaginal and rectal search, has filed a $1,100,000 damage suit against Suffolk County and various police personnel involved in the case. The suit also seeks a restraining order barring such searches in connection with minor offenses.

A jury in Bellevue, Washington, has awarded damages of $5000.15 to a woman who was arrested, booked, fingerprinted and photographed by police for failure to pay a traffic ticket when, in fact, she had already paid it. The 15 cents, the jury foreman said, was for the call she made after her arrest; the police had made her use a pay telephone.

Perpetual Pregnancy

Sassari, Italy--Under Italian law, a woman cannot be jailed while pregnant nor just after childbirth, and that provision has inspired the wife of a Sardinian street cleaner to set some kind of procreative record. Convicted years ago of fraud and forgery, she has remained almost continuously pregnant, recently giving birth to her 18th baby, a boy.

Church vs. Feminists

San Diego--The National Organization for Women has accused the Most Reverend Leo Maher, bishop of the San Diego diocese, of attempting to "spiritually disenfranchise" women by denying Communion to members of NOW or any other group that supports the right to abortion. The bishop's order was contained in a pastoral letter to priests in 178 parishes, and he attacked NOW for its "shameless agitation" for legal abortion, adding that membership in the organization constituted "a serious moral crime." On the Sunday after the order became effective, more than 80 people wearing NOW pins were refused Communion at churches in the diocese.

Wacky Wheels of Justice

Portland, Oregon--First, the Portland police decided to test the honesty of citizens by using Federal anticrime funds to purchase $3500 worth of television and stereo equipment and offer it for sale as stolen merchandise through undercover agents, who easily found customers in bars and taverns. Then the police charged the purchasers with attempted first-degree theft. Eight people were convicted and several cases are still pending. Now, however, a deputy district attorney has decided that, because the equipment was in fact not stolen, "the civil contract created by the sale of the sets was not affected by the prosecution of the buyers." So the buyers get to keep their sets if they are willing to make up the difference between the price they paid and the wholesale price paid by the police--so the city doesn't lose money. The presiding county judge said that this "served the ends of justice, but I have never seen cases like this before."

Dark Days for the Dea

Washington, D.C.--The resignation of John R., Bartels, Jr., as director of the Drug Enforcement Administration has increased speculation that the agency may be disbanded. The DEA was established in 1973 by President Nixon as a Justice Department superagency to consolidate Government narcotics-control programs for the enforcement of Federal drug laws and the combating of heroin traffic. Since then, frequent charges of graft, hiring and promotion irregularities, poor performance and Gestapo-style tactics have brought it under investigation by both the Justice Department and Vice-President Rockefeller's Domestic Council. Bartels' resignation adds weight to charges of "gross corruption" and. mismanagement, and the New York Post reports that the DEA's work may be divided among the FBI, the Food and Drug Administration and the U. S. Customs Service.

Man's Best Friend

Los Angeles--A Federal district judge has ruled that the drug-sniffing dogs used by U. S. Customs are not only efficient and effective but, in some cases, constitute an illegal invasion of privacy. In the case of 1525 pounds of marijuana found in a truck parked at a Santa Ana gas station, the judge ruled that while dogs legally may be used to examine autos and luggage at border crossings and airports where citizens expect searches, they cannot be taken onto private property without probable cause. Such use of dogs, the court held, violates constitutional rights against illegal search and seizure.