Bottom Line: Juries Just Don’t Like Hippies

Maybe keep that in mind during the next voir dire:

A former member of what is believed to be New York City’s only commune was found not guilty on Monday in the shooting of a co-founder of the commune.

The former member, Rebekah Johnson, 45, was acquitted by a jury in State Supreme Court on Staten Island of second-degree attempted murder in the shooting of the co-founder, Jeffrey Gross, 53. He had identified Ms. Johnson as the person who aimed a handgun at him as he returned from a movie on May 29, 2006, and shot him repeatedly. He also said she stepped over him after he fell to the ground.

The jury took less than five hours to clear Ms. Johnson, who had also been charged with assault and attempted grand larceny.

. . .

The Staten Island district attorney, Daniel M. Donovan Jr., issued a one-sentence statement that said, “While we respect the verdict of the jury, it is my belief that we presented a clear and compelling case which satisfied each element of the crimes for which Rebekah Johnson was indicted.”

Mr. Gross summarized his reaction in three words: “Stunned. Disbelief. Shock.”

“The evidence is overwhelming,” he said. “I was the eyewitness. She was 10 feet from me.”

He was shot on the stairway leading to his home, one of 10 buildings owned by the Ganas commune, a group that sanctions wife-swapping among its 100 members but moved to evict Ms. Johnson in 1996. He said she ambushed him.

“I said to the court, ‘I said to the jury, I immediately recognized it was Rebekah Johnson,'” he said in a telephone interview on Monday, after the verdict. “She had a gun pointed at me, I said, ‘Please don’t shoot,'” and he watched her pull the trigger. “I knew exactly who it was and I knew who it was as she climbed over me.”

Earlier: You Win Some, You Lose Some; Rebekah, Stop The Madness!; From Deranged Hippie Fugitive To Deranged Hippie Reject.

What You Don’t Know Is That These Days Marconi Is Just A Mean Old Drunk Who Panhandles Down On The Seedy Stretch Of Market

Two things are wrong with this. One, “city proclamations” officially have lost all meaning and two, well, two is quite obvious.

If Only Eliot Spitzer Knew About The Options . . .

. . . they wouldn’t have given him so much grief:

Sexually active New Yorkers looking to wise up before turning the lights down can verify their partners’ sexual health status with a simple glance in their wallet.

Manhattan-based company STFree Certifications provides its health-conscious customers a sexual history “license” with a phone number on the back that enables them to prove their testing backgrounds to potential partners.

More than 15,000 people nationwide have signed up for the STFree service, launched in 2004 by Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, native Eli Dancy.

Dancy, a former club promoter, said he saw “a lot of irresponsibility” in his neighborhood and created the STFree card to help raise awareness.

“In places like where I grew up and where I worked, there are incredibly high HIV and STD rates,” said Dancy, 28. “This card opens up the conversation for people to talk about it.”

. . .

At registration, which can be completed online or inside an STFree van that travels citywide, program subscribers must provide a detailed sexual profile and be tested.

To access the testing history of an STFree cardholder, partners must have access to the phone number located on the back of the card as well as to a PIN number provided only to the STFree member.

“This card will keep people from lying and get it all out in the open,” said Bronx beautician Lorna Smith, 51, who lives in the borough with the highest AIDS death toll citywide.

“It will let you know who’s safe, and who’s not. It’s definitely a good idea,” said fireproofer Eric Lopez, 28, of Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

STFree members pay a one-time $19.99 fee for the service — which Dancy said will allow more people to join.

Just A Pinch Between My Cheek And Gum

Maybe it’s not Obama’s year after all — people in New York have started chewing tobacco:

On a recent Friday evening, two New York City gentlemen in their 20s were sitting at Vol de Nuit, a Belgian beer bar in the West Village. After some conversation, they removed a couple of small, tea-bag-like packets stuffed with tobacco out of a circular black plastic container the size of a hockey puck and, between sips of Pilsner, placed them inside their respective upper lips.

First came the burning sensation, followed by a slightly unpleasant taste, and then, the nicotine buzz.

“It combines the cleanliness of not smoking with the pleasure of tobacco,” said one of the men, who wished only to be identified by his first name, Lucas, of the substance, a product imported from Sweden called “snus” (rhymes with “loose”). “It’s like a secret. Nobody really has to know you’re doing it.”

In a city where the act of lighting up in a bar or restaurant increasingly seems a part of ancient history, where smokers now huddle in angry little knots under scaffolding, shunned by polite society, could snus be the up-and-coming vice of choice?

“We sell out of them like candy — it’s very popular,” said Mario Chebly, manager of the smoke shop Shisha International on West Fourth Street, of packages of snus, which retail for a recession-friendly $5 apiece (some stores are now pricing cigarettes at $10 per pack). It was a little after 2 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon, and Mr. Chebly was standing beside a refrigerated display case of General brand snus, flanked by shelves of Marlboros and Dunhills. He’d sold 14 containers of the moist oral tobacco to “nice, good-looking, professional people” since opening at around 11 that morning.

. . .

The use of snus brings a certain class, if that’s possible, to this consumer category. It’s quite discreet, and unlike the chewing tobacco or dip favored by baseball players, doesn’t require spitting. And while snus tins do come with the requisite warnings of mouth cancer, gum disease and — yikes! — tooth loss, for some nicotine addicts, it seems like a slightly healthier alternative to hacking up a lung each morning, or smelling like they just bathed in an ashtray.

Cue Christopher Meloni And Ice-T . . .

. . . who will then proceed to rough up the young punk, asking him What does he think this is, some kind of Norman Rockwell tableau? No sir, this is no game. Then they’ll take him into custody:

Time was, the pea shooter was a staple of the schoolboy arsenal. Classmates and teachers made tempting targets.

But yesterday, a developmentally disabled 10-year-old who let fly on a school bus was arrested and charged with two misdemeanors.

His alleged crime was shooting a fellow pupil, a 9-year-old, in the back of the neck with a bean.

The incident occurred at 7:16 a .m., as the bus was en route to PS 373, a District 75 school that teaches children with developmental challenges.

The driver, following standard procedure, stopped the Staten Island Bus vehicle on Sobel Court between Bowen and Targee streets in Clifton, and police and students’ parents were notified, said Carolyn Daly, a spokeswoman for the company.

The child who was hit was taken to Staten Island University Hospital, Ocean Breeze, with pain and swelling at the area of impact. He was treated and released, according to a hospital spokeswoman.

The 10-year-old was arrested at 7:54 a.m. and charged with assault in the third degree with intent to cause physical injury, and reckless endangerment in the second degree for using a pea shooter while on a bus, police said.

School officials declined to comment.

While some might question whether the punishment fits the crime, one veteran law enforcement source said the actions of the police seem justified.

“To cause an injury with a weapon is an assault,” the source noted. “And, I’ve actually heard of Emergency Service Unit cops being called in for kids younger than 10 for similar situations.”

Donk Donk!