Well, yeah, Gainesville's world-class McKnight Brain Institute just got a $1.5 million gift to study addiction, and ostensibly it has nothing to do with the binge drinking that the school is famous for. Now, what's up with the donor, from Orlando, whose name is, well, Donald R. Dizney. [Gainesville Sun]
Keys to Ending Corruption in the F State: Scorned Ex-Wives!
Testimony of the ex-wife of jeweler and mover/shaker Fred "Sport" Suttles kicked off his fraud/tax evasion trial in Pensacola, although Background/Main Squeeze Mary Ham may have some things to say, along with recent Side Squeeze Kelly Lynn. All say they signed whatever business papers he wanted them to sign. [Pensacola News Journal] And in West Palm Beach today, former Palm Beach County Commission chairman Tony Masilotti is scheduled to enter his guilty plea for getting quite a bunch of kickbacks from property developers, done in when his wife of 27 yrs filed for divorce and inadvertently listed as joint property some things that Masilotti had never disclosed that they owned. [Palm Beach Post]
So Much for Eyewitness Identification
David McGuffie finally filed his lawsuit against Sarasota police and 7-Eleven for his November 2005 identification by a clerk as the guy who robbed her. McGuffie actually left his name as a potential helpful witness to the robbery, but the clerk swore up and down, "100 percent sure," she said, that McGuffie was the robber. He was locked up for 2-1/2 months before things got straightened out. [Sarasota Herald-Tribune]
Too Clever by Half
Key West escape artist Michael Patrick, who normally does lounge-act-type stuff on the street for tourists, did a top-of-the-line escape off of a downtown pier on Halloween, and in fact it was so well done that three state agencies and the Coast Guard looked for him for the rest of the night (and of course by that time, he was home watching TV). He got 60 days in jail and charged $60k restitution, and the Miami Herald checked in on him this week to see if he'd learned anything. [Miami Herald]
Follow-Up
Secretary Butterworth Is in the House!
Take a look (first source, below) at this Tallahassee give-and-take over Sec. Butterworth's (Dept. of Children and Families) outline for how to bring "state gov't" into compliance with "state law" on the treatment of mentally-ill prisoners. One group of legislators thinks money only, with little regard for (a) actual needs of the mentally ill or (b) what their own state law commands. It's not fair, they seem to say, to have this kinda influx of or increase in mentally-ill people right now, and therefore the state should get a time-out in dealing with them. After all, the budget numbers are written in stone, they say, and these mentally-ill people are throwing us all into turmoil; it's not our fault, it's theirs. (For looks inside Tampa Bay area jails' treatment of mentally-ill, see the second and third sources.) [Tampa Tribune] [Tampa Tribune via RedOrbit.com] [St. Petersburg Times]
Your Daily Loser
Keith Quarles, 43, was arrested in Ocala after he allegedly walked into a fire station and threatened to kill the officer in charge and any other firefighter whoever comes onto his property again, as they did Tuesday morning, when they put out an illegal fire. The firefighters said they knocked on his door, and Quarles admitted he was home but also admitted to having celebrated the Gators' win Monday night a little too hard. [Ocala Star-Banner]
More Things To Worry About Today
A guy named Willie Nelson Jr is suing Tampa General Hospital for making him blind when he went in for back surgery (and it sort of makes sense, how it happened) [Fort Myers News-Press] . . . . . Orlando's Christine Souza, 47, was picked up for practicing the art of home dentistry [WKMG-TV (Orlando)].
