LEWISTON, Idaho, Dec. 13, 2007(AP)
Police didn't have to look far to find a man suspected of stealing a woman's wallet _ just an inch down the page. On the front page of its Thursday edition, The Lewiston Tribune ran a photo of a man in a blue and black checkered coat standing in a convenience store. The photo was taken from the store's surveillance video, which reportedly shows the man slipping the wallet in his coat pocket and walking away. The picture of the possible purloiner ran along with a story explaining that a woman had forgotten her wallet at the store, and that police were now trying to identify the man in the video.Also on the front page ran a festive photo of a holiday scene taken by the newspaper's photographer, Kyle Mills. That photo showed a man _ in a blue and black coat _ painting decorative Christmas greetings on storefront windows. The caption identified the man as Michael Millhouse of Millhouse Signs in Lewiston. Some sharp-eyed copy editors at the newspaper first noticed the matching photos as they were laying out the newspaper Wednesday night and wondered if they showed the same man, managing editor Paul Emerson said Thursday. "They were pointing it out and laughing about it," Emerson said. A newspaper employee called the nearby Clarkston, Wash., police department early the next morning to report their suspicions.Police Chief Joel Hastings said that after picking up a copy of the paper, Officer Jeremy Maguire contacted Millhouse and asked about the wallet. Millhouse was subsequently arrested and charged with felony second-degree theft. He is scheduled for a hearing on Monday, Asotin County Prosecuting Attorney Ben Nichols said, and he was released from custody after posting $5,000 bond. Nichols said Thursday that it wasn't a simple case of finders, keepers. "We've got a signed, written confession from him where he says, 'What I did was wrong, it was stupid,' blah, blah blah," Nichols said.Police also located the wallet, which still contained the owner Jami Johnson's driver's license and three credit cards. But Johnson says $600 in cash _ money from her paycheck that she planned to use for Christmas _ was missing.If convicted, Millhouse could be sentenced to up to five years in prison and fined up to $10,000.The only phone listing for M. Millhouse in the region is an unlisted number, and The Associated Press could not reach Millhouse for comment.
Cracker jack police work there A
HAGERSTOWN, Md., Dec. 13, 2007(AP)
A judge has granted a man convicted of armed robbery a new trial because the jury that found him guilty in October also found a wad of cash in his coat during the trial that police and prosecutors overlooked.A money roll totaling $1,300, a rubber glove and a bandage apparently went unnoticed by police, prosecutors and the defense until jurors detected them while examining the garment during deliberations in October.Circuit Judge Theresa M. Adams granted the defense motion Wednesday for a new trial in Frederick at what was to have been Moses M. Streete's sentencing hearing. She ordered Streete held without bail. "You would think with all the law enforcement people that had been involved with the case that everything would have been gone over with a fine-toothed comb _ and then that fine-toothed comb would have had another fine-toothed comb going over it," said Christine Bowersox, one of the jurors in Streete's trial. Frederick County State's Attorney J. Charles Smith said Thursday that Assistant State's Attorney Deborah Kemp had checked the coat pockets before the trial and found no money. He said it must have been in hidden pockets or in holes in the pockets of the charcoal gray parka.Defense attorney Scott L. Rolle said he had seen the coat before the trial but hadn't gone through the pockets.Gregory Shipley, a spokesman for the Maryland State Police, which had custody of the coat, declined to comment because a new trial is pending.Although the overlooked evidence resulted in a new trial for Streete, the cash and glove, had they been offered as evidence, would have helped prosecutors more than Streete because his defense relied partly on the absence of any cash or fingerprints. Rolle said he planned to fight the admissibility of the new evidence.
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