Boise nurse facing charges
Boise A former St. Luke’s Regional Medical Center nurse charged with stealing a narcotic from the Boise hospital is also accused of allowing a substitute liquid to be used during surgery.
Nanette Kristen Hiller, fired from St. Luke’s in 2003, is charged with four crimes involving the theft of fentanyl, a narcotic, according to District Court records. A trial, which was to have begun Monday, has been delayed indefinitely.
Hiller, who in Idaho State Board of Nursing records admitted to being addicted to painkillers, is charged with stealing the drug from vials at the hospital and replacing it with another liquid.
Prosecutors allege she let the altered dosage be administered to a patient undergoing a surgical procedure at St. Luke’s on July 31, 2003.
Washington repeals archaic slander law
Olympia Impugning a lady’s chaste reputation will soon be legal in Washington state.
Gov. Christine Gregoire on Friday signed a bill repealing an archaic law that prohibited slander of a woman.
Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, sponsored the bill.
“When the slander of a woman law was first passed, civility laws protecting a woman’s virtue were quite common,” said Kohl-Welles, a women’s studies lecturer at the University of Washington. “But now they’re just quaint. Protecting a woman’s virtue also usually meant ‘protecting’ them from equal rights, too.”
The statute prohibits “false or defamatory words or language which shall injure or impair” the virtuous and chaste reputation of any female over 12. The law does say it is OK to slander a “common prostitute.”
Washington has other laws protecting all citizens from slander.
Jury rejects wrongful-death claim
Seattle
A federal jury on Friday rejected a wrongful-death claim filed by the estate of a black man gunned down by a white, off-duty sheriff’s deputy.
The family of Robert L. Thomas Sr. had sought $25 million for his fatal shooting and for the wounding of his son, Robert Thomas Jr. The two were shot by Deputy Melvin Miller on April 7, 2002, after they pulled their vehicle over in Miller’s neighborhood near Renton.
Miller, dressed in blue jeans and a baseball cap and with his pistol tucked in his waistband, went over to see why the car was stopped. He found the occupants drinking and listening to music and told them to move along.
What happened next was in dispute. Miller said he opened fire after Robert Thomas Sr. pulled out a handgun and aimed it at him. The younger Thomas and his girlfriend said the deputy drew first. Both sides agree Miller didn’t identify himself as a deputy until after the shooting.
Thomas Sr., 59, was shot in the chest and killed. His son was shot in the hand.
Seattle police investigating terror rumor
Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske said Friday that his department was investigating a rumor that someone may have been planning a terrorist act – a release of toxic gas in the city this month.
Kerlikowske said the FBI briefed him Thursday about an anonymous threat, e-mailed from overseas, that gas would be released in downtown Seattle sometime at the end of April.
The police chief said his office was treating the information seriously, but said he didn’t believe residents have anything to worry about.
“I would absolutely put this at the lowest level” of threat, he said. “A scheme such as releasing a gas requires a high level of knowledge for a terrorist event.”
On a threat scale of one to 10, he said, he would only rate it a one.
The mayor’s office and Health Department were informed, Kerlikowske said, and he noted that police officers and firefighters are trained to work in gas-contaminated environments.