Pitch Weekly’s T.R. Witcher goes behind the bars of death row to examine the case of Joe Amrine, who’s awaiting execution for a crime he says he didn’t commit. Amrine admits he raped and stabbed other inmates. "That was just the way it was," Amrine tells Witcher. "Either you did that or you were done to." But Amrine says he didn’t stab his friend Gary Barber to death in 1985 with a shank made from the metal handle of a paint roller. “Despite jurors' admitting they made the wrong decision, despite three witnesses who now say they all lied … Amrine remains on death row,” Witcher reports. “Now the buck stops at [Missouri] Governor Bob Holden's desk -- or on Amrine's gurney.” Amrine is realistic about his chances. “For him to give me a pardon, that would be kind of like career suicide.”
For a quarter million New Yorkers like Terry, heroin is a life-shattering addiction. When Terry’s former girlfriend, Juliet, returned to the city, she found him in desperate straits, strung out and panhandling for his next fix. Before she leaves again, Juliet must help him renew his lease on life. “If I leave him now, he’ll get in really deep,” she says. Michael Kamber of The Village Voice spends four days with the couple as he chronicles their struggle to help Terry kick his toxic habit.
Dan Pulcrano, publisher of Metro Silicon Valley, says he's never "seen someone so blatantly try and enter a market by expropriating a trademark and associating it with a knockoff product as we have seen with the current 'SurfMetro/The Wave' folks." Federal Judge Claudia Wilken has issued a preliminary injunction against SurfMet Inc. barring them from using the Metro name on their publication and Web site. Wilken told SurfMet that she may allow them to use the mark "if you want to use it to sell toothbrushes in Des Moines—maybe."
“Have you no morals, Mr. Bush?” asks John Sugg, senior editor of Creative Loafing Atlanta. Sugg echoes the Declaration of Independence addressed to King George III to make the case for President Bush's resignation. Sugg's revision of the Declaration asks today's George II, "It is fitting for the People to ask: To whom do you answer? Your constituency is obvious to those who look -- the band of lawless corporate marauders who seek to loot the world's wealth, squander the planet's resources and gamble with American workers' salaries and savings. It is not too extreme to say that you run a quisling puppet government for the pinstriped corporate warlords."
The owner of Impact Weekly is discussing a sale of the paper to Kentucky-based Landmark Community Newspapers Inc., the Dayton Business Journal reports, although Landmark's president says, "We're not even close to making an offer." Yesse! Vice President Kerry Farley, who wants the weekly to focus more on suburban readers, says editorial changes may be in store even if the paper isn't sold. Meanwhile, Yesse! President Craig Hitchcock tells the business journal that ownership of Illinois Times may revert to former owner Fletcher "Bud" Farrar if Yesse! fails to pay the remaining balance on the paper.
In a letter to the editor (see "We deserved credit," third from top), Pittsburgh City Paper Editor Andy Newman notes that the daily's Dan Fitzpatrick relied on City Paper reporting but failed to credit the paper.
