Inmate Mikovits Meets Judge
by Jon Cohen on 22 November 2011, 10:49 PM |
VENTURA, CALIFORNIA=97Judy Mikovits has been on trial of sorts ever
since she led a team that published a heavily criticized report in
Science 2 years ago that linked a mouse retrovirus known as XMRV to
chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). But here in Superior Court in room 13
she faced a real legal proceeding: an extradition hearing on felony
charges that she was a fugitive from justice who had possession of
stolen property from her former employer, the Whittemore Peterson
Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease (WPI) in Reno, Nevada.
Dressed in a prison-issued blue jump suit with an orange T-shirt
underneath, Mikovits entered the courtroom and took a seat on a bench
already occupied by a few dozen similarly dressed male and female
inmates. They sat in a large room-within-the-room that had white metal
bars for walls. They looked like they were in a cage. Four bailiffs
with Taser guns strolled around the open part of the court. The other
inmates included heavily muscled and tattooed men and street-tough
women. The 53-year-old scientist, who has been in jail since last
Friday, appeared composed but wildly out of place.
In keeping with court rules, Mikovits did not try to communicate with
her husband or any of her half-dozen other supporters who had come to
watch the proceeding. When her case came up, she walked to the front
of the cage and spoke through the bars to her attorney, Paul Tyler.
Tyler asked the judge to reduce her $100,000 bail, which he refused to
do, noting that this was a Nevada case and a court there had set the
amount. The judge granted a request for a continuance on the
extradition demand and asked Mikovits to return on 19 December.
Mikovits's supporters, several of whom attended a prayer service for
her last night at a nearby Presbyterian church she attends, were
outraged by her arrest, which was instigated after WPI reported a
theft of laboratory notebooks and related material that it deems
proprietary. WPI alleges in a separate civil suit for breach of
contract that Mikovits "masterminded" the theft. "When you see a
professional person and world-renowned scientist in a cage like that,
it hurts me a lot," said Emmett Littleton, a deacon at her church.
His wife, Sherelyn, visited Mikovits in jail yesterday and told the
story of her trying to help another inmate make bail so she would not
miss work today. "Judy is all heart," Sherelyn said. "Her whole
interest is in helping patients, and everything that she has done is
for that end."
Mikovits, who has denied wrongdoing through lawyers handling her civil
suit, posted bail shortly after the hearing and is expected to be
released as early as this evening.
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/11/inmate-mikovits-meets-jud=
ge.html?ref=3Dra
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