Criminal Defense

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) -- Last month two men and their teenage sons tackled one of the world's most unforgiving summertime hikes: the Grand Canyon's parched and searing Royal Arch Loop. Along with bedrolls and freeze-dried food, the inexperienced backpackers carried a personal locator beacon - just in case.

In the span of three days, the group pushed the panic button three times, mobilizing helicopters for dangerous, lifesaving rescues inside the steep canyon walls.

What was that emergency? The water they had found to quench their thirst "tasted salty."

If they had not been toting the device that works like Onstar for hikers, "we would have never attempted this hike," one of them said after the third rescue crew forced them to board their chopper. It's a growing problem facing the men and women who risk their lives when they believe others are in danger of losing theirs.

Technology has made calling for help instantaneous even in the most remote places. Because would-be adventurers can send GPS coordinates to rescuers with the touch of a button, some are exploring terrain they do not have the experience, knowledge or endurance to tackle.

Rescue officials are deciding whether to start keeping statistics on the problem, but the incidents have become so frequent that the head of California's Search and Rescue operation has a name for the devices: Yuppie 911.

"Now you can go into the back country and take a risk you might not normally have taken," says Matt Scharper, who coordinates a rescue every day in a state with wilderness so rugged even crashed planes can take decades to find. "With the Yuppie 911, you send a message to a satellite and the government pulls your butt out of something you shouldn't have been in in the first place."

Fro! m the Si erra to the Cascades, Rockies and beyond, hikers are arming themselves with increasingly affordable technology intended to get them out of life-threatening situations.

While daring rescues are one result, very often the beacons go off unintentionally when the button is pushed in someone's backpack, or they are activated unnecessarily, as in the case of a woman who was frightened by a thunderstorm.

"There's controversy over these devices in the first place because it removes the self sufficiency that's required in the back country," Scharper says. "But we are a society of services, and every service you need you can get by calling."

The sheriff's office in San Bernardino County, the largest in the nation and home to part of the unforgiving Death Valley, hopes to reduce false alarms. So it is studying under what circumstances hikers activate the devices.

"In the past, people who got in trouble self-rescued; they got on their hands and knees and crawled out," says John Amrhein, the county's emergency coordinator. "We saw the increase in non-emergencies with cell phones: people called saying 'I'm cold and damp. Come get me out.' These take it to another level."

Personal locator beacons, which send distress signals to government satellites, became available in the early 1980s, but at a price exceeding $1,200. They have been legal for the public to use since 2003, and in the last year the price has fallen to less than $100 for devices that send alerts to a company, which then calls local law enforcement.

When rescue beacons tempt inexperienced hikers to attempt trails beyond their abilities, that can translate into unnecessary expense and a risk of lives.

Last year, the beacon for a hiker on the Pacific Crest Trail triggered accidentally in his backpack, sending helicopters scrambling. Recently, a couple from New Bruswick, British ! Columbia activated their beacon when they climbed a steep trail and could not get back down. A helicopter lowered them 200 feet to secure footing.

In September, a hiker from Placer County was panning for gold in New York Canyon when he became dehydrated and used his rescue beacon to call for help.

With darkness setting in on the same day, Mono County sheriff's deputies asked the National Guard for a high-altitude helicopter and a hoist for a treacherous rescue of two beacon-equipped hikers stranded at Convict Lake. The next day they hiked out on foot.

When eight climbers ran into trouble last winter during a summit attempt of Mt. Hood in Oregon, they called for help after becoming stranded on a glacier in a snowstorm.

"The question is, would they have decided to go on the trip knowing the weather was going bad if they had not been able to take the beacons," asks Rocky Henderson of Portland Mountain Rescue. "We are now entering the Twilight Zone of someone else's intentions."

The Grand Canyon's Royal Arch loop, the National Park Service warns, "has a million ways to get into serious trouble" for those lacking skill and good judgment. One evening the fathers-and-sons team activated their beacon when they ran out of water.

Rescuers, who did not know the nature of the call, could not launch the helicopter until morning. When the rescuers arrived, the group had found a stream and declined help.

That night, they activated the emergency beacon again. This time the Arizona Department of Public Safety helicopter, which has night vision capabilities, launched into emergency mode.

When rescuers found them, the hikers were worried they might become dehydrated because the water they found tasted salty. They declined an evacuation, and the crew left water.

The following morning the group called f! or help again. This time, according to a park service report, rescuers took them out and cited the leader for "creating a hazardous condition" for the rescue teams.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- The first officer of the Northwest Airlines jet that missed its destination by 150 miles says there was no action in the cockpit, neither he nor the captain had fallen comatose and the passengers were never in any danger.

But in an interview with The Associated Press two days after he and a colleague blew past their destination as air cartage controlled approved aimlessly to ability them, pilot Richard Cole would not say just what it was that led to them to forget to land Flight 188.

"It was not a austere event, from a assurance issue," Cole said in advanced of his Salem, Ore., home. "I would acquaint you more, but I've already told you way too much."

Air cartage controllers and pilots approved for added than an hour Wednesday night to acquaintance Cole and the flight's captain, Timothy B. Cheney, of Gig Harbor, Wash., using radio, cell phone and data messages. On the ground, concerned officials alerted National Guard jets to prepare to hunt the aeroplane from two locations, though none of the aggressive planes larboard the runway.

Cole would not discuss why it took so continued for the pilots to respond to radio calls, "but I can acquaint you that airplanes lose acquaintance with the arena people all the time. It happens. Sometimes they get together appropriate away; sometimes it takes awhile afore one or the added notices that they are not in contact."

A badge address appear Friday said the pilots passed breathalyzer tests and were atoning after the flight. The address additionally said that the crew indicated they had been having a heated altercation about airline policy.

But aerodynamics assurance experts and added pilots were acutely skeptical they could accept become so distracted by shop talk that they forgot to land an airplane a! ccustome d 144 passengers. The best likely possibility, they said, is that the pilots simply fell comatose somewhere along their avenue from San Diego.

"It certainly is a believable explanation," said Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va.

Unfortunately, the cockpit articulation recorder may not acquaint the tale.

New recorders retain as abundant as two hours of cockpit chat and added noise, but the earlier archetypal aboard Northwest's Flight 188 includes just the last 30 minutes - alone the actual end of Wednesday night's flight after the pilots realized their error over Wisconsin and were heading back to Minneapolis.

Cheney and Cole accept been abeyant and are to be interviewed by National Transportation Safety Board investigators next week. The airline, acquired last year by Delta Air Lines, is additionally investigating. Messages larboard at Cheney's home were not returned.

FAA agent Tony Molinaro said in general, an unsafe action created by a pilot could lead to the suspension of the person's pilot authorization and possibly a civilian penalty.

With worries about terrorists still high, even after acquaintance was re-established, air cartage controllers asked the crew to prove who they were by executing turns.

"Controllers accept a acute faculty of vigilance back we're not able to talk to an aircraft. That's the reality post-9/11," said Doug Church, a agent for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

NTSB agent Keith Holloway said fatigue and cockpit distraction will be looked into. The plane's flight recorders were brought to the board's Washington headquarters.

The pilots were finally alerted to their situation back a flight attendant called on an intercom from the cabin.

Voss said a appropriate concern was t! hat the many assurance checks built into the aerodynamics system to anticipate incidents like this one - or to actual them quickly - allegedly were ineffective until the actual end. Not alone couldn't air cartage controllers and added pilots raise the Northwest pilots for an hour, but the airline's dispatcher should accept been trying to ability them as well. The three flight attendants onboard should accept questioned why there were no affairs for landing being made. Brightly lit cockpit displays should accept warned the pilots it was time to land.

"It's apparently article you would say never would happen if this hadn't just happened," Voss said.

---

AP Airlines Writers Joshua Freed in Minneapolis and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta and AP Writers Joan Lowy in Washington, Amy Forliti in Minneapolis and Dave Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report. Cain reported from Salem, Ore.

SEATTLE (AP) -- A second trial began Wednesday to determine whether a mentally ill man who stormed a Jewish center in 2006, killing one woman and wounding five others as he railed against Israel and U.S. foreign policy, was legally insane at the time.

Naveed Haq's first trial ended last year with jurors deadlocked on that question.

On July 28, 2006, Haq drove from his eastern Washington home to Seattle and forced a teenage girl at gunpoint to let him into the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. Once in the second-floor office, he opened fire, shooting some people in their cubicles, some in the hall and one, Pamela Waechter, fatally as she fled down a stairwell.

Before surrendering, he told a 911 operator he wanted to get on CNN. Deputy King County prosecutor Don Raz told 16 jurors in his opening statement Wednesday that the shooting spree was "Naveed Haq's press release."

"He was tired that no one was listening to the Muslim point of view. He wanted that point of view heard," Raz said. "Naveed Haq's mental illness did not cause him to attack the Jewish Federation. His anger did."

Raz focused his opening statement on Haq's preparations in an effort to show that his mind was clear at the time.

Haq made several trips to gun stores in the prior weeks, wrote two documents on his father's computer criticizing Israel and U.S. policy in the Middle East and used MapQuest to find directions to the center from his family's home in Pasco, 180 miles east of Seattle.

On his way to the Jewish center, he pulled off Interstate 5 and test-fired his gun, Raz said, and when pulled over for driving down a bus-only street in rush hour, he seemed normal to a police officer.

In a recorded phone conversation after the shooting, ! Raz said , Haq told his mother, "I did a very good thing. I did it for a good reason."

She said, "I know you're not well," to which Haq replied: "Whatever, Mom."

One of Haq's lawyers, John Carpenter, argued that Haq could not perceive the quality of his actions, and that he honestly believed he could change the course of wars by attacking the Jewish Federation.

"There could be no defense for this act if it was borne by an undiseased mind," Carpenter said. "But it wasn't."

Carpenter said Haq was an excellent student in high school - he was admitted to a dual-degree program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Pennsylvania - but his time at college was darkened by worsening depression.

He heard voices that called him a "loser" and a "homo," Carpenter said.

Haq's mental problems were well documented for more than a decade, including auditory hallucinations and paranoid delusions. He described Haq's condition as psychizoaffective disorder with bipolar tendencies, and said medication changes caused a serious deterioration of his mental state before the shooting.

The shooting left one victim, Layla Bush, unable to walk. Another, Cheryl Stumbo, said it made her more active in pushing for mental health care for Washington residents, and Carol Goldman has said she now volunteers at Harborview Medical Center, where the critically injured women were treated.

Stumbo was expected to testify Wednesday, as was her niece, who was 14 at the time. Haq ambushed the girl in the lobby and forced her to let him into the charity's office.

Richard Fruchter, the Jewish Federation's president, attended the trial Wednesday and said he wanted to "ensure that Mr. Haq never again has the opportunity to cause such devastation in people's lives and send a clear message that such acts of hate ar! e not to lerated in our greater Seattle community."

"Having to endure a second trial is an unfortunate reality, but we are committed to seeing this through," he said.

SEATTLE (AP) -- More money might result in more projects to replace culverts that block migrating salmon in Washington state but would not cut the time it takes to make each fix, a transportation official testified Monday.

Paul J. Wagner, environmental services biology branch manager in the state Transportation Department, testified Monday in U.S. District Court that the estimated number of state highway-related problem culverts has grown from 350 in 1994, when the first survey was completed, to 1,800 when the latest estimate was completed in 2007.

The difference reflects the addition of rivers, creeks and streams with steeper slopes to the estimates, Wagner told Judge Ricardo S. Martinez. The first survey covered only those with gradients up to 7 degrees while the latest goes up to 20 degrees.

Subtracting about 200 fixes that have been made since the state's culvert program began in 1991 and culverts that would be of little benefit to repair or replace, about 800 remain on the to-do list, he said.

In a trial that began last Tuesday, 19 Native American tribes are asking Martinez to order a drastic speedup in replacing culverts that block salmon from potential spawning grounds and their offspring from the ocean.

The case is a spinoff of 29 years of litigation over tribal fishing rights based on mid-19th century treaties. State lawyers argue that a culvert speedup would give short shrift to other vital efforts, including habitat restoration, hatcheries, harvest controls and changes in hydroelectric dam operations.

Regardless of funding, it takes at least four years from scoping - determining which actions, impacts and concerns will be addressed in a project - to improve or replace a culvert to meet fish passage requirements, Wagner said.

Mor e money won't speed up that process, he added, "We'll just be able to do more projects at the same time."

John C. Sledd, a lawyer for nine of the tribes, suggested that fixing culverts would benefit salmon more than other efforts.

"Our goal is to correct priority salmon barriers," Wagner replied. "We hope that would increase salmon production. We don't have a way to determine" how that work compares in effectiveness with other approaches.

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) -- Pierce County officials are investigating six complaints against Assessor-Treasurer Dale Washam from workers in his agency.

County personnel managers notified Washam of the claims of mistreatment and wasting public funds three weeks ago.

The News Tribune of Tacoma reports that, according to the notice, employees have accused Washam of violating state, federal and local laws.

A spokeswoman for Teamsters Local Union 117, Mary Ann Brennan, says the complaints reflect deteriorating working conditions, but she won't discuss the specifics.

Washam has repeatedly denied the accusations, blaming them on what he says is an effort by the Teamsters to solicit complaints to discredit him.

In March, Washam claimed that under his predecessor, Ken Madsen, the agency skipped hundreds of thousands of property inspections required by state law.

---

Information from: The News Tribune, http://www.thenewstribune.com