Naked pumpkin runner accepts plea deal, avoids sex-offender status
Woman will avoid jail, sex-offender registration
By Heath Urie
Thursday, December 18, 2008
The first of 12 runners cited for streaking on the Pearl Street Mall on Halloween night wearing nothing but pumpkins on their heads has accepted a plea agreement that prosecutors said would likely be offered to the others.
Natalie Ziemba, 20, of Boulder agreed Thursday to plead guilty to disorderly conduct, a petty offense.
She agreed to undergo six months of unsupervised probation, eight hours of community service and pay $27 in court fees. She will not be required to register as a sex offender, and her record will be cleared if she doesnt commit any crimes for at least six months.
In a light-hearted moment, a prosecutor joked with Ziemba that a condition of her probation would also include no contact with fruits or vegetables.
This was very uncharacteristic of me, Ziemba told Boulder County Judge Thomas J.B. Reed.
Ziemba, a docent at the Fiske Planetarium and a junior at the University of Colorado majoring in womens studies, attended court with her parents.
None of them wanted to comment about the case, but Ziembas attorney, former Boulder Municipal Judge Sheila Carrigan, said the plea agreement was the best option for her client.
This is certainly the maximum that makes sense, Carrigan said, although she said she questions the original misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure.
The prosecution and the attention of the so-called naked-pumpkin runners is something I wonder about spending our resources on, Carrigan told the judge.
Prosecutor David Chavel has been assigned all of the naked runners cases.
He said the agreement with Ziemba would likely represent the same offer extended to all of the accused Halloween streakers. However, he said it would be up to each individual to accept such an offer.
All of the cases are being handled separately, Chavel said, because some of the runners have attorneys and others do not.
He said the remaining cases involving the naked runners are in negotiations with the Boulder District Attorneys Office.
Ten of the 12 people ticketed in the Halloween run had courts dates Wednesday, but none showed up. Chavel said the remaining cases involving the naked runners are in negotiations with the Boulder District Attorneys Office, and two of the ticketed runners have a Jan. 12 court date.
Police have warned runners in the past that the activity isnt legal, but this year was the first time officers showed up en masse to enforce the law.
Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner has previously said indecent exposure was the charge that best fit the violation.
On Thursday, Boulder police issued a written statement about the plea agreement.
The decision was made by the District Attorneys Office, which consulted with the department. Chief Mark Beckner believes this is an appropriate disposition. As for future violations, Boulder officers will continue to issue citations or make arrests based on the law as it is written. It is and will remain the province of the District Attorneys Office to determine whether other charges are possible.
Ahh the pumpkin runners make the news again.
Naked woman tased by Beach police officer
By TONY SIMMONS / Online Editor
December 22, 2008 - 7:25AM
PANAMA CITY BEACH - A Beach police officer tased a naked woman after responding to a complaint of a disturbance along Front Beach Road on Saturday.
Just after midnight Saturday morning, a Bay County Sheriff's deputy responding to a complaint of a verbal disturbance saw a woman leaving an apartment wearing no clothes. She started walking toward him, and he told her to stop.
He could see into the apartment, and he noticed two men coming from the hallway into the living room area. He told them to lie face-down on the floor, and they complied.
Just then, a Panama City Beach police officer arrived. The deputy told him to watch the woman while he secured the two men inside. The deputy reported hearing the officer tell the woman, "Stop, or I will tase you."
The woman kept approaching the officer, according to the report, which says the officer then "deployed his taser into" the woman.
The report says the woman "remained on the front porch without further incident" once she had been tased.
A second deputy arrived and took photos of the residence, "as there was a large amount of blood in the living room, hallway, office and bedroom," the report said.
According to one of the men apartment, the three of them had gone for a walk together along the beach and returned to the apartment for drinks. The man said the woman, whose name he did not know, was the other man's girlfriend. When she started to "put the moves on him," the report said, her boyfriend became upset and the two men started fighting.
The boyfriend grabbed a small knife, the report said. He never attacked the other man with the knife, but had "accidentally cut himself."
The boyfriend had a severe cut on his hand and was taken to Bay Medical Center by ambulance. He refused to provide any information to the deputies.
The woman refused to give deputies any information. She said she wanted to go home. She refused medical treatment. She was charged by the Panama City Beach Police with resisting an officer without violence. She was handcuffed and taken to the Bay County Jail by a deputy.
Both men refused to press charges against each other.
5 more people plead guilty in Naked Pumpkin Run
By Associated Press | Tuesday, December 23, 2008 | https://www.bostonherald.com | Central
BOULDER, Colo. Five more people cited with running down Boulders Pearl Street Mall on Halloween night wearing nothing but pumpkins on their heads have accepted plea agreements.
That brings to six the number of people cited in the 10th Naked Pumpkin Run who have agreed to plead guilty to disorderly conduct and accept a six-month deferred sentence.
A total of 12 people were charged in the Oct. 31 run, a tradition that involves pumpkin carving, alcohol and a late-night naked run down the mall. All 12 originally faced indecent exposure charges, which would have required them to register as sex offenders.
Assistant district attorney David Cheval said last week that all dozen people likely would be offered the same plea deal, but it is up to them to accept it.
Burb from San Antonio Express-News Monday December 22, 2008
page 7B "The Bottom Line"
Buff or in the buff?
A pitcher without a mound or without a baseball, for that matter an Iraqi journalist hurled two shoes (and two strikes) at President Bush recently.
The incident brought to mind other bizarre protests over the years, and here is one of the most creative, courtesy of Time Magazine:
It was a small town in Saskatchewan, and the residents, tired of the bad condition of their roads, decided to do something about it earlier this year They took off their clothes, posing in the nude for a protest calendar, with one man smiling as he held a hubcap in front of his nether regions.
Not exactly the Chicago Seven, but, then, potholes are not exactly the Vietnam War.
The protest, as silly as it seemed, worked: Funding for highway repairs, according to the magazine, was approved in October.
Happy Trails
Jerry
Breastfeeding photo ban by Facebook sparks global protest by mothers
A global campaign has been launched by thousands of mothers against social networking site Facebook for banning photos of women breastfeeding.
Mothers around the world have rallied agaist the policy which they say stigmatises breastfeeding and demeans women Photo: GETTY Thousands of women have had their pictures of removed from profiles and online albums after they were classified as "obscene content" by the site. Many have also received warnings that they may be barred from using the site.
Mothers around the world have rallied agaist the policy and some have even picketed the Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, California - under the banner of the Mothers International Lactation Campaign, to complain about the policy which they say stigmatises breastfeeding and demeans women.
Over 82,000 people have joined a Facebook petition group "Hey Facebook, Breast-feeding is not Obscene" with hundreds joining every hour.
More than 11,000 people around the world took part in the 'Mothers International Lactation Campaign' through an online "nurse-in" protest on Saturday by posting more breastfeeding pictures. Many of these photos have been subsequently removed.
Facebook says the website takes no action over most breastfeeding photos because they follow the site's terms of use, but photos that showed nipples were indecent and had to be removed.
Barry Schnitt, a Facebook spokesman, said: "We agree that breastfeeding is natural and beautiful and we're very glad to know that it is so important to some mothers to share this experience with others on Facebook."
But, he added, some photos were removed to ensure the site remains safe and secure for all users, including children.
"Photos containing a fully exposed breast - as defined by showing the nipple or areola - do violate those terms on obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit material and may be removed," he said in a statement. "The photos we act upon are almost exclusively brought to our attention by other users who complain."
But mothers say that breastfeeding is natural and healthy and should be not bracketed with pornography.
Katherine Brierly, from Brighton, said: "BF is natural, and allows the mum to have food on tap 24/7, wherever she is, that is safe and in the right quantities and temperature at all times.
"Prudes like you would wish every mother to complicate their lives and potentially endanger their children's health so that you don't have to see a bit of nipple."
Nicky Cartwright Pashley, from Sheffield, said: "When I go to the beach I see people's asses and breasts exposed in bits of string pretending to be swimwear. I would much rather see the beauty and love of a mother feeding her baby than be subjected to complete strangers' gratuitous flesh flashing."
Earlier this month, Nicola Wood, 27, was reprimanded for breastfeeding her baby during a carol service at St Peter's Cathedral, Exeter.
"My little boy Theo, who is six months old, was getting hungry, so I started to breastfeed him, but all I could hear was a woman a few pews back moaning and saying, 'oh my God, how disgusting'," she said.
"Then she came up to me at the end of the service and said, 'as long as this cathedral has been open I have never seen anyone as disgusting as you in church. You might as well have been naked and peeing in the church'. It ruined the whole service for me."
Wis. court: Nude people still have privacy rights
MADISON, Wis. (AP) A state appeals court ruled Tuesday that a person who is voluntarily nude in the presence of another still has privacy rights against being secretly videotaped, in a decision that bolsters Wisconsin's video voyeur law.
The ruling upholds the felony guilty plea of Mark Jahnke, who videotaped his girlfriend while she was naked and while they were having sex. He argued in his appeal that because the woman agreed to be naked around him, she had no reasonable expectation of privacy.
The state Department of Justice argued that shared intimacy does not give a person the right to film another unknowingly.
Jahnke's attorney, Michael Herbert of Madison, argued that the court had found in a previous case that a reasonable expectation of privacy existed when a nude person reasonably believed he or she was "secluded from the presence of others."
Prosecutors argued the video voyeur law would make no sense under that interpretation. The appeals court agreed, saying the definition in the previous case was not intended to cover all circumstances.
Judge Charles Dykman, the dissenter in the 2-1 decision, said the 2001 law does not specifically prohibit what Jahnke did.
Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen praised the ruling.
"Wisconsin's citizens enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy not to be secretly videotaped while in the nude, and Wisconsin's criminal law has been correctly interpreted to protect that expectation," he said.
Herbert said he did not know whether the case would be appealed to the state Supreme Court.
In April 2007, Jahnke pleaded guilty to illegally making a nude recording. He was sentenced to three years' probation and six months in jail, which was put on hold pending his appeal.
He was a Waunakee High School chemistry teacher but negotiated a resignation after school officials voted to fire him.
Jahnke's ex-girlfriend said she became suspicious when she saw a flash of a red light from beneath a pile of clothes in her bedroom. She complained to Stevens Point police, who searched Jahnke's house and seized 33 audio tapes of the couple having sex and three DVDs. One showed the couple having sex, and two showed the woman nude in her home.
Actions
Back to TopicsReply to TopicShare this topic
Get paid just by sending us users/traffic.
Signup takes seconds, start now!
Signup as an affiliate!