Astronaut charged with attempted kidnapping not attempted murder

Wok wrote:
Astronaut charged with attempted kidnapping not attempted murder
Fri Mar 2, 2007 1:42PM EST

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak, who
stunned colleagues by driving from Houston to Orlando in diapers
to confront a woman she thought was a love rival, was charged
with attempted kidnapping but not with attempted murder,
prosecutors said on Friday.

I think the easiest solution for all concerned, NASA included, would be
to just have the Navy give her a dishonorable discharge for "conduct
unbecoming an officer" under UCMJ. Just the fact that she stalked
Shipman, her rival in a love triangle, for 900 miles and then zapped her
with the pepper spray, is sufficient to get her on "conduct unbecoming,"
without having to worry about whether her intent was kidnapping. And
Nowak does not deny that she was the one who zapped Shipman, so under
UCMJ she would plead guilty to "conduct unbecoming."

Then NASA could take that dishonorable discharge from the Navy and ask
her to resign from NASA on that basis.

Simple.


--
Steven D. Litvintchouk
Email:
Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.

On Sat, 03 Mar 2007 13:24:40 -0500, in a place far, far away, John Doe
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as
to indicate that:

Stevie wrote:
and back. She was in possession of printed emails sent between Shipman and
Oefelein, also found was a map to Shipman's home, a written (shopping?) list
of items she was carrying - latex gloves, metal mallet, knife, rubber hose,
trash bags, BB gun, etc..

It makes it LOOK like she had intentions to kill her prey.

Yes, indeedy.

Remember OJ Simpson ? Everything pointed to him having done it. But in he
court of law, the jury wasn't 100% convinced that he had done it because
the evidence wasn't 100% conclusive.

No, it was because the jury consisted of morons.

I suspect an insanity plea could work.

Alex

On Mar 2, 4:09 pm, (Rand Simberg) wrote:
On Fri, 02 Mar 2007 14:52:22 -0600, in a place far, far away, Jim
made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:





On Fri, 02 Mar 2007 19:03:34 GMT, Wok wrote:

Astronaut charged with attempted kidnapping not attempted murder
Fri Mar 2, 2007 1:42PM EST

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak, who
stunned colleagues by driving from Houston to Orlando in diapers
to confront a woman she thought was a love rival, was charged
with attempted kidnapping but not with attempted murder,
prosecutors said on Friday.
On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 12:40:05 GMT, (Rand
Simberg) wrote:

Me thinks that she'll end up only facing one or two (reduced) assault and
battery charges...

Assault, with pepper spray, is all she really did...

Nope. It's a pretty open/shut case of attempted murder.
Then I wrote:
Another shining example of your failure to properly interpret what is
really happening in the world around you. Spraying someone with pepper
spray is, at most, simple assault. She brought a BB gun and a knife,
neither of which was brandished or otherwise used. Could possibly go
with an added "with intent to do great bodily harm" but that's
doubtful.

Now I write further, Rand, Terrell Miller both owe me a tip of the
hat. And I get to say "I told you so".

Why? Our argument was based on the evidence available to us. There
are many reasons that the prosecution could decide to reduce the
charge, but it doesn't mean that we were wrong, given that
information.

In any event, you're wrong as well. You said, right above, it would
only be assault and battery. The charge remains attempted kidnapping.
Which of course raises the question of the purpose of such a
kidnapping.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Which of course raises the question of the purpose of such a
kidnapping.-

Yeah, what was she going to do with the woman? Talk her
into giving up Astro Boy? I mean what about the black
plastic bags, the mallet and I believe a serated knife.

robbielynn wrote:

On Mar 2, 4:09 pm, (Rand Simberg) wrote:
On Fri, 02 Mar 2007 14:52:22 -0600, in a place far, far away, Jim
made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:





On Fri, 02 Mar 2007 19:03:34 GMT, Wok wrote:

Astronaut charged with attempted kidnapping not attempted murder
Fri Mar 2, 2007 1:42PM EST

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak, who
stunned colleagues by driving from Houston to Orlando in diapers
to confront a woman she thought was a love rival, was charged
with attempted kidnapping but not with attempted murder,
prosecutors said on Friday.
On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 12:40:05 GMT, (Rand
Simberg) wrote:

Me thinks that she'll end up only facing one or two (reduced) assault and
battery charges...

Assault, with pepper spray, is all she really did...

Nope. It's a pretty open/shut case of attempted murder.
Then I wrote:
Another shining example of your failure to properly interpret what is
really happening in the world around you. Spraying someone with pepper
spray is, at most, simple assault. She brought a BB gun and a knife,
neither of which was brandished or otherwise used. Could possibly go
with an added "with intent to do great bodily harm" but that's
doubtful.

Now I write further, Rand, Terrell Miller both owe me a tip of the
hat. And I get to say "I told you so".

Why? Our argument was based on the evidence available to us. There
are many reasons that the prosecution could decide to reduce the
charge, but it doesn't mean that we were wrong, given that
information.

In any event, you're wrong as well. You said, right above, it would
only be assault and battery. The charge remains attempted kidnapping.
Which of course raises the question of the purpose of such a
kidnapping.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Which of course raises the question of the purpose of such a
kidnapping.-

Yeah, what was she going to do with the woman? Talk her
into giving up Astro Boy? I mean what about the black
plastic bags, the mallet and I believe a serated knife.

Her dragon killing aquotremontre'! thats all.
"The better to convince you with, my pretty" . (Witch of the East)

Wok wrote:

Astronaut charged with attempted kidnapping not attempted murder
Fri Mar 2, 2007 1:42PM EST

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak, who
stunned colleagues by driving from Houston to Orlando in diapers
to confront a woman she thought was a love rival, was charged
with attempted kidnapping but not with attempted murder,
prosecutors said on Friday.

The former space shuttle crew member also was formally charged
on Friday with battery and car burglary with assault after
trying to pepper spray the woman she thought was competing with
her for the attention of another astronaut, said prosecutors in
Orlando.

Shortly after Nowak was arrested on February 6, prosecutors said
she was trying to kill U.S. Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman, who
she believed was a rival for the attention of astronaut Bill
Oefelein.

But the attempted first-degree murder charge, which carried a
maximum sentence of life imprisonment, was dropped without
explanation and prosecutors declined to comment.

Nowak, who has three children and recently separated from her
husband, was released on bail shortly after her arrest and
allowed to return to her home in Houston.

Police said Nowak, a flight engineer who made her first trip
into space in July to the International Space Station aboard
shuttle Discovery, sped the 950 miles from Houston to Orlando
wearing diapers so she would not have to stop at a bathroom.

WMClass soccor mom goes nuts - what's new! **** you ought
see what the mediua does to its audience every night! That's a
cause for worry!

Recently divorced, stressed-out astronaut super-Mom, infatuated with male
astronaut, threatened by rival female fighter jock, armed with a lot of
circumstantial, but pretty damning evidence, and then assaults her rival.

I am not a jail-house lawyer, like many who have offered input here, but
taken in whole, I'd say it spells desperation leading to a total nervous
breakdown. Ambition, compulsion, rejection, desperation. Cut the woman
some slack here, folks. She is going to lose the greatest job status of
which most people can conceive, lose her Navy status, lose everything
associated with both those jobs, she loses her love interest, the respect of
her colleagues, her status among other women, and be ridiculed for the
balance of her life.

My verdict: I doubt Lisa Nowak is a danger to society at large. Dismissal
from NASA, dismissal from the Navy, compulsory psychiatric services for
years, if not life, minimum jail time with eternal probation. Then a series
of book deals and a television movie, which may restore some financial
support to her, but not enough to balance her burdens through the rest of
her natural life.

That's it.



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On Sun, 4 Mar 2007 11:25:22 -0500, "R.Glueck"
wrote:

My verdict: I doubt Lisa Nowak is a danger to society at large. Dismissal
from NASA, dismissal from the Navy, compulsory psychiatric services for
years, if not life, minimum jail time with eternal probation.

It won't be eternal probation and it will be a minimum sentence.
That's the law. At the first conviction any prison sentence must be
the minimum except for certain extreme exceptions. Even if those
exceptions are present, there's still a maximum term beyond which the
sentence can't go.

You probably don't mean probation, anyway. Probation, now called
community control or something similar, is what you get instead of a
prison sentence, not in addition to it. I think you mean parole,
which is what you get if you're let out of prison early, before
serving your entire sentence. Parole can't extend beyond the term of
the original sentence.

And you don't get jail time for a felony, only for a misdemeanor. You
get prison time for a felony. (Cities and counties run jails, states
run prisons.)

Mary "No first-hand knowledge here, though"
--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer
We didn't just do weird stuff at Dryden, we wrote reports about it.
or
Visit my new blog at http://thedigitalknitter.blogspot.com/

On Mon, 5 Mar 2007 12:48:14 -0600, Reunite Gondwanaland (Mary Shafer) wrote
(in article ):


My verdict: I doubt Lisa Nowak is a danger to society at large. Dismissal
from NASA, dismissal from the Navy, compulsory psychiatric services for
years, if not life, minimum jail time with eternal probation.

Mary, Mary, Mary . . .

It won't be eternal probation and it will be a minimum sentence.
That's the law. At the first conviction any prison sentence must be
the minimum except for certain extreme exceptions. Even if those
exceptions are present, there's still a maximum term beyond which the
sentence can't go.

In most jurisdictions, this part is correct.

You probably don't mean probation, anyway. Probation, now called
community control or something similar, is what you get instead of a
prison sentence, not in addition to it.

In my state (and in Florida, so far as I know), it's still called probation.
And you can be sentenced to both for separate crimes and have them served
consecutively. For instance, you may have one conviction for possession of
narcotics, and a second conviction for possession of paraphernalia. The
first might have you serving four months of a two year sentence, for
instance, followed by probation for the remaining term, plus a term of
probation for the paraphernalia charge. If you screw up your probation
(failing a drug test, for instance), you can get yanked back to serve the
remainder of your sentence term.

I think you mean parole,
which is what you get if you're let out of prison early, before
serving your entire sentence. Parole can't extend beyond the term of
the original sentence.

That's the general rule, but it might well be highly-supervised probation,
not parole (which is usually pretty much a "Check in once a month or so" kind
of thing).

And you don't get jail time for a felony, only for a misdemeanor. You
get prison time for a felony. (Cities and counties run jails, states
run prisons.)

And when state prisons are full (as they usually are since we are so involved
in the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, and incidentally the War on Crime),
state prisoners are often housed on county jails, for which the county is
paid - some counties with large jails actually make quite a bit of money this
way to defray their own costs and fund additional deputies and support
personnel for general law enforcement.


--
You can run on for a long time,
Sooner or later, God'll cut you down.
~Johnny Cash

On Mon, 5 Mar 2007 13:07:36 -0600, Herb Schaltegger
wrote:


And when state prisons are full (as they usually are since we are so involved
in the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, and incidentally the War on Crime),
state prisoners are often housed on county jails, for which the county is
paid - some counties with large jails actually make quite a bit of money this
way to defray their own costs and fund additional deputies and support
personnel for general law enforcement.

Maybe they could sentence her to serve her prison term at hard labor
aboard ISS.