Lead Story
Questionable Judgments
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In Hamtramck, Michigan, in October, Judge Paul Paruk told plaintiff Ginnah Muhammad, reportedly a devout Muslim, that he would dismiss her small-claims suit against a rental car company if she wouldn’t take off her veil before testifying. Paruk insisted that the veil, which the plaintiff regularly wears in public, would keep him from gauging her credibility. Muhammad refused, and he threw out the case. Also in October, Judge Robert Armstrong of Riverside County, California, dismissed an indecent exposure charge against a 40-year-old woman because the relevant section of the penal code refers to someone “who lewdly exposes his person,” which in Armstrong’s reading meant the law applies only to men. The district attorney’s office said it would appeal, and the local paper the Californian pointed out that elsewhere in the penal code it’s made clear that statute language in the masculine gender is intended to cover the feminine gender as well.
Their Parents
Least Competent Criminals
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Shawn Belshwender.
