Canadian SF writer Dr. Peter Watts just can’t seem to catch a break. We covered his arrest and conviction for getting out of his car when crossing the US/Canada border. Now, while in the hospital for a routine skin biopsy on his leg, he managed to contract necrotising fasciitis, otherwise known as “flesh-eating bacteria”. After emergency surgery, he is now stuck in the hospital recovering, with no prospect of going home any time soon. To make matters worse, the hospital does not have Internet access. (I’m not making light here. When I was in the hospital for a...

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...