The World Around You

Go vote! You can even vote for me!

This will mean nothing to people outside of Alabama, but the Wyatt case has finally ended, after 33 years.

A 33-year-old lawsuit that brought landmark changes to Alabama’s mental health system ended Friday, long after many of the original participants were dead.

U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson closed the case at the request of attorneys for both the state and mental patients. The attorneys said the state had met the requirements of a settlement agreement reached in 2000 by former Gov. Don Siegelman’s administration.

The case, known as Wyatt vs. Stickney, was filed in 1970. Stonewall Stickney, who was state mental health commissioner when the suit began, is dead. So are Frank M. Johnson, the federal judge who presided over the case for many years, and George Wallace, who was governor when Johnson issued his precedent-setting ruling in 1972 for massive changes in Alabama’s mental health system.

Johnson ruled that the mentally retarded and mentally ill were being held in inhumane warehouse-like institutions, and he put the mental health system under court oversight.

Because of the case, the state closed several big institutions and switched to more community-based services, such as group homes.

Ricky Wyatt, the original plaintiff in the case, is now 49 and agreed it was time for the litigation to end. Wyatt said the state’s large mental hospital in Tuscaloosa is nothing like the institution he entered when he was 15.

“I was amazed at the changes made in the last 33 years. I didn’t think it would ever be like that,” Wyatt said after the hearing.

Thompson said the Wyatt case became a model for changing mental health care throughout the United States and in other countries. Even though the suit has now ended, Thompson said the changes it brought will never end.

“No one judge can terminate Wyatt. Wyatt is greater than itself,” the judge said about the case.

Those who have been following the Roy Moore case will notice, the same federal judge, Myron Thompson, oversaw the settlement of this case.

Of course, I would have put Roy Moore at Number One without hesitation, but that’s just me.

I could not resist this headlinefrom the BBC.

Scientists have identified the oldest male fossil animal yet discovered. It is an ocean-dwelling creature from 425-million-year-old rocks in the UK.
Unusually, its soft parts are well preserved as well as its hard shell. It has limbs for swimming and feeding.

It also has what scientists say is the oldest penis seen in the fossil record.

Researchers are puzzled as to why the ancient creature appears so similar to its modern relatives. Their research is to be found in the journal Science.

UPDATE: How does the NY Times headline the same story? “A Fossil, Decidely Male, and Old as the Hills” The Yanks are so boring.

A county commissioner in Mobile County is

Mobile County Commissioner Freeman Jockisch hid at least $93,178 from the Internal Revenue Service, money he made when his sprinkler company worked on at least a dozen public projects, according to a 20-count federal indictment unsealed Thursday.

Jockisch also stands accused of demand ing kickbacks from an employee at the company, Reed Fire Protection Inc. He also demanded a job there for his wife, Deborah, who made $144,480 in a little more than five years despite not doing any work, the indictment states.

Jockisch could not be reached for comment. His lawyer, Billy Kimbrough, said his client was innocent.

“There are a lot of things you can say about Freeman, but a schemer he’s not,” Kimbrough said.

The indictment lists 16 charges of mail fraud relating to the mailing of checks Jockisch and the company received between April 1997 and July 2002. Eleven of the charges center on work Reed Fire Protection did at nine different Mobile County school facilities, and five deal with work the company did at the county license commissioner’s office. The document groups those charges into a category known as honest services fraud, a nebulous clause in the U.S. code under which public officials can be prosecuted for failing to serve their constituents honestly.

The indictment also lists four counts of filing false federal income tax returns for facing a federal indictmentthe years 1998-2001. Jockisch, who makes $71,600 annually as commissioner, reported about $500,000 total in income on his returns for those years despite knowing “he had received income substantially in excess of that,” the indictment charges.

By statute, a mail fraud conviction carries a sentence of up to five years in prison. A conviction for filing a false income tax return carries a possible prison term of up to three years, as well as fines. If he were convicted, Jockisch almost certainly would face less than the maximum sentence based on his lack of a serious criminal record.

Only effective prosecutions can stem this kind of corruption.

Ruben Studdard has been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance. The song, “Superstar” is a tribute to Luther Vandross, who is competing with Studdard in the same category.