News in Brief

Wilkes-Barre – When Matthew Dix finished his sentence Oct. 3 at the state Correctional Institution at Dallas, he had no place to stay. Two state troopers had a solution – they arrested him.

Dix became the second person in three months to be charged for not having a place to live when he left the Jackson Township prison. He has been there ever since for lack of $5,000 bail.

A rape conviction 17 years ago in Philadelphia put Dix in a special class of sex offenders required to register their addresses with state police upon release from prison.

‘The point of the law is to know where these individuals are,’ said Sgt. Nancy Shaheen of the Megan’s Law Unit in Harrisburg.

Shaheen said there have been more than 10 arrests over the past year of just-released inmates who did not comply with the residency registration. She updates a registry of sex offenders that has grown to 4,185 since the law was enacted in 1996, with 80 to 100 more added each month.

But critics decry the revolving door of incarceration for inmates who have little or no resources. They say the residency registration requirement is both unfair and unconstitutional.

Dix is awaiting a preliminary hearing to determine if there is enough evidence for the felony charge that could send him back to state prison. Prosecutors say Dix was made aware he would be put back in jail because his first address was rejected by the Megan’s Law Unit.

Shaneen said the law is ‘very rigid’ whether inmates refuse to give an address or are unable to find one.

Corrections department spokeswoman Sue McNaughton said the state informs an inmate of the Megan’s Law address requirement and it is the inmate’s responsibility to find a place to stay.

Attorney Karl Baker, deputy chief of appeals for the Defenders Association of Philadelphia, said the address requirement could be challenged on a number of fronts.

The association played a role in challenging another part of the law that presumed certain offenders to be ‘sexually violent predators.’ The state Supreme Court in 1998 put the burden of proof on the prosecution to prove someone deserved that designation.

Baker said inmates ‘rendered indigent by the state’ because of years of incarceration lack resources to set up a residence on their own. Other issues, he said, include whether the offender is willfully violating the requirement, the 10-day period people are given to notify authorities, and the right to travel.

Court Rejects Hospitals’ Suit Against Tobacco Cos.

Chalk up another victory for Big Tobacco now that a federal appeals court has refused to revive an antitrust and civil RICO suit brought by 16 nonprofit hospitals in Pennsylvania to seek reimbursement of the costs of treating non-paying patients with tobacco-related diseases.

In its 33-page opinion in Allegheny General Hospital v. Philip Morris Inc., the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that “because the hospitals’ damages are too speculative and their injuries are too remote from the tobacco companies’ alleged wrongdoing, proximate cause is lacking, and thus the hospitals do not have standing to sue.”

In the suit, the hospitals alleged that the tobacco companies and their trade associations engaged in a conspiracy lasting more than 40 years to manipulate the nicotine content in cigarettes and other tobacco products. They alleged that the tobacco companies also deceived and misled the public about the addictive properties of nicotine and the health risks of smoking.

As a result, the suit alleged, many people used tobacco and developed lung cancer and other tobacco-related illnesses. And the hospitals, under a legal duty to give care to non-paying patients, say they expended significant resources treating these tobacco users.

But U.S. District Judge Donetta W. Ambrose of the Western District of Pennsylvania dismissed the entire suit, finding that the hospitals’ federal antitrust and RICO claims were based on remote and indirect injuries and on an attenuated theory of causation and that they therefore lacked standing to bring those claims. Now the 3rd Circuit has upheld that ruling.

School Requires Breathalyzer Tests Before Dances