Oddly enough 1/25/04

Man sentenced to yoga classes for slapping wife

HOUSTON -- A man convicted of slapping his wife has been sentenced to yoga classes. Judge Larry Standley said yoga should help James Lee Cross with his anger management. Cross was ordered to take the class as part of his yearlong probation. The judge said Cross' case is unique and prosecutors agreed. Cross claimed he hit his wife during a New Year's Eve argument about her drinking problem. Standley, who is known for his creative sentencing, has in the past ordered dozens of people convicted of drunken driving to collect newspaper clippings about the crime.

Marijuana fumes force cops to leave work

JERUSALEM -- The fumes from several tons of marijuana stored in an Israeli police station were so strong that officers had to leave their workplace. The police station in the town of Dimona in the southern Negev Desert is used to store all the marijuana confiscated along the Israeli-Egyptian border, a busy smuggling route. Between three and four tons were seized in the past two months. "The smell was overpowering," police spokesman Gil Kleiman said Friday. Finally, it was too much for the officers working next door to the storage room, and they had to leave their offices. "Every time I came to work I felt very bad, like I was high. The smell of the marijuana was killing us, we couldn't work," one officer told the Israeli newspaper Maariv.

Elderly man gets 12 years for bank heist

LUBBOCK, Texas -- A 92-year-old man who pleaded guilty to robbing a bank was sentenced Friday to 12 1/2 years in prison. J.L. Hunter "Red" Rountree pleaded guilty in federal court in October to taking $1,999 from an Abilene bank in August, his third such robbery in less than five years. He could have received up to 20 years in prison. He will be held at the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth. Rountree told the Orlando Sentinel in 2001 that money and revenge were his motivation. He said he had not liked banks since one he had done business with forced him into bankruptcy.-- From wire reports