It wasn't enough for Natalie to wreck a popular singing group with her goofy mouth. Now this:
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines is the target of a defamation lawsuit by the stepfather of one of three 8-year-old boys slain in 1993. Maines spoke out for three people convicted of the slayings and alleged the stepfather was instead involved in the killings.
Terry Hobbs, stepfather of Steve Branch, who was killed in 1993 with Christopher Byers and Michael Moore, filed suit in Pulaski County Circuit Court on Nov. 25. The suit names all three members of the Dixie Chicks, but focuses on Maines. The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages. Hobbs claims he suffered loss of income, injury to his reputation and emotional distress.
Maines attended a Dec. 19 rally in Little Rock, where she claimed Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols and Jessie Misskelley -- known to sympathizers as the "West Memphis Three" -- were innocent and that supposed new evidence pointed to Hobbs. Her comments echoed a Nov. 26, 2007, letter that was still on the Dixie Chicks' Web site on Thursday, in which she claimed that new DNA testing of hair from the crime scene linked Hobbs to the killings and that his behavior after the slayings indicated his guilt.
The lawsuit says the claim is false.
Hobbs told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a Feb. 1 interview that his reputation was in tatters and he wanted to clear his name. "I want people to know I haven't done nothing wrong," Hobbs said. "I want them to hear it from me."
The lawsuit says Maines' statements were "so extreme in degree as to be beyond the pale of decency and to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society."
Assertions similar to those made by Maines were also made by lawyers seeking new trials for the three convicts.
The boys' bodies were found by police a day after they vanished from their quiet, tree-lined neighborhood May 5, 1993. Police arrested the three after a confession by Misskelley in which he described how he watched Baldwin and Echols sexually assault and beat two of the boys as he ran down another trying to escape. A jury gave Misskelley a life-plus-40-year sentence for the killings. A later jury gave Baldwin a life sentence without parole. Echols, then 19, the oldest of the three, received the death penalty.
The Arkansas Supreme Court later upheld the convictions, but a later documentary sparked interest across the Internet, as well as among celebrities, including Maines, who felt the teens were railroaded by police for their interest in heavy metal music and the occult. Supporters say they raised more than $1 million for a legal defense fund for the three, enough to pay for lawyers, new DNA testing and a second federal appeal on behalf of Echols.
A judge has since denied defense motions for a new trial.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/07/2008 11:42 ||
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#1
Baldwin and Echols sexually assault and beat two of the boys...
Notice how much news coverage expands when its a gay killed for his/her behavior [documentaries, Hollyweird tv and big screen movies], but when gays do this to kids, the MSM and culture elites seems to lose their self righteous outrage?
#2
If the documentarians who made "Paradise Lost" are to be believed, Maines may actually have a point. It's hard to watch that movie, and its sequel, without feeling that there has been a serious miscarriage of justice. The boys convicted in the killing were young, stupid and weird. Echols was trying to seem creepy. But there's not much reliable evidence, and some reason to suspect the stepfather.
To prove defamation, the stepfather would have to prove she knew her statement to be false, something he may not be able to do.
I expect I disagree with Maines on just about everything politically. This, though, isnt politics.
Posted by: Baba Tutu ||
12/07/2008 14:53 Comments ||
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#3
Actually I could care less abotu that little bitch Maines. Someone ought to throw her headfirst into a post. Or maybe already has given the amount of brian damage she shows.
Australia's official human rights watchdog wants a third gender called "intersex" to be created for use on official documents like passports and driving licenses, a newspaper report said on Saturday. The new gender would be another legally recognized option alongside male and female.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/07/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
There's an issue that will get no traction, except for judges and bureaucrats.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
12/07/2008 0:33 Comments ||
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#2
That would make search techniques interesting I suppose. /s
#8
'Intersex', is that the kind of sex that slips between the cracks? Also, what does one wear to the intersex coming out party and who would want to watch. Is sex really that important when getting drivers licences and passports? Do I really need to know the sexual orientation of the driver who rear-ended me? Oops, bad example. Maybe that would be helpful.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
12/07/2008 9:43 Comments ||
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#9
I think "Other" would suffice.
Posted by: Rednek Jim ||
12/07/2008 13:08 Comments ||
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Isn't the 'third' sex supposed to be -none-. Anyone claiming to be anything except male or female should be required to have an operation and accept their new classification. Eunuch.
FARIDKOT, near Depalpur, Pakistan -- The lone gunman captured alive by Indian police during last week's terrorist attack on Mumbai comes from a dirt-poor village in Pakistan's southern Punjab region where a banned Islamist group has been actively recruiting young men for "jihad," according to residents of the village and official records seen by McClatchy Newspapers.
Ajmal Ameer Kasab, the dark haired 21-year-old man arrested by Indian authorities in the first hours of the assault -- in which over 170 people died -- left the village four years ago, several residents said. He would return once a year to see small family home and one villager recalled him talking about freeing the Muslim-dominated region of Kashmir from India.
His origins are a key to the investigation of the attack and could have a profound impact on relations between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, already at the brink of confrontation. Until now, the Pakistan government has repeatedly said that there was no solid evidence to back Indian accusations that the gunmen came from Pakistan.
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Posted by: john frum ||
12/07/2008 00:00 ||
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A neighbor said she remembered when Ajmal and the rest of the children would play cops and bombers. They would yell, "jihad, jihad, all come free".
#2
"They brainwash our youth about jihad, there are people who do it in this village. They tell them they'll get a ticket to heaven. It is so wrong," the villager added.
#3
One of the statements Kasab made to th Mumbai police is that his father sold him into slavery to the terrorists. Would like a response from dad on this accusation.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
12/07/2008 9:35 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
