Assistant Attorney General

WASHINGTON -- Preoccupation with more glandular scandals is preventing proper scrutiny of a constitutional scandal. The matter of Bill Lann Lee illuminates a recurring dereliction of duty by the Senate, and underscores the importance of West Virginia's Robert C. Byrd, the Senate's senior Democrat, as a defender of that institution's integrity.On Jan. 20, 1997, Deval Patrick resigned as assistant attorney general for civil rights. His deputy, Isabelle Pinzler, became acting assistant attorney general.

"I have done my best to work with the United States Senate in an entirely constitutional way. But we had to get somebody into the Civil Rights Division."-- President Clinton, Dec. 15, 1997WASHINGTON -- A year has passed since President Clinton accompanied his appointment of Bill Lann Lee as assistant attorney general for civil rights -- as "acting" assistant attorney general in perpetuity -- with that breezy acknowledgment: The appointment was not "entirely constitutional."This year the nation has become used to the mincing language by which Mr. Clinton describes his lawlessness.

A Columbia man is being investigated by Howard County authorities in the death of his ailing 89-year-old mother, a case that could raise the issue of assisted suicide.After the death Sept. 7 of Helen Vanmeter Fishback, a housemother for football players at the University of Kentucky decades ago, authorities struggled to determine whether it was a suicide or slaying -- or a combination of both. Police, who found her dead in the apartment she shared with her son, initially thought it was a suicide and investigated whether her son assisted.

Lucy A. Weisz, a Maryland assistant attorney general and tireless consumer rights advocate, died Oct. 6 at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care in Towson after a two-year battle with melanoma. She was 47."She didn't want to see people cheated, especially people who didn't have the skills to fully understand their rights," said Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr., Weisz's boss for 10 of her 14 years with the Consumer Protection Division of the attorney general's office. "She was just one of the nicest people I think I've met."

A federal judge who in November vacated the death sentence of convicted killer Tyrone Delano Gilliam Jr. has overturned his own order, again putting the wheels in motion for the execution.Gilliam was sentenced to death in 1989 by a Baltimore County judge for the murder of Christine J. Doerfler, 21, a hardware store clerk who was kidnapped and shot in the back of the head in a robbery that netted $3.Judge Marvin J. Garbis said in his November decision that Gilliam's attorney, Donald Daneman, provided inadequate defense work.

A seemingly innocuous change in Maryland regulations proposed by the state public defender's office could frustrate efforts to speed death penalty appeals, according to the attorney general's office.Opponents of the rule change contend that it is a backdoor attempt to use the regulatory process to frustrate the clear intent of the General Assembly.The May 31 proposal from public defender Stephen E. Harris will come up for a hearing June 24 before the General Assembly's Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review Committee.

Debra Gough Woodruff, an assistant attorney general and registered nurse who prosecuted doctors for violating medical-care standards, died Friday in an automobile accident. She was 41.Ms. Woodruff of Lutherville worked in a unit within the state health department that handled matters before the Board of Physician Quality Assurance, the state panel that polices the practice and conduct of doctors in Maryland.Since joining the five-lawyer unit in 1988, she had prosecuted physicians accused of sexual misconduct, fraud, misprescription of drugs and misuse of medical services.

Marylanders do not need an inspector general to tackle recent high-profile problems with its procurement process. What they need is a vigilant attorney general who makes state agencies obey the law.The issue came into sharp focus when concerns arose about sole-source awards of a $49 million Keno contract modification and C&P Telephone's proposal to link schools with fiber optics. Legislative leaders acted quickly to convene a joint House-Senate Task Force. A good move. But some drew the wrong conclusion about how to fix the problem, saying that an inspector general may be needed because the attorney general cannot effectively enforce the state's procurement laws.

Owners of the now-defunct Elite Medical Weight Loss Systems Inc. face charges that they sold memberships to unsuspecting customers on theeve of the facility's closing.In addition, the Attorney General's Division of Consumer Protection said the firm, formerly in Carroll Plaza Shopping Center, sold long-term memberships without being bonded, as required by Maryland law."Any weight-loss center, health center or self-defense center that collects more than three months payment in advance must post security with the division," said Steven M. Sakamoto-Wengel, assistant attorney general.

Gerard H. Kessler Sr., an assistant attorney general for Maryland for 22 years, died of cancer Tuesday at the Manor Care Nursing Home in Ruxton.A memorial Mass for Mr. Kessler, who was 61, will be offered at 10 a.m. tomorrow at the Roman Catholic Immaculate Conception Church, 200 Ware Ave., Towson.Born in Perth Amboy, N.J., Mr. Kessler graduated from Loyola College in Baltimore in 1952 and from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1955. Mr. Kessler then went to work as an attorney at the Baltimore law firm of Callahan and Caldwell.

WASHINGTON - -Thomas E. Perez, the Maryland lawyer picked by President Barack Obama for the administration's most important civil rights post, is expected to win Senate confirmation today after months of delay. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has scheduled an afternoon vote on Perez's nomination to head the Civil Rights division at the Justice Department. The nomination is expected to be approved by a comfortable margin, according to aides to Maryland Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin.

In the five years since Maryland State Police agreed to change procedures to settle accusations of racial profiling, about 100 motorists lodged complaints. Not one allegation contending that the practice occurred during traffic stops has been upheld in police internal investigations. On Monday, a dispute over records of those investigations landed in Maryland's second-highest court. Lawyers for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and American Civil Liberties Union argued that the public should be able to learn how those probes were handled, while an assistant attorney general countered that the documents are personnel records because even with troopers' identities blacked out, the officers can be identified.

James Patrick O'Conor Jr., principal counsel to the Maryland Uninsured Employers' Fund and a Glen Arm resident, died Saturday of pancreatic cancer at Stella Maris Hospice in Timonium He was 57. Mr. O'Conor - the eldest of eight - was born in Baltimore and raised in Towson. He was the grandson of Herbert Romulus O'Conor, who had been Maryland attorney general and governor from 1939 to 1947, when he resigned after being elected to the U.S. Senate. Mr. O'Conor was a 1968 graduate of Loyola High School and earned a bachelor's degree from American University.

Andrea D. Johnson, a former associate state attorney general and principal counsel to the Maryland Lottery, died Aug. 1 of breast cancer at Northwest Hospital Center. The longtime Randallstown resident was 55. Andrea Dale Jackson was born and raised in Bridgeton, N.J. She was a 1971 graduate of Bridgeton High School and earned a bachelor's degree in history from what is now Morgan State University in 1975. After graduating from the University of Baltimore School of Law in 1980, she interned at the Baltimore City Legal Aid Bureau and then went to work as in-house counsel for Peterson, Howell and Heather, the former Baltimore fleet leasing firm.

George E. Barrett Jr., a retired assistant attorney general whose career spanned more than two decades, died Friday of lung cancer at Carroll Hospice in Westminster. The Owings Mills resident was 67. George Edmund Barrett Jr. was born in Baltimore and raised on Moreland Avenue. He was a 1960 graduate of City College and earned a bachelor's degree from Morgan State University in 1964. Mr. Barrett was a social worker for the Baltimore Department of Social Services for two years and then served in the Army as a social worker specialist from 1966 to 1968.

Alexander Lacy Cummings, former longtime clerk of the Maryland Court of Appeals who retired last month because of illness, died Tuesday of prostate cancer at his Towson home. He was 66. Before Mr. Cummings became the 25th clerk of the Court of Appeals in 1983, he had served in the Maryland attorney general's office, which he joined in 1971, as an assistant attorney general. As chief deputy of the criminal appeals and correctional litigation division, Mr. Cummings argued between 700 and 800 criminal appeals before the U.S. Supreme Court, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Maryland Court of Appeals and the state's Court of Special Appeals.

Maryland has agreed to pay about $400,000 as part of a settlement of a decade-old federal lawsuit alleging that state troopers used racial profiling in deciding which drivers to pull over on Interstate 95. The agreement to end what had become known as the "driving while black" lawsuit was announced jointly yesterday by the state police and the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the action in 1998. After the announcement, the settlement was approved by the state Board of Public Works.

Four more candidates have submitted their names to be Howard County's next state's attorney: Domenic F. Iamele, 63, is a longtime Baltimore defense and personal injury attorney in practice with his son. He was an assistant state's attorney in Baltimore for five years in the early 1970s, according to his Web site. Gary Stewart Peklo, 61, who moved to the county in 1972, practices civil litigation, including wills, and some criminal law as a sole practitioner in Ellicott City, and was an assistant state's attorney in Howard County from 1975 to 1978, he said.

Republican lawmakers questioned a key witness yesterday in their lawsuit to overturn tax increases that took effect this week, but Democrats claim her testimony was irrelevant and, if anything, bolstered their defense. Irwin R. Kramer, attorney for five GOP lawmakers suing the state, said his four-hour interrogation of Mary Monahan, the House of Delegates' chief clerk, has produced persuasive evidence that Democratic leaders tried to conceal a constitutional infraction during November's special session by falsifying official records.

E.H. Dale Gallimore Jr., a former assistant Maryland attorney general, died of lymphoma complications Tuesday at Anne Arundel Medical Center. The Millersville resident was 63. Born in New York City and raised in Tulsa, Okla., he earned a bachelor of arts in political science and a law degree, both at the University of Tulsa. He joined the Army and served with the Judge Advocate General Corps, and was stationed in Vietnam from 1971 to 1972. He was awarded the Bronze Star. Mr. Gallimore, who moved to Millersville in 1988, was an assistant attorney general and worked in state contract litigation until 2001, when illness forced an early retirement.