Saturday, January 26, 2008

Here's one for the "poor unfortunate victim" file

DENVER -- Scott Anthony Gomez Jr. made his first break from the Pueblo County Jail two years ago.

He pushed up a ceiling tile, hoisted himself into the ventilation system and climbed until he reached a roof. Then he shinnied down the wall on bedsheets fashioned into a rope. Caught two days later, he was back in his cell.

The next time, Gomez again pried loose a ceiling tile and vanished into the guts of the building. But as he tried to rappel on bedsheets down the side of the 85-foot building, he fell.

Now the would-be Houdini is suing the sheriff of the southern Colorado county, saying authorities caused his injuries by making it too easy to fly the coop. "Defendants . . . did next to nothing to ensure that the jail was secure and the plaintiff could not escape," says Gomez's lawsuit, which seeks an unspecified amount of money.

Filed this month in federal court in Denver, the case has attracted attention statewide and on the Internet, mostly from people chuckling and fuming at Gomez's legal efforts.

"It doesn't pass the straight-face test," said Pueblo County Sheriff Kirk Taylor, who took office one day before Gomez's second escape one year ago. "He is the criminal here, not the sheriff. He is the one who committed the crime."

No, the prison below is not the one Gomez escaped from.

When you think of a prison, the first thing comes to your mind is stoned walls and a huge gate with armed watch towers. That’s not the case in Leoben Justice Centre, Steiermark, Austria. In fact here you can find the world’s best looking prison, which houses a complex of courts, offices of Judges, and prison.
Unlike prisons we see in movies and documentaries, this one looks to be better than dorms of many universities

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