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Lock of Lennon’s hair could net $6,200 at auction

LONDON, England (AP) — A lock of John Lennon’s hair is being put up for sale.

Lennon gave Betty Glasow, the Beatles’ hairdresser, the lock of hair in a copy of his book A Spaniard in the Works. In the dedication he wrote, To Betty, Lots of Love and Hair, John Lennon.

On Wednesday, fans will have the chance to bid on the hair and other autographed photos and Beatles memorabilia when they go up for auction in Worthing, in southern England.

The book — with the hair still inside — could fetch as much as $6,200, said Nick Muston, director of Gorringes auction house.

Glasow, who kept the Beatles’ moptops trimmed on the set of the films A Hard Day’s Night and Help! decided to sell the items because she wanted fans to have them, Muston said.

She feels that rather than these things being stuck in a drawer with nobody enjoying them, real enthusiasts [could] get their hands on these things, Muston said.

Other items in the sale include signed photographs of the Beatles dedicated to Glasow, including one where George Harrison signed the photo George Dandruff Harrison.

Another lot includes a program, ticket and screw from one of the seats at a 1965 Beatles Christmas Concert at Hammersmith Apollo in London, where fans ripped out seats so they could dance in the aisles.

Glasow has also worked with a number of actors. Her collection includes a photo album of signed photos and personal messages from Michael Caine, from Educating Rita; Peter Ustinov, from Death on the Nile; Steve McQueen, from The War Lover; Harrison Ford, from Patriot Games; and the cast of the Harry Potter films.
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Bush pardons do not include Scooter Libby

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush granted pardons Tuesday to carjackers, drug dealers, a moonshiner and a violator of election laws, but not to I. Lewis Scooter Libby, his vice president’s former top aide who was convicted in the case of the leaked identity of a CIA operative.

In all, Bush pardoned 29 convicts and reduced the prison sentence of one more, in the end-of-the-year presidential tradition.

Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin said Bush has granted 142 pardons and commuted five sentences since taking office in 2001 — lagging far behind the pace set by most modern presidents.

The list was issued with little fanfare Tuesday afternoon by the Office of the Pardon Attorney at the Justice Department. Bush was not expected to issue any more pardons this year.

In July, Bush commuted Libby’s 2 1/2-year sentence, sparing Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff from serving any prison time after being convicted of perjury and obstructing justice. Libby, who recently dropped appeals to have his convictions overturned, has paid a $250,000 fine and remains on two years probation.

Libby was the only person to face criminal charges in the case of the 2003 leak of then-CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity. Plame, who has since left the CIA, contends the White House was trying to discredit her husband, a critic of Bush’s Iraq policy.

A pardon amounts to federal forgiveness for one’s crime, while a commutation cuts short an existing prison term.

Nearly all of those to win pardons this year were small-time crooks who at most were imprisoned for five years. Many of them never served time at all, and instead were fined or put on probation.

On the list this year was William Charles Jordan Jr., a 64-year-old retiree from Dover, Pennsylvania, who was pardoned for his role in a college and NFL football gambling ring that federal authorities shut down on Super Bowl Sunday in 1997.

Jordan said he did not want his eight grandchildren to know he was a felon, so he obtained the necessary paperwork through his congressman. He learned Tuesday the pardon came through.

It’s a nice Christmas present, Jordan said. I didn’t know what the odds were on getting one. I just sent the stuff in and hoped.

Others pardoned included:

–Jeffrey James Bruce, of Chandler, Oklahoma, convicted in 1994 of possessing stolen mail. He served five years probation and paid $4,789 in restitution.

–Jackie Ray Clayborn, of Deer, Arkansas, sentenced in 1993 to five months in prison, two years of supervised release and $3,000 in fines on marijuana charges.

–John Fornaby, of Boynton Beach, Florida, convicted in 1991 of conspiring to distribute cocaine. He served three years in prison.

–Melton Harrell, of Cairo, Georgia, sentenced in 1976 to two years probation and a $200 fine for stealing government property.

–Saul Kaplan of Scranton, Pennsylvania, sentenced in 1992 for violating the Federal Election Campaign Act and fined $25,000.

–John F. McDermott, from Moretown, Vermont, sentenced in 1995 for receiving kickbacks in defense procurement contracts. He served two years probation and paid a $10,000 fine.

–William James Norman of Tallahassee, Florida, convicted in 1970 for possessing and running an unregistered distillery that did not carry the proper signage and illegally produced alcoholic drinks made from mash. He was sentenced to three years probation.

–James Albert Bodendieck Sr., of New Athens, Illinois, sentenced in 1959 to three years probation for transporting a stolen vehicle across state lines.

–Glanus Terrell Osborne of Dallas, Georgia, sentenced in 1990 for possessing a stolen motor vehicle. He served three years probation, including 90 days in a community corrections center, and paid a $2,000 fine.

Additionally, Bush cut short the 1992 prison sentence of crack cocaine dealer Michael Dwayne Short of Hyattsville, Maryland, who will be released on February 8 after serving 15 years of his 19-year sentence. Short’s commutation comes the day the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously to allow some 19,500 federal prison inmates, most of them black, to seek reductions in their crack cocaine sentences.

Short must still serve a term of supervised release.

Molly Gill, spokeswoman for Families Against Mandatory Minimums, applauded Bush’s decision to spring Short early. She described Short as a first-time convict who played only a small role in a Washington-area crack ring.

Commutations can only impact individual lives, Gill said. What we need is systemic change to federal sentencing laws, and that is up to Congress. Congress should address all mandatory minimums so the courts can prevent unfair sentences like Short’s from recurring.

Compared to most of his immediate predecessors, Bush has granted far fewer pardons for the length of time he’s been in the White House.

President Clinton issued a total of 457 in eight years in office. Bush’s father, George H. W. Bush, issued 77 in four years. President Reagan issued 406 in eight years, and President Carter issued 563 in four years.

Since World War II, the largest number of pardons and commutations — 2,031 — came from President Truman, who served 82 days short of eight years.
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Fujimori gets 6 years in prison

LIMA, Peru (AP) — A Peruvian Supreme Court judge convicted former President Alberto Fujimori of abuse of authority and sentenced him to six years in prison Tuesday in the first criminal conviction for Fujimori, who also faces human rights and corruption charges.

Supreme Court Justice Pedro Guillermo Urbina declared Fujimori guilty of abusing his power for ordering an illegal search as his government imploded in scandal seven years ago. He also fined Fujimori the equivalent of $134,900.

The former president was convicted of having a military aide pose as a prosecutor and search without a warrant the luxury apartment of the wife of his spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos in November 2000.

It was the first prison sentence handed down for Fujimori, 69, who ruled Peru from 1990 to 2000, before fleeing to Japan, his ancestral homeland, as his government collapsed. He faces three other trials on charges that include murder, kidnapping and corruption.

Fujimori showed little emotion during the hearing. After the sentence was read, he consulted quickly with his defense lawyer and then addressed the judge, saying he was appealing partially the sentence and the fine. He did not elaborate.

His daughter Keiko, a congresswoman for his party, attacked the ruling as she left the courtroom.

This is really an unfair sentence, she said. Before, it was a political persecution. Now it’s a judicial persecution. Like 90 percent of the Peruvian people, I don’t trust the judicial system.

On Monday, an indignant Fujimori shouted his innocence and waved his arms in outrage as he went on trial in a separate case on charges he authorized an army death squad to kill leftist rebels and collaborators. He faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted for his alleged role in the killings, which came amid a government crackdown on a bloody Maoist insurgency.

I received a country … almost in collapse, exhausted by hyperinflation, international financial isolation and widespread terrorism, he said, his voice cracking with emotion.

My government rescued the human rights of 25 million Peruvians with no exceptions. If any detestable acts were committed, I condemn them, but they were not done on my orders. I reject the charges totally. I am innocent and do not accept the prosecutor’s accusation, he shouted angrily as the head of the three-judge panel called him to order.

The trial on the charge of abuse of authority was conducted in closed hearings before a single judge because it involved a minor charge. The trials are taking take place at the police base on the eastern outskirts of Lima where Fujimori is being held.

The search of the apartment of Montesinos’ wife was conducted without a court order. Fujimori admitted ordering one of his military aides, an army officer, to pass himself off as a prosecutor during the search. All searches in Peru require a court order and the presence of a prosecutor.

Fujimori justified his action by saying it was part of a nationwide manhunt for Montesinos after Switzerland accused him of money laundering.

The prosecution had sought a sentence of seven years, but Fujimori’s defense lawyer Cesar Nakazaki had asked the court for a reduced sentence of four years, arguing that Fujimori was not the one who committed the crime but was simply the instigator. Judges normally suspend sentences of four years or less.

At the time of the search, only days before Fujimori fled Peru, the Interior Ministry said plainclothes police had seized some 40 suitcases and 40 boxes filled with videos, books and documents from the apartment of Montesinos’ wife, Trinidad Becerra.

Several days later Fujimori called reporters to the Government Palace and showed them seven watches and two heavy gold chains, which he said were worth about $1 million. He said they had been seized during the search of Becerra’s apartment.

Prosecutors said they suspected Fujimori was seeking evidence that might have implicated him in Montesinos’ illegal activities, but he denied that.

After his trial for murder and kidnapping, Fujimori will have two more trials. In one he faces charges of illegally paying $15 million in state funds to Montesinos, now jailed and accused of dozens of crimes, to get him leave his post. In a fourth trial, he faces charges of bribing opposition congressmen, illegal wire tapping and misuse of state funds to buy a television station to support his re-election campaign.

Fujimori has said he is innocent of those charges.

He was extradited in September to Peru from Chile. He had flown there in 2005, taking Peruvian authorities by surprise, in the hope he would be extradited on minor charges, but the charges approved by Chile’s Supreme Court included accusations of human rights violations.
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‘System failed’ gang rape girl

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — Officials conceded Tuesday that Australia’s welfare system failed a girl who was removed from a remote Aboriginal community after being sexually abused at age 7, then gang raped at age 10 when she was returned to live in the town.

The case has drawn outrage in Australia after it was revealed that nine males who pleaded guilty to the second rape were paroled or had their sentences suspended by a judge who said the victim had probably consented to having sex with them.

Officials in Queensland state said Monday they would launch appeal proceedings against District Court Judge Sarah Bradley’s decision not to hand down custodial sentences in connection with the girl’s rape in Aurukun township on Cape York in 2006.

Queensland state Premier Anna Bligh has also announced a review of all sexual assault cases on the cape — a remote, tropical region dotted by giant cattle farms and tiny Aboriginal outstations — in the past two years, amounting to about 75.

As anger surrounding the case roiled Australia, Bligh on Tuesday confirmed news reports that the girl was first sexually assaulted at Aurukun in 2002, by several juveniles who did not face court.

Bligh said the girl was taken from the community and put into foster care in the regional center of Cairns before being returned to Aurukun in April 2006, when shortly afterward she was raped by nine males from the community, six of them younger than 16, the legal age of consent, and the others aged 17, 18, and 26.

The system clearly failed this little girl, Bligh told reporters in the state capital Brisbane.

One welfare officer responsible for sending the girl back to Aurukun has been fired and two others have been suspended, she said.

The case underscores fears about the breakdown of society in remote Aboriginal communities, where joblessness, alcohol and drug abuse, sexual assault and violence are reported as rampant.

Today, Australia’s original inhabitants are a minority of about 400,000 in a population of 21 million, and are the poorest and most disadvantaged citizens, with a life expectancy 17 years shorter than any other group.

The federal government earlier this year launched a radical intervention plan in another Outback region, the Northern Territory, after an official investigation concluded child sex abuse was rife because of neglect and the effects of what it called rivers of grog — or alcohol.

The plan, which involves bans on alcohol and pornography and tying welfare payments to schooling and buying food, does not apply outside the territory, where the federal government retains powers it does not have over the states.

Bradley’s office did not respond Tuesday to requests for comment. The judge was quoted in The Australian newspaper on Monday as saying the penalties had been sought by the prosecution and were appropriate, and referred further inquiries to her sentencing remarks.

Transcripts released by Queensland officials on Tuesday show that prosecutor Steve Carter told the court the girl could not legally have consulted to sex because of her age. But he said she had agreed to meet the offenders for the purpose of having sex, and for that reason he was not seeking prison sentences.

It was a form of childish experimentation, rather than one child being prevailed upon by another, Carter told the court in September. I can’t say it was consensual in the legal sense but … in the general sense, the non-legal sense, yes, it was.

Bligh on Tuesday rejected that view as unacceptable.

The Australian newspaper, which first reported the story on Monday, reported Tuesday that the rape victim had earlier been judged by welfare authorities to be mildly intellectually impaired after being born with fetal alcohol syndrome to an alcoholic mother.

In sentencing, Bradley told the offenders that the victim was not forced and she probably agreed to have sex with all of you but warned them that having sex with anyone younger than 16 was illegal and they could end up in prison.

Aboriginal leaders have condemned the ruling as too lenient, and have demanded Bradley be stood down.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Monday said he was disgusted and appalled by the reports of the case, and that sexual violence against women and children should be treated with zero tolerance.
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Panel says 19,500 crack inmates can seek reduced sentences

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to allow some 19,500 federal prison inmates, most of them black, to seek reductions in their crack cocaine sentences.

The commission, which sets guidelines for federal prison sentences, decided to make retroactive its recent easing of recommended sentences for crack offenses.

Roughly 3,800 inmates could be eligible for release from prison within a year after the March 3 effective date of Tuesday’s decision. Federal judges will have the final say whether to reduce sentences.

The commissioners said the delay would give judges and prison officials time to deal with public safety and other issues.

U.S. District Judge William Sessions of Vermont, a commission member, said the vote on retroactivity will have the most dramatic impact on African-American families. A failure to act may be taken by some as particularly unjust, Sessions said before the vote.

The seven-member commission took note of objections raised by the Bush administration, but said there is no basis to treat convicts sentenced before the guideline change differently from those sentenced after the change.

Inmate family representatives and other advocates had said a Supreme Court decision on Monday could only improve chances the commission would address the long-criticized disparity in sentences for crack and powder cocaine offenses. Crack is predominantly used by blacks; powder cocaine, predominantly by whites.

The administration restated its opposition to the easing on Tuesday before the commission voted.

Our position is clear, said Attorney General Michael Mukasey at a news conference. We oppose it.

The attorney general said the convicted crack offenders were sentenced under an existing standard and to change that standard retroactively dismisses any mitigating factors the sentencing judge considered when deciding how long a prison term to set.

In addition, the release of inmates would cause problems for communities whose probation and supervisory systems are not ready to receive crack offenders, he said.

In two decisions Monday, the Supreme Court upheld judges who rejected federal sentencing guidelines as too harsh and imposed more lenient prison terms, including one for crack offenses.

In the crack case, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s majority opinion said Derrick Kimbrough’s 15-year sentence was acceptable, although guidelines called for 19 to 22 years. In making that determination, the judge may consider the disparity between the guidelines’ treatment of crack and powder cocaine offenses, Ginsburg said.

Kimbrough is black.

So are 86 percent of the 19,500 inmates who might see their prison terms for crack offenses reduced after the commission approved retroactive easing. By contrast, just over a quarter of those convicted of powder cocaine crimes last year were black.

The sentencing commission recently changed the guidelines to reduce the disparity in prison time for the two crimes. New guidelines took effect November 1.

The Kimbrough decision is a tremendous victory for all who believe that the crack and powder cocaine disparity is unjust, said Mary Price, vice president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

Kimbrough’s case, though, did not present the ultimate fairness question. Congress wrote the harsher treatment for crack into a law that sets a mandatory minimum of five years in prison for trafficking in 5 grams of crack cocaine or 100 times as much powder cocaine.

Seventy percent of crack defendants get the mandatory minimum.

Kimbrough is among the remaining 30 percent who, under the guidelines, are supposed to receive even more prison time for trafficking in more than 5 grams of crack.

Neither the court’s decision nor the commission’s guidelines affect the minimum sentences, which only Congress can alter.

In previous years, the sentencing commission reduced penalties for crimes involving marijuana, LSD and OxyContin, which are primarily committed by whites, and made those decisions retroactive.
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