Word: courtrooms
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Some courts have begun to favor nurture over nature when a custody battle erupts. Denver juvenile court judge Dana Wakefield says he invariably considers the child's needs over the parents' demands. "In my courtroom, they stay where they've been nurtured," he says flatly. "You have to consider who the child feels is the psychological parent. If they have a good bond in that home, I'm not about to break it." In the DeBoers' case, he adds, the alternatives were not necessarily better for Jessica. "The other parents didn't have a good track record to simply hand...
...Last week he backed away from a widely leaked plan to name Bruce Babbitt to the Supreme Court when environmentalists complained that they would be losing their key ally at the Interior Department. When Robert Dole of Kansas and Orrin Hatch of Utah objected to Babbitt's lack of courtroom experience, it was more flak than Clinton could bear...
Bobby Shaw, 42, is a prisoner at Missouri's Potosi Correctional Center. When questioned about his life, he parrots courtroom legalese: "Read the record . . . I have no comment." When a photographer asks to "take" his picture, he replies in all seriousness, "I don't have one." On June 9, at one minute past midnight, unless he receives executive clemency, he will die by lethal injection...
Pincus is so convinced that Bobby was abused as a child that he has said so in testimony. When he did, Ruby Shaw got up and left the courtroom. She later told him, "I know you had to say all that, but I just couldn't stand reliving those terrible times." Says Pincus: "I believe he was abused -- beaten and burned." As for brain damage, tests administered in 1990 indicate that Shaw's right parietal lobe is damaged. That is the area of the brain that controls how we interpret the behavior of others. Shaw's frontal lobes are also...
...Supreme Court in 1985 began a series of rulings limiting the introduction of new evidence into cases already under appeal. Says O'Brien: "Bobby's death sentence is the product of a complete breakdown of the adversary system. The true defense in this case has never been inside a courtroom, and it never will be." In the eyes of the law, Bobby Shaw has been and always will be a normal, functioning citizen -- and fit for execution...