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Super-Recidivists
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During the 17 months he spent in a minimum-security federal prison in Atlanta for mortgage fraud between 2002 and 2004, Wayne Milton bribed guards and sneaked out at night at least 50 times to set up further fraud operations that authorities said ultimately took in nearly $20 million. In May the 32-year-old Milton was sentenced to 20 years for the new fraud plus the escapes; according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he was reportedly recorded earlier that month making a phone call from jail to try to get another mortage loan.
The Michigan Supreme Court ruled in June that 11 carboxy-THC, a by-product created when the body metabolizes the THC in marijuana, must itself be considered a drug under the state’s DUI laws. This means that any driver who tests positive for the by-product alone can be prosecuted for DUI even though it has, experts testified, “no pharmacological effect on the body” and can linger in the system a month after actual drug use.
Least Competent People
John C. Veltman, a 52-year-old physician, was charged with DUI in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in May after he allegedly drove a backhoe through two fences and into a building, a garage door, and a tree. According to the Martinsburg Journal, the enraged Veltman reportedly told the arresting officer, “I am a [expletive] medical doctor, and you are below me.”