The use of DNA in Missouri’s criminal justice system is getting a special look by a legislative committee. The committee is fueled by a mix of technology and popular culture. St. Louis Representative Connie Johnson, who heads the special committee, says crime-fighting television shows rely on technology to achieve justice. She says the general public expects real world crime investigators to do the same thing. She says various organizations have been exploring DNA’s role in the justice system and now it’s time for lawmakers to hear the accumulated expertise. The first committee meeting is next Monday in Columbia. A second hearing will be two days later in St. Louis. The committee cannot afford to have a hearing in Kansas City or anywhere else. Johnson says there might be some legislation discussed next year – a bill was filed in the last session about DNA evidence. But she says it will be only one step in addressing DNA in the justice system.
Sentencing Recommendation Routine Begins
Starting Tuesday, judges throughout the state will have access to a new effort to help them determine appropriate sentences for criminal offenders. A new routine probation and parole report on criminals will now be available to judges prior to sentencing. Kim Green, Director of the Missouri Sentencing Advisory Commission, says these sentencing recommendations will include possible alternatives to prison. The recommendations are the result of the pre-sentence investigation report put together by probation and parole officers, and others in the criminal justice system. Green hastens to point out these are not sentencing guidelines – only recommendations that leave the discretion to judges.
Bond Expects Fellow Republican Talent to Win Re-Election
Senator Kit Bond is confident of one prediction in next year’s US Senate race: Plenty of money will be spent. Bond expects his fellow Republican, Jim Talent, to win re-election. But he acknowledges that Democrat Claire McCaskill is a tough opponent. Bond says Talent will raise enough money to run a good campaign. And he expects McCaskill to attract a ton of cash from national contributors interested in the Missouri race. Bond says the only advice he has given Talent is to serve Missourians well. He says if Talent does that, he will win re-election.
Woman Sentenced for Role in Fraud Scheme
A woman found hiding in the Branson area has been sentenced to prison for 25 years for a large fraud scheme. The woman, Janet Mavis Marcusse, had been on the lam from Michigan for a couple of years when she was found near Branson, living in a cabin. She was part of a scheme to defraud almost 600 people and launder the money through bank accounts of nonexistent churches. The government thinks the total loss was almost $13-Million.
1996 Nobel Prize Winner Dies
A Missourian who won the Nobel Prize in 1996 for helping to discover a new form of carbon has died in Houston, Texas. Richard Smalley was a professor at Rice University when he and two other chemists discovered buckminsterfullerene. It’s a material whose molecular structure resembles the geodesic dome design of Buckminister Fullee. Smalley grew up in Kansas City where he says he and his mother collected single-clled organisms from a local pond and studied them under a microscope and where his parents taught him the immportance of ideas, the beauty of nature, mechanics and electrical science.
