(AP) - NEW HAVEN, Conn.-A federal judge in a sport utility ran into a police officer directing traffic in the rain, critically injuring the officer, authorities said Thursday.
New Haven police Chief Francisco Ortiz said Senior Judge John M. Walker was "very much distraught" over the Tuesday night crash.
Officer Dan Picagli, 38, was in critical condition Thursday at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He had been wearing a black raincoat and a reflective vest when he was hit, Ortiz said.
Ortiz said Walker is cooperating, and police did not feel it was necessary to test him for drugs or alcohol.
Walker, 65, stepped down this month as chief judge of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals but he maintains court chambers in New Haven. He was appointed to the New York-based court in 1989 by President George H.W. Bush, who is a cousin of the judge.
Why is it that an innocent applicant for any janitorial job is routinely subjected to drug testing, but a federal judge who nearly kills a cop is not?
Oil company executives have been cringing at the poll results, economists all but screaming.
Nearly a third of all Americans believe the oil industry, in cahoots with the White House, is orchestrating the recent drop in energy prices to help Republicans in November.
So there was groaning again on Thursday when House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., issued a news release that was headlined: "Gas prices continue to fall during a Republican majority."
Oil price manipulation is only the second conspiracy he's been discovered to be involved in since the beginning of this month. And, despite the unseemliness of teenage penis measurement by Republican lawmakers, this is the more serious one.
A Kane County Board candidate arrested last week on sexual assault charges died Tuesday when his vehicle slammed head-on into a concrete bridge support, Aurora police said.
Brent K. Schepp, 36, a father of four from Aurora, was traveling at "a very high rate of speed" on Eola Road and did not try to brake or take any evasive action, said Dan Ferrelli, police spokesman.
"At this point in the investigation, we believe this to be self-inflicted," Ferrelli said, adding that the coroner and an inquest will determine the cause of death.
Schepp was seeking the board's District 3 seat, but his first bid for office quickly unraveled with the announcement Friday of charges that he sexually abused and assaulted two teenage girls in 2005. The Kane County Republican Central Committee withdrew its endorsement of his candidacy that afternoon.
As Schepp may have learned from the example of fellow Republican Ken Lay, death, possibly by suicide, is one sure way to avoid criminal accountability.
A federal judge in Houston this afternoon wiped away the fraud and conspiracy conviction of Kenneth L. Lay, the Enron Corp. founder who died of heart disease in July, bowing to decades of legal precedent but frustrating government attempts to seize nearly $44 million from his estate.
The ruling worried employees and investors who lost billions of dollars when the Houston energy trading company filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2001. It also came weeks after Congress recessed for the November elections without acting on a last-ditch Justice Department proposal that would have changed the law to allow prosecutors to seize millions in investments and other assets that Lay controlled.
With the judge's order, Lay's conviction on 10 criminal charges will be erased from the record. "The indictment against Kenneth L. Lay is dismissed," U.S. District Judge Simeon T. Lake III wrote in a spare, 13-page order.
