“Girls Gone Wild” Joe Francis, and a few others…
Runners-up for top story of the month:
“Girls Gone Wild” founder Joe Francis, 34, indicted on two counts of tax evasion following his arrest on a contempt-of-court citation stemming from a civil case in Florida, where he is being held. The tax charge alleges he deducted more than $20 million in false business expenses on corporate returns in 2002 and 2003, including $3.78 million for building a residence in Punta Mita, Mexico (the northernmost point in the Bahia de Banderas, where Puerto Vallarta lies). The federal grand jury indictment also alleges he used offshore bank accounts to conceal income. His attorney, Jan L. Handzlik, said the indictment was unwarranted and should be, at most, a civil dispute.
The question a Drug Addiction Recognition Expert(TM) can help answer is, what might Joe Francis be capable of? If he is tentatively identified as having the disease of alcoholism, the DARE knows he is capable of anything, including tax fraud, and is far more likely (by roughly a ten to one ratio) to commit such crimes than a non-addict. Francis, it turns out, is not a non-addicted Hugh Hefner wannabe. He screamed expletive after expletive at a Los Angeles Times reporter who asked him about an incident in which he was accused of non-consensual sex. He also falsely accused the reporter of having a crush on him and an ax to grind because she was “jealous and angry.”
The reporter, Claire Hoffman, found she wasn’t the only woman at whom Francis has spewed venom. Reportedly upset about the noise garbage collectors made in the morning, a time during which some alcoholics are sleeping off the previous night’s partying and the BAL is in decline (which is tough on the body and brain), Francis allegedly harassed and threatened the property manager of his Santa Monica apartment, Stephanie Van de Motter. Sober people are unlikely to (allegedly) climb up to someone else’s bedroom window on two separate occasions, pound violently on the glass and scream obscenities. Another time, a scout for locations who arranged for a Halloween party space rental was subjected to threats and profanities when she refused to return his $25,000 deposit because the 2,000 guests had trashed the place.
Francis has been accused of habitually supplying alcohol to underage girls and appeared as if he might be under the influence on a Howard Stern show interview. He has repeatedly been charged with criminal conduct and has been the plaintiff in several lawsuits, either of which by itself strongly supports a diagnosis of alcoholism. Recently, he was charged with possession of a controlled substance and, while in jail, allegedly found with drugs, including lorazepam (in the same class as Valium, alcohol in pill form for the alcoholic) in his cell. The Drug Addiction Recognition Expert(TM) would conclude that Joe Francis’s misbehaviors are best explained–not excused–by the disease of alcoholism and that he is, therefore, capable of anything–including behaviors that suggest he thinks he is more powerful than the taxing arm of the U.S. government.
Rapper-actor Snoop Dogg, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, quickly pleading no contest to two felony charges, transportation of a controlled substance and gun possession by a convicted felon, in exchange for avoiding jail. He received a three-year suspended sentence, five years’ probation and will be required to complete 800 hours of community service. He was convicted in 1990 of felony drug possession and intent to distribute and in February 1996 was acquitted of murder charges in an August 1993 shooting death.
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, 63, in a classic example of addicts doing crazy things, admitting that he mixed his father’s ashes with cocaine and snorted it. It’s hard to say which is crazier”doing it, or admitting to having done it.
Jimmy Lee Smith, whose March, 1963 high-profile killing of LAPD officer Ian Campbell was chronicled by Joseph Wambaugh in his 1973 book, The Onion Field, dead of a heart attack at age 76. Smith, whose story is a classic in the annals of a perennial relapsing recidivist, ran away from home at 16 and was arrested for burglary and narcotics possession in 1950. He was arrested again for burglary two years later, paroled, arrested in 1959 and paroled just weeks before Officer Campbell’s murder. His death sentence was reduced to life in prison after the California Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty; despite public outrage, he was paroled in 1982. Four months later he failed a drug test and got a return ticket to prison. (For God’s sake, if we’re going to parole murderers, let’s not give second chances.) After serving six months, he was paroled again and then rearrested on trafficking charges. He was released in 1986 and rearrested in 1987 for DUI. After being paroled yet again, he was arrested in 1989 for terrorizing a woman he held captive over a weekend in West Covina, California. In 1990, out of prison–again–he was arrested in Van Nuys, California for threatening a man with a knife. The pattern continued until February, 2007 when Los Angeles police found him living on skid row and violating parole. He died in the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic, north of Los Angeles.