Mistaken Identity

The labyrinthine murder and insurance-fraud case of Dr. Richard Boggs went to the jury Wednesday, after an eleventh-hour admission by his lawyer that the Glendale physician is "unquestionably guilty" of conspiring to collect life insurance benefits by falsifying the victim's identification.

The Supreme Court this week ended the quest of five exonerated Guantanamo detainees who are seeking release in the United States. The defeat for the Uighurs, members of a Muslim minority group in China, shouldn't be the end of the story. The problem is that other paths to settling them here are strewn with obstacles. The Uighurs' story is a poignant one: They had traveled to Afghanistan, where they joined training camps run by a Uighur separatist group. After the United States launched a military offensive in Afghanistan, they fled to Pakistan, where they were swept up by Pakistani and other coalition forces and brought to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Retired Judge Robert B. Morgan often gets mistaken for a former U.S. senator with the same name. But he still thinks he should get to keep $18,000 sent to the wrong man. Officials in Harnett County, N.C., mailed an $18,042 check to the retired judge in April 2003. Now they want the money back because it was supposed to go to former Sen. Robert B. Morgan. Judge Morgan, 89, said he shouldn't have to return the money. "It's been two years. I spent it and paid taxes on it."

The mad hares of March have left the scene, leaving behind an assortment of strange goings-on to reflect upon in April. From the "you can fool some of the people some of the time" file, for instance, come these odd tales, gathered over the last few weeks. We begin in Greece, where officials from Aris Thessaloniki are still trying to get over the embarrassment of a photograph that mistakenly made its way into the club's game program. Aris was scheduled to play Manchester City in a Europa League game and program compilers scrambled to find a team photograph of the English Premier League club.

State game officials say they do not intend to track down a mountain lion that pounced on a hunter, wrestled with the man and then let him go. Fish and Game Department officials say they believe the cougar mistook the man for a turkey. "I think it was (a case of) mistaken identity," said Bill Clark, a Fish and Game Department wildlife investigator in Sacramento. "Once the cat realized it wasn't a turkey, it took off. . . . I think the cat was probably as scared as he was."

It tends to happen when I'm wearing blue jeans or a Windbreaker. If I'm working in my frontyard, a hedge clipper in hand, it is almost sure to happen. Or if I go to the mall and buy some flowers. Or if I stand in a restaurant parking lot with my hands in my pockets. Every time it happens, it takes all the self-control I can muster to keep from shouting: "No, I am not the gardener, I actually own this house!" "No, I am not the valet. Park your own car!" "No, I'm not delivering these flowers.

Reid's previous outfit, Living Colour, was not only ambitious but blessed with more than enough chops to realize Reid's thrashy, funky, jazz-inflected hard-rock vision. Ironically, it was the sheer force of the group's musical will that was perhaps its greatest shortcoming; there was so much going on with such intensity that it was often hard to connect with the human beings behind it. Though this solo outing is loaded with many of the same stylistic components, the results are more personable.

Hundreds of depositors lined up Thursday at a Chinatown savings and loan in a run on deposits that officials said was a case of mistaken identity. Customers of Elmhurst Federal Savings and Loan Assn., most of them Chinese, apparently confused the thrift with an unrelated institution in the suburb of Elmhurst--United Security Bank Inc.--that closed at the state's request last week. "The headline was, 'Elmhurst Bank Fails,"' said David G. Plummer, president of Elmhurst Federal.

The art house isn't the first place you'd think to go for empty-headed farce, a staple of the major studios, but that's where you'll find first-time writer-director John Hamburg's "Safe Men," a comedy of mistaken identity that's about as empty-headed as anything out of Hollywood this year. And, in its own clumsy, eager-to-please manner, more fun than most. Hamburg hits a low percentage of his jokes and proves that he can overreach with the worst of the studio hacks.

A 16-year-old Sylmar youth was killed Monday morning in San Fernando by four assailants, apparently in the mistaken belief that he had killed a member of a gang they associated with, authorities said. The attackers chased Jimmie Torrez in their car until he fell off the back of a motorcycle, then beat him and shot him in the back, authorities said. Torrez was found at Second Street and Hubbard Avenue about 12:30 a.m., police said.

In a surreal spectacle, they bring out Omar Ahmed Sodani, a former employee of the Libyan Embassy in London who was named as a suspect in the 1984 shooting of British policewoman Yvonne Fletcher in 1984. The man calls it a case of mistaken identity. During a surreal spectacle reminiscent of organized tours for busloads of journalists in Tripoli, opposition figures in Benghazi displaying recently captured prisoners saved their prize catch for the end. Two young gunmen hauled out a stout, bearded black man in a green overcoat.

On Monday, several neighbors, family members and friends gathered around a memorial in South Los Angeles to pray and question why a young mother was shot to death there on Christmas Day in front of her 3-year-old daughter. Some believe Kashmier James, 25, was killed in a case of mistaken identity. "I think the guys who shot her were looking for someone driving the same car she was driving," said Tarsha Ayers, a cousin of James. "They just thought she was someone else. " Police have not established a clear motive in the shooting.

There is a moment in "The Tourist" when Johnny Depp turns to Angelina Jolie and asks "Why is all this happening?" It's a question moviegoers will be asking themselves as well. Lured into theaters by the pairing of the most seductive film stars working today, audiences will be nonplussed to discover a not particularly thrilling thriller about mistaken identity that doesn't come close to living up to expectations. Adapted by a bunch of high-profile screenwriters (three are credited but there were reportedly more)

NATO forces swooped down on the home of a senior Afghan police official, arrested him and accused him of helping insurgents make and plant roadside bombs, Western military officials said Sunday. The incident, which took place last week in Kapisa province in eastern Afghanistan, is likely to raise tensions between foreign forces and the national police. That partnership is considered a crucial element of plans by the Obama administration to draw down American forces starting next year.

A 40-year-old man who spent more than five months in Los Angeles County jail accused of sexually assaulting a Santa Monica College student on campus was released Thursday after DNA tests threw the case into doubt. Chase Guy Reynolds, who was living in Topanga when he was arrested April 7, was charged after the 18-year-old student identified him as the man who attacked her near the restrooms in the college's library building. The woman told police that the assailant robbed her, licked her stomach and sexually assaulted her, according to court documents.

Mike Brennan was getting off a Vienna subway when two undercover police officers pounced on him, mistaking him for a drug dealer. Months later, the 35-year-old black American is still recovering from his injuries -- and waiting for a satisfactory apology. Critics say the incident has highlighted discrimination in a country where Amnesty International says migrants and people of color are more likely to be suspected of crimes than whites and are regularly denied their right to equal treatment by the police and judicial system.

Legal advocates for the poor, elderly and disabled secured a $500-million class-action settlement Tuesday for as many as 200,000 people whose Social Security benefits were suspended on unfounded suspicions that they were fleeing prosecution. The suspensions, dating back nearly a decade in some instances, were ordered in cases of mistaken identity or outstanding warrants for offenses such as bounced checks or traffic violations. "Virtually none" of the Social Security recipients who were cut off after their names were matched with those in a computerized warrant database were felons using their government benefits to evade law enforcement or prosecution, said Gerald McIntyre, an attorney for the National Senior Citizens Law Center.

Where Did You Sleep Last Night? A Personal History Danzy Senna Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 200 pp., $23 -- Danzy Senna is a novelist whose graceful explorations of race and identity in works like "Caucasia" stand in stark contrast to the chaotic experiences that inspired that work. That wasn't supposed to be the case. Senna is the daughter of Carl Senna and Fanny Howe, two gifted writers whose marriage in 1968 shone with a defiant but hopeful symbolism of the age.