The Binary Circumstance

There are three things that interest me about this story from 365gay.com.

First, as is so often the case, the congressman has a history of backing anti-gay legislation.

(Tampa, Florida) State Rep. Bob Allen (R), a longtime foe of LGBT rights in Florida, has a bizarre excuse for being charged with offering a male cop $20 for oral sex in a washroom at a park.

He was busted last month in a sting at Veteran’s Memorial Park in Titusville, Florida.

Second, is his excuse.

In taped statements made by Allen to police following his arrest and released by the force Allen admits to soliciting the male officer but claims that it was the result of being nervous by the high number of black men in the park.

“I certainly wasn’t there to have sex with anybody and certainly wasn’t there to exchange money for it,” Allen told officers.

Of the arresting officer Allen said in the tape, “This was a pretty stocky black guy, and there was nothing but other black guys around in the park.”

He claimed he feared he “was about to be a statistic” would have said anything just to get away.

Third, according to the police report, he wanted to move the sex to a more private place, but was arrested anyway.

Titusville Officer Danny Kavanaugh who was on plainclothes duty says he observed Allen entering the washroom twice. Kavanaugh said he was drying his hands in a stall when Allen peered over the stall door.

The officer’s report said that after peering over the stall a second time, Allen pushed open the door and joined Kavanaugh inside. Allen muttered “‘hi,’v” and then said, “‘this is kind of a public place, isn’t it,’” the report said.

Kavanaugh wrote that he asked Allen about going somewhere else and Allen suggested going “across the bridge, it’s quieter over there.”

“Well look, man, I’m trying to make some money; you think you can hook me up with 20 bucks?” Kavanaugh wrote in the report that he had asked Allen.

The Republican lawmaker, the report said, replied, “Sure, I can do that, but this place is too public.”

According to Kavanaugh’s statement, the officer said, “do you want just (oral sex)?” and Allen replied, “I was thinking you would want one.”

It was at that point Allen was arrested.

So which is the bigger crime: the solicitation for sex and the suggestion that a private location would be more suitable, or spending taxpayer money, all taken at the point of a gun, on entrapment, the arrest and all the legal proceedings that will follow? Which action will ultimately harm more individuals?

The answer is obvious to me.

With Paris Hilton in jail and Mike Nifong disbarred it seems almost as if something is right with our justice system.

The committee, after deliberating for a little more than an hour on Saturday, unanimously agreed with the bar on almost every charge — including the most serious allegations — that Nifong’s actions involved “dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation.”

State Bar prosecutor Douglas Brocker told the committee that as Nifong investigated the allegations that a stripper was raped and beaten at a March 2006 party thrown by Duke’s lacrosse team, he charged “forward toward condemnation and injustice,” weaving a “web of deception that has continued up through this hearing.”

“Mr. Nifong did not act as a minister of justice, but as a minister of injustice,” Brocker said.

The verdicts and the punishment did not appear to surprise Nifong, who acknowledged during sometimes tearful testimony Friday that he would likely be punished for getting “carried away a little bit” when talking about the case.

He still doesn’t grasp the magnitude of his crimes against the three lacrosse players or the taxpayers and voters.

The players’ attorneys have pledged to seek criminal contempt charges next week in Durham.

Go for it!

This is something that should have happened a long time ago and I don’t believe Nifong’s excuses that he made innocent mistakes in not turning over DNA results and other information to the defense.

From Yahoo News:

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Breaking down in tears at his ethics trial, Mike Nifong abruptly said Friday he would quit as district attorney and admitted he got “carried away” during his discredited rape prosecution of three Duke University lacrosse players.

Catching even his attorneys by surprise, Nifong said he would resign and regretted making improper statements about the players.

“My community has suffered enough,” Nifong said at his trial on allegations that he violated rules of professional conduct.

State prosecutors who took over the case have declared the players innocent.

The North Carolina State Bar alleges Nifong withheld DNA test results from the players’ defense attorneys, lied to the court and bar investigators and made misleading and inflammatory comments about the three athletes who’d been charged with raping a stripper at a team party in March 2006.

Nifong said he wanted to own up to his mistakes, but that he did not make all the mistakes alleged by the bar.

“I will go to my grave being associated with this case. And that’s OK,” Nifong said. “Whatever mistakes I made in this case were my mistakes. But they’re not all the ones that the bar says I made, but they are my mistakes.”

Nifong was trying to railroad three innocent men into jail for a crime they didn’t commit. Period. That is such a horrible crime that it’s hard to know what punishment is suitable for it.

I don’t think having a law license taken away is enough, even if that’s the outcome of this trial.

The makers of the painkiller OxyContin pleaded guilty to understating the dangers of the drug.

ROANOKE, Va. - The maker of the powerful painkiller OxyContin and three of its current and former executives pleaded guilty Thursday to misleading the public about the drug’s risk of addiction, a federal prosecutor and the company said.

Purdue Pharma L.P., its president, top lawyer and former chief medical officer will pay $634.5 million in fines for claiming the drug was less addictive and less subject to abuse than other pain medications, U.S. Attorney John Brownlee said.

The plea agreement settled a national case and came two days after the Stamford, Conn.-based company agreed to pay $19.5 million to 26 states and the District of Columbia to settle complaints that it encouraged physicians to overprescribe OxyContin.

“With its OxyContin, Purdue unleashed a highly abusable, addictive, and potentially dangerous drug on an unsuspecting and unknowing public,” Brownlee said. “For these misrepresentations and crimes, Purdue and its executives have been brought to justice.”

Privately held Purdue learned from focus groups with physicians in 1995 that doctors were worried about the abuse potential of OxyContin. The company then gave false information to its sales representatives that the drug had less potential for addiction and abuse than other painkillers, the U.S. attorney said.

Ken Jost of the Justice Department’s Office of Consumer Litigation said this case should put pharmaceutical companies on notice that they won’t be able to get away with breaking the law to make a profit.

[…]

OxyContin, a trade name for oxycodone, is a time-release painkiller that can be highly addictive. Designed to be swallowed whole and digested over 12 hours, the pills can produce a heroin-like high if crushed and then swallowed, snorted or injected.

From 1996 to 2001, the number of oxycodone-related deaths nationwide increased five-fold while the annual number of OxyContin prescriptions increased nearly 20-fold, according to a report by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. In 2002, the DEA said the drug caused 146 deaths and contributed to another 318.

That’s a pretty light fine when you consider how much Purdue made from selling OxyContin, the cost of treating all the addiction that it created, not to mention the deaths that it caused.

Purdue was sued over their exclusive patent to market OxyContin, which accounts for 70% of it’s profits, because the patent was allegedly obtained by making fraudulent claims about the drug.

The suit alleges that Purdue has been illegally marketing and selling OxyContin since December 1995, when it received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (”FDA”). To win its patents on the drug in the first place, Purdue told the federal patent office that OxyContin was unique because of its effectiveness at very low dosages. The suit charges that Purdue knew that there was no evidence to support this assertion at the time the company filed for the patents and therefore received exclusive rights to the drug that it did not deserve.

It’s ironic that the guilty pleas were entered in southwest Virginia, close to Blacksburg, where gunman Seung Hui Cho randomly took the lives of 32 people and then his own life with two guns at VA Tech. Adding to the irony is the possibility that Cho was taking psychotropic medications, which are known to cause psychosis in a small number of patients. Will we one day find out that the potential for such adverse reactions has also been understated to doctors and patients to increase sales?

The U.S. attorney said the guilty pleas were entered Thursday morning in U.S. District Court in Abingdon, about 135 miles southwest of Roanoke. In an unusual move, Brownlee said, company chief executive officer Michael Friedman, general counsel Howard Udell and former chief medical officer Paul Goldenheim each pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of misbranding the drug. Of the total fine, $34.5 million was levied on those three.

The fines will be distributed to state and federal law enforcement agencies, the federal government, federal and state Medicaid programs, a Virginia prescription monitoring program and individuals who had sued the company. About $5 million will go toward a six-year company program to monitor compliance with the agreement.

Had Cho lived, he would never have gotten off with a misdemeanor and a fine, but would have been either executed or put in jail or a mental health facility for the rest of his life.

When corporate executives and lawyers misrepresent the dangers of a prescription drug and randomly execute hundreds of people, they get to plead guilty to “a misdemeanor count of misbranding the drug” and pay a fine.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Cho’s deadly rampage seems minor by comparison.

And the government wants us to believe that they’re protecting the people when they really protected the criminals.