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Assistant warden removed during inquiry
By Times Staff
Published July 13, 2006
An assistant warden at Union Correctional Institution in Lake Butler was placed on leave without pay this week, but officials won't say why. John Palmer, 38, was removed Tuesday by Corrections Secretary James McDonough. The agency released no other details. "There is an open investigation," prison spokeswoman Jo Ellyn Rackleff said. A person who answered the phone at Palmer's Lake Butler home Wednesday said he was not there and hung up. Palmer joined the prison system in 1990 as a correctional officer and worked his way up to assistant warden last year, when then-Corrections Secretary James Crosby assigned him to a senior management analyst position. The action is the latest in a series of disciplinary moves by McDonough, who has fired, suspended or forced out two dozen prison employees since February. Appeals court upholds pilots' convictions MIAMI - The 3rd District Court of Appeal on Wednesday upheld the convictions of two pilots who were drunk when they got behind the controls of an America West flight in 2002. The court also upheld the five-year prison sentence for Thomas Cloyd, 49, of Peoria, Ariz., and a 2-year term for Christopher Hughes, 45, of Leander, Texas. They were convicted in June 2005 of operating an aircraft while intoxicated or in a careless or reckless manner. Police, tipped off by screeners who smelled alcohol on their breath, arrested them after the America West jetliner left the gate and headed for the runway at Miami International Airport. The pilots had been at a bar until about six hours before their departure time. Hours after their arrest, their blood-alcohol levels were still above the 0.08 percent level that Florida law regards as rendering someone too impaired to drive. Cloyd and Hughes argued at trial that they were not in control of the Airbus 319 carrying 117 passengers and crew members, because it was being towed when it was ordered back to the gate. Man grounds stolen yacht after joy ride HOLLYWOOD - A Kentucky man who stole a 100-foot yacht and took it on a joy ride while drinking whiskey and waving to passing boaters has been charged with felony grand theft. Benjamin Mami, 46, boarded the boat Sunday at Wilshire Marina and cruised through the Intracoastal Waterway. Ken Stanley, whose boat was docked nearby, said he saw a bald man who seemed comfortable on the yacht about 10 a.m. The man waved, so Stanley assumed he was a friend of the owner. "I saw what I thought was a cup of coffee in his hand, but when I got a closer look, I noticed it was a bottle of Jack Daniel's," Stanley said. Mami then left the dock and took an erratic joy ride, said Hollywood police spokesman Tony Rode, before grounding the yacht about 500 yards from where he started. - STAFF, TIMES WIRES
[Last modified July 13, 2006, 08:54:26]
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