CAMPUS BRIEF AU grad students and faculty raise awareness about death row inmate
Graduate students from the School of Communication rallied for a death row inmate with guidance from two AU professors, according to an SOC announcement. The students, who all take a class with SOC professor Gemma Puglisi, wrote op-ed pieces and tabled on the quad to bring attention to the case of Troy Davis, a death row inmate in Georgia, according to the announcement. Davis' conviction for the murder of a police officer was solely based on eyewitness testimony that has almost all been recanted since the verdict was first announced in 1991, according to the announcement. Davis' sister invited SOC professor Rick Stack to speak at an Oct. 9 rally for Davis at Savannah State University. Stack worked for seven years as a pro bono media adviser for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and wrote "Dead Wrong: Violence, Vengeance & the Victims of Capital Punishment," according to the announcement. "Troy's case represents everything that is wrong with capital punishment ... systematic corruption in the form of police coercion and overzealous prosecution, incompetent defense counsel, snitch testimony and mistaken eyewitness identification," Stack said in the announcement. "I firmly believe that removing this layer of violence from our society will make ours a more peaceful world." -KIM SELMAN
METRO BRIEF Man found guilty of murder over cell phone
A 19-year-old Annapolis man accused of shooting another man for using his friend's cell phone was found guilty Friday of first degree murder and a handgun violation. Andrew "Zell" Tuell faces a life sentence plus 20 years for killing 23-year-old Terrance Anthony Powell Feb. 11 in the College Creek Terrace area of Annapolis after Powell picked up and briefly used a cell phone belonging to a friend of Tuell's while he waited for a cab, according to Capitalonline.com, a local news Web site. Witnesses said they saw Tuell standing approximately 50 feet from Powell's body minutes after the shooting. Police said he then took a bus to his uncle's home in Utah, dumping his own cell phone along the way in Pittsburgh, according to HometownAnnapolis.com, an Annapolis news Web site. The uncle called a crime hotline and turned his nephew in when he heard of the killing, according to Capitalonline.com. Powell's younger brother was also fatally shot in College Creek Terrace in 2001, Capitalonline.com reported. -PATRICIO CHILE
NATIONAL BRIEF Woman asked to take off bra at security check
An Idaho woman is seeking an apology from the U.S Marshals Service after she was asked to remove her bra in public two weeks ago when the under-wire support triggered a metal detector in a federal courthouse in Coeur D'Alene, according to the Coeur D'Alene Press. "I asked if I could go into the bathroom because they didn't have a privacy screen, and no women security officers were available," Lori Plato told Idahostatesman.com. "They said, 'No.'" Patrick McDonald, the U.S. Marshal in Boise, denied the guards did anything wrong and said appropriate security protocols were followed, according to Idahostatesman.com. Guards told her to remove her bra in her car or in a restaurant bathroom, he also said. "She's inflating it," McDonald said. "All of a sudden she just took it off. It wasn't anything we wanted to happen, and it wasn't anything we asked for her to do. She did it so fast." Plato told reporters she didn't change in a restaurant bathroom or in her car because she was unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the busy downtown Coeur D'Alene neighborhood where the courthouse is located. Instead, she had her husband shield her with his jacket as she removed the bra, the Coeur D'Alene Press reported. -P.C.
INTERNATIONAL BRIEF Brazilian boy survives 12 days in Amazon
A three-year-old Brazilian boy, Neilson Oliveira Lima, was found alive last week singing a nursery rhyme 12 days after disappearing in the Amazon Rainforest, according to Globo.com, a Brazilian news Web site. "He went in the forest following his father, and he got lost," Amazonas state police officer Alison Carvalho told the Associated Press Friday. "He was found by his cousin, who was out hunting. Nobody knows what he ate or how he survived." Lima was very lean and bruised but would receive medical help for a day or two, the boy's mother told CBN, a Brazilian radio station, last week. "In the jungle close to my house there are hawks, jaguars and cobras, but his guardian angel and God protected my baby," she told CBN. -P.C.
