Found via BoingBoing: David Nickel reports that fellow Canadian SF writer Dr. Peter Watts, who was arrested and beaten at the Canadian border by US border guards on his way back into Canada, has received a suspended six-month sentence, a fine, and a lecture on respecting the police, but no actual jail time. It is good that Watts will not go to jail. Unfortunately this still leaves him a convicted felon in the eyes of the law. I would hope that he could appeal the conviction and get it overturned. But either way, it is good to know that...

Since the original news reports on Dr. Peter Watts’s conviction for “assault”, it has come out that the charge actually was not assault, and that charge was never offered to the jury. In a comment on a Port Huron Times-Herald’s article’s comment thread, one of the actual jurors writes: Assault was never one of the charges. We were given one option... felony obstruction/resisting. I don't know if the prosecutor dropped the assault prior to the jury convening, but it was never presented to us. and in a different post (quoted by one of Dr. Watts’s friends in his own blog about...

Canadian science-fiction author Dr. Peter Watts has been found guilty of assault felony obstruction in connection with the incident we mentioned in December, when he was stopped on the US side of the border while crossing back into Canada. As Watts tells the story, he was attacked and arrested by the border patrol officer; as the officer tells the story, Watts attacked him. Watts faces up to 2 years in prison; sentencing will take place April 26th. (Found via BoingBoing.) Update: Ted R. points out Peter Watts’s blog entry on the verdict. As Paul Durrant also says in comments below, it...