Burden Of Proof

WHEN ASSET FORFEITURE statutes were passed more than a decade ago, lawmakers never envisioned that federal, state and local law enforcement officers would seize property from people without ever charging them with crimes.In almost every state, citizens suspected but never convicted of crimes have lost their homes, cars, cash and other property to aggressive prosecutors who have exploited the existing statutes.Willie Jones, a Nashville landscaper, bought airplane tickets with cash, arousing the suspicions of federal drug agents.

A bill introduced in Annapolis this legislative session would make it easier for parents to challenge school systems when they believe their special education students are not receiving a proper education. Senate Bill 691, introduced by Sen. Karen Montgomery, a Montgomery County democrat, seeks to shift the burden of proof to local school systems in due process hearings, which advocates say are usually burdensome for parents who are often outnumbered, overwhelmed and outspent when they go before an administrative judge to settle disputes.  Due process hearings--which mirror civil court trials--are one of the pivotal rights afforded to parents under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

WASHINGTON -- It is not necessarily unlawful for an employer to adopt policies that put older workers at a disadvantage. Such policies pass muster under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act as long as they are based on "reasonable factors other than age." The question in a Supreme Court argument yesterday was whether the employer has to prove that such "reasonable factors" exist, or whether it is up to the employee who has brought a lawsuit to show that they do not. The burden of proof makes a substantial difference in any lawsuit, although statutes rarely specify which side bears it. For federal laws against race and sex discrimination in the workplace, the Supreme Court has filled the gap by developing fairly elaborate procedures that plaintiffs and defendants must follow.

MISSOULA, Mont. -W.R. Grace & Co. and three former executives were acquitted Friday of federal charges that they knowingly allowed residents of northwestern Montana town to be exposed to asbestos from its vermiculite mine. Attorneys for some residents of the town of Libby blame tremolite asbestos from the vermiculite for about 2,000 cases of illness and about 225 deaths in and around the community. Miners carried asbestos home on their clothes, vermiculite used to cover school running tracks in Libby and some residents used vermiculite as mulch in their home gardens.

CareFirst BlueCross Blue- Shield told lawmakers yesterday that it would not fight a bill that would force it to prove its proposed transformation from a nonprofit to a profit-making enterprise is good for Maryland. The legislation would shift the legal burden of proof from Insurance Commissioner Steven B. Larsen. He must review CareFirst's proposed $1.3 billion sale to WellPoint Health Networks Inc. Without a change in current law, it would be up to Larsen to show that the deal was not in the interest of the state.

WASHINGTON -- Responding to a groundswell of public fury at one of the government's most-maligned agencies, the Senate unanimously approved legislation yesterday that would restructure the Internal Revenue Service for the first time in decades and give taxpayers an arsenal of new rights when they have disputes with the agency.The 97-0 vote was a rare display of bipartisanship at a time when most issues before Congress -- especially tax matters -- have split lawmakers along party lines. The political momentum behind demands for change at the agency is so strong in this election year that no one, not even President Clinton or his IRS commissioner, is defending the status quo.The bill would subject the IRS for the first time to oversight by a management board dominated by private citizens.

Howard County prosecutors said yesterday that they will drop a gun charge filed against a White House Secret Service officer whose 3 1/2 - year-old son shot himself after grabbing the officer's loaded, unlocked service weapon off the top of the family's refrigerator. Kenneth John Bouley, 33, had been scheduled for trial Aug. 28 on a charge of allowing access to firearms by minors, but Howard County State's Attorney Marna L. McLendon said yesterday that the facts of the case don't meet the "difficult" burden of proof required by the 9-year-old statute.

BOTH SIDES CLAIMED victory in the forfeiture case involving the large water-view house of Patricia Emory, former principal of Severna Park Elementary and current administrator for Anne Arundel County schools.The obvious winner is Ms. Emory, who keeps her Pasadena house -- albeit at a cost of $49,300 -- and forced Anne Arundel County to follow the basic legal precept that the burden of proof rests on the government.Ms. Emory and her husband, James Mitchell Emory, had been accused in 1992 of being drug kingpins.

IN ITS FIRST incarnation, Gov. Parris N. Glendening's breathtaking effort to withhold public records could hardly have been worse. Virtually any document deemed "a risk to the public or to the public security" could have been kept secret. The Rand McNally Road Atlas might have been thrown under lock and key under that formula. Fortunately, Mr. Glendening's staff has refined its first draft. A series of amendments, amounting to an entirely new bill, offers a more reasoned and rational approach to withholding information that might be of use to terrorists.

Prosecution of criminals is supposed to be swift and fair, but the handling of the case against Jonathan T. Jarboe in Carroll County was anything but.Not only did the prosecution -- with the acquiescence of Circuit Court Judges Francis Arnold and Raymond Beck -- keep Mr. Jarboe jailed for 179 days before dropping the charges, but county Assistant State's Attorney Barton F. Walker III's mishandling of a young, frightened witness apparently drove her into...

WASHINGTON -- It is not necessarily unlawful for an employer to adopt policies that put older workers at a disadvantage. Such policies pass muster under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act as long as they are based on "reasonable factors other than age." The question in a Supreme Court argument yesterday was whether the employer has to prove that such "reasonable factors" exist, or whether it is up to the employee who has brought a lawsuit to show that they do not. The burden of proof makes a substantial difference in any lawsuit, although statutes rarely specify which side bears it. For federal laws against race and sex discrimination in the workplace, the Supreme Court has filled the gap by developing fairly elaborate procedures that plaintiffs and defendants must follow.

Coast Guard shows LNG plan is unsafe Last week, the U.S. Coast Guard erased any doubt that a proposal to locate a liquefied natural gas terminal in Eastern Baltimore County poses serious security threats to the region ("LNG security questioned," Feb. 28). The Coast Guard's report, which focuses on whether AES Corp. could safely transport LNG up the Chesapeake Bay, confirms the fears that Baltimore County Executive James T. Smith Jr. and other county officials have harbored about this project since its inception.

McCormick Elementary School Principal Kevin M. Lindsey, who was accused of sexually assaulting two former pupils, was driving to the bank yesterday morning to take out a loan for his legal defense when his cell phone rang. It was his lawyer, calling to say the charges against him had been dropped. For the 50-year-old Sparks resident and father of three, the news was bittersweet. He is relieved but also incredulous, wanting to know why he was arrested at all. "Why did they put me through all that?"

A MASSACHUSETTS panel last week proposed a blueprint for reducing attorney error, geographic disparity, evidentiary flaws, racial bias and juror doubt in capital cases. If adopted, these reforms would create a death penalty that is "as infallible as humanly possible," the panel claimed, to bolster Republican Gov. Mitt Romney's campaign to restore the death penalty. Capital punishment was abolished there in 1984. History teaches us to beware governmental claims of infallibility. Caution is especially warranted when we're talking about the horror of convictions of innocents and undeserved sentences of death.

SAN JOSE, Calif. - From the moment a steroid scandal linked to BALCO Laboratories broke last fall, pulling in high-profile names that included that of Barry Bonds, sports officials have made their position clear: The previously undetectable substance, THG, is an anabolic steroid that promotes muscle growth and enhances athletic performance. Case closed. In a legal sense, however, the issue might not be that simple. This question is going to be central, not only to the Olympic sports cases before the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency this week, but perhaps also to the public perception of Bonds: What exactly is THG?

Arguing that the state's murder case "challenged the foundation of the right to defend yourself," two Harford County businessmen were acquitted yesterday of gunning down a drug addict who broke into their East Baltimore warehouse. Prosecutors said the men, frustrated by repeated burglaries at their business, were acting with murder in mind, not self-defense, when they killed Tygon Walker with a shotgun and a handgun in June 2001. But Baltimore Circuit Judge John M. Glynn pronounced Kenny Der and Darrell R. Kifer not guilty of first-degree murder seconds after attorneys finished their closing arguments.

McCormick Elementary School Principal Kevin M. Lindsey, who was accused of sexually assaulting two former pupils, was driving to the bank yesterday morning to take out a loan for his legal defense when his cell phone rang. It was his lawyer, calling to say the charges against him had been dropped. For the 50-year-old Sparks resident and father of three, the news was bittersweet. He is relieved but also incredulous, wanting to know why he was arrested at all. "Why did they put me through all that?"

As authorities in Arizona investigated a potentially new piece of the deadly cross-country puzzle left by the Washington-area snipers, a lawyer for one of the suspects said yesterday that the U.S. government has alleged a "crackpot extortion scheme" as a way to force the impending serial killings trial into federal court. Police in Tucson, Ariz., were re-examining the March 19 killing of a food salesman shot while practicing chip shots at a local golf course. FBI officials notified Tucson authorities that John Allen Muhammad, 41, and Lee Boyd Malvo, 17, were in the area at the time, visiting Muhammad's sister.

Punishing doctors is the wrong way to reduce mistakes The Sun's editorial "Rx for lawmakers: Tighten medical oversight" (March 19) urged the General Assembly to pass legislation that would lower the burden of proof in disciplinary actions against physicians and reduce the role of MedChi, the Maryland State Medical Society, which administers the peer review of physicians in the disciplinary process. On behalf of the two-thirds of all practicing Maryland physicians who are its members, MedChi is seeking to modify the flawed legislation aimed at making it easier to prosecute physicians.