Man Arrested In Auburn Tree Poisoning

Harvey Almorn Updyke, Jr. has been arrested for allegedly posioning the large 130 year-old oak tree located in Toomer's Corner on the Auburn campus. He has been charged with first degree criminal mischief, and could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted, although he would likely serve considerably less time, probably two years or less. Police traced two phone calls claiming credit for the incident to Updyke's house, and he was subsequently arrested.

Based on some of the evidence that the state's attorney will have on Updyke, including him having knowledge of what herbicide was poured into the soil and claiming credit for the attack, my guess is Updyke will attempt to reach a plea bargain with the state in exchange for a much lesser penalty. However, it will be interesting to see how that turns out given that many in the Auburb area are so livid and distrought by the event that there will be considerable local pressure on the state's attorney to get the maximum penalty allowbale for Updyke.

NFL Earns Victory Over NFLPA

In what could be a preclude to a tough and intense negotiating process to develop a new NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement, the NFL owners earned a victory by allowing the players' salary to be held in an escrow account should there be a lockout, instead of the players receiving their paychecks. This is a huge blow for many of the lower earning players who rely on these checks to make ends meet and don't have multi-million dollar signing bonuses to fall back on. This could potentially create some division among the players, but NFLPA DeMaurice Smith attemtped to downplay the victory, and expects no negative emotions to result from this decision. Roger Goodell and Smith continue to try to pound out a new agreement, however, it is looking more and more likely that some sort of work stoppage will result.

Clemens Attorney to Stay

Today, Rusty Hardin obtained the appropriate waiver to represent Roger Clemens in his upcoming trial. Generally, attorneys are not allowed to represent individuals if there is a "conflict of interest," meaning the attorney has represented a confictying party is a previous case. This regulation is intended to prevent legal professionals from representing one party and learning confidential information about that party, and later representing another party who has adverse interests to the original party, whereby the attorney can utuilize the information he had obtained on the original party for his new client's advantage. Here, Hardin briefly represented Andy Pettitte several years ago, and Pettitte is expected to be one of the star witnesses in Clemens' upcoming trial. However, as mentioned above, Hardin has obtained the appropriate waivers that will allow him to represent Clemens in his tiral.