Here’s a quick roundup of justice-related stories around the northwest that caught my eye.
Featured fugitive captured: An Oklahoma man that was recently featured on “America’s Most Wanted” — the long running show that keeps criminals on the run — has been caught in Grays Harbor County, according to the Washington State Patrol.
Troopers stopped James Joseph Reimer, 41, about 3 p.m. Saturday for “routine traffic violations.” He was apparently driving a Mercury XR7 and had a 14-year-old in the front seat.
Oklahoma authorities had charged Reimer with luring the girl with sexually-explicit text messages. He’ll eventually be extradited back to the state to face the felony charges. No word yet on what brought him to the Evergreen State.
Local ‘Ax Men’ Under Investigation: On a recent episode of the History Channel’s “Ax Men,” loggers from Cle Elum-based company S&S Aqua Logging are seen pulling wood from the Hoquiam River. That’s a no-no according to the state’s Department of Natural Resources. The company should have pursued permits to do so, officials said. In the quote of the day, Larry Raedel, the DNR’s chief of law enforcement services, said: “We get our cases from TV now,” the Seattle Times reported.
And finally, the only Canadian on U.S. death row sees life, not death: Ronald Allen Smith, 51, told CBC News from prison in Deer Lodge, Montana that his death sentence will end “here in the next month.” He believes lawmakers will end the practice citing the high costs.
CBC sums up his crime that earned such a sentence:
On Aug. 4, 1982, Smith shot and killed 20-year-old Thomas Running Rabbit Jr. and 23-year-old Harvey Madman Jr. near Glacier National Park in Montana. He marched the two cousins into the woods by the highway and shot them both in the head with a sawed-off .22-calibre rifle.
Smith is the only Canadian on death row in the United States. Canada abolished the death penalty in 1976, and several states are now considering following suit, citing economic, and not moral, reasons.
I’ll leave you with one more quote on the topic. Also according to CBC, one of the two men who were the last executed in Canada in 1962, was told of that very fact — that the Canadian gallows would end after him.
“Some consolation,” he reportedly replied.
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