Jury finds Peschel not guilty
By TRISTAN SCOTT of the Missoulian

A retired physician was acquitted Friday of charges he obstructed Missoula police by refusing to leave the side of an armed suicidal woman last August.

After deliberating two hours Friday morning, the Missoula Municipal Court jury found Dr. Walt Peschel not guilty of the misdemeanor charge.

“I'm happy. I think the system worked,” said Peschel, 66, who was hospitalized for three days after his arrest.During the two-day trial, Peschel testified he was duty-bound as a physician to stand by the woman. He said she would have shot herself had he left her side.
With 35 years of clinical experience, Peschel said he was qualified to treat the woman, and had begun to pacify her before police arrived and ordered him away from the car in which she'd locked herself.“She told me if I stepped away she was going to kill herself,” he said at trial.
There presence exacerbated the woman's condition. Instead of obeying officers' orders, Peschel stood by the woman until she lost consciousness due to the drug overdose.
Police say Peschel hindered their efforts to focus on the emergency at hand and contributed to a dangerous situation, while Peschel says he had hoped to work in concert with police, and his expertise should have been seen as a valuable asset.
One officer testified that he ordered Peschel to move away from the woman's car a dozen times, and that the doctor's presence prevented him from doing his job and preserving the peace.
“Although his intentions were good, he definitely complicated the situation,” said Officer Matt Kazinsky. “Not only did I have to worry about her safety, but I had to worry about his safety.”
According to Montana law, a person must follow an officer's commands, even if the order is illegal.( So dose this mean if an officer tells me to shoot someone I have to do it )
But David Paoli, one of Peschel's attorneys, said the case shouldn't be viewed through a black-and-white legal lens.
“This is not about disobeying the law, this is about having some flexibility as human beings and doing what's right,” Paoli said.
The 49-year-old woman at the center of the dispute killed herself after being released from medical treatment days later.
Peschel said he hopes that some good will come of the case, and that improved crisis intervention will become a focus point for Montana law enforcement agencies.

“I would like to see us move forward,” he said.

  This is the mess that is left when a star explodes. The Crab Nebula, the result of a supernova seen in 1054 AD, is filled with mysterious filaments. The filaments are not only tremendously complex, but appear to have less mass than expelled in the original supernova and a higher speed than expected from a free explosion. The above image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, is presented in three colors chosen for scientific interest. The Crab Nebula spans about 10 light-years. In the nebula's very center lies a pulsar: a neutron star as massive as the Sun but with only the size of a small town. The Crab Pulsar rotates about 30 times each second.

A truck driver would amuse himself by running over lawyers he would see walking down the side of the road. Every time he would see a lawyer walking along the road, he would swerve to hit him, and there would be a loud "THUMP" and then he would swerve back onto the road.
(at this point some of you are probably wondering how the trucker could distinguish the lawyers from the humans. Obviously he saw the trail of slime they left...)
One day, as the truck driver was driving along he saw a priest hitchhiking. He thought he would do a good turn and pulled the truck over.
He asked the priest, "Where are you going, Father?"
"I'm going to the church 5 miles down the road," replied the priest.
"No problem, Father! I'll give you a lift. Climb in the truck." The happy priest climbed into the passenger seat and the truck driver continued down the road.
Suddenly the truck driver saw a lawyer walking down the road and instinctively he swerved to hit him. But then he remembered there was a priest in the truck with him, so at the last minute he swerved back away, narrowly missing the lawyer. However even though he was certain he missed the lawyer, he still heard a loud "THUD". Not understanding where the noise came from he glanced in his mirrors and when he didn't see anything, he turned to the priest and said, "I'm sorry Father. I almost hit that lawyer."

"That's okay", replied the priest. "I got him with the door!"

NEW YORK, Feb. 15, 2008(AP) Police say a Parks Department employee took his city-issued golf cart on a rampage, running over and killing five birds in a public park.
Police said they arrested the 45-year-old employee Friday evening after receiving complaints that he was driving erratically in the park in Lower Manhattan. He faces charges of reckless endangerment and intentional injury to an animal.
Three pigeons and two seagulls were killed.

HARRISBURG, Pa., Feb. 15, 2008

(AP) A Harrisburg teenager might have been well on his way to earning his driver's license if he hadn't hit the brick house. Quenton Gann practiced parallel parking, changing lanes and making turns for months. He says he may need more practice on ice.
Gann and his cousin were on the way to his road test Thursday in a borrowed car. The 16-year-old turned left, hit some ice, and the car landed on its side, wedged between a utility pole and a row house porch.
Christina Sears says her house shook, and "It scared my cat so bad, the hair on his back stood up."
Gann and his cousin climbed up out of the passenger's-side window, uninjured. But the car needed a tow truck. Gann says, "I'm going to leave driving alone for a little bit."