Cases

The suspension rate for Harford students is continuing its upward spiral, with 149 cases as of Nov. 18, a school supervisor said last week.There were 630 suspension cases last school year."

For years, when pressed for details about pending cases and interviews with clients, defense attorneys have steadfastly maintained: "I will not try my case in the news media." But in the past few months, several attorneys in the Baltimore area have done exactly that.When police accused an elementary school principal of drug dealing or when they charged a teacher with fondling a student, the defense attorneys quickly turned to newspapers and televised press conferences to fight the charges in the court of public opinion.

Orchid Cellmark, a Montgomery County-based laboratory that has analyzed DNA for such high-profile cases as the O.J. Simpson trial and the JonBenet Ramsey murder, has fired an analyst for allegedly falsifying test data - setting off a scramble by defense attorneys to review evidence in the affected cases. The incident mars an otherwise stellar reputation for Cellmark, a pioneer in the burgeoning field of solving crimes through the analysis of trace genetic material, known as deoxyribonucleic acid, left on evidence.

The road toward speedy justice in many minor cases in Baltimore's justice system has hit stumbling blocks, judges and other court officials said yesterday. At a meeting of an oversight committee steering reform of the system, officials painted a gloomy picture of the plan to dispose of as many as half of minor cases within 24 hours after arrest. Officials said legislators did not grant enough money to make the plan work. "It's going to have to be greatly scaled down," said Judge Keith E. Mathews, administrative judge of city district courts.

The strategy sounds almost illogical: Detectives in New Jersey are being urged to build criminal cases with as few witnesses as possible. Or, if feasible, with none at all. In cities struggling with gang-related crimes, such as Trenton and Newark, detectives said that even on those infrequent occasions when they have found witnesses who might be willing to testify, investigators were wary about pressuring them to appear in open court. That reluctance is based on a fear that the authorities might not be able to protect witnesses from retaliation.

A Baltimore Circuit Court judge cleared the way yesterday for what observers say will be the largest mass trial ever held in the United States -- the consolidation of approximately 9,000 asbestos-related personal injury cases that have been pending in courthouses throughout Maryland.The trial, scheduled for April 29, will decide issues common to those cases and will take anywhere from three to six months to complete.Similar consolidated mass trials in Texas and Colorado have handled as many as 3,000 plaintiffs at one time.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Oakland Police Department has reopened 203 rape cases, many involving prostitutes or women who abuse drugs, after admitting that the cases were dropped without even minimal investigation.The admission yesterday by the department that it had mishandled so many cases, including 37 in which the victim was never interviewed, followed the publication of several articles this week in the San Francisco Examiner."Candidly, we blew it," said Police Chief George Hart, who has promised immediate reforms, including the retraining of investigators and more stringent review of their work.

A Baltimore circuit judge ruled yesterday that attorneys handling tax-sale foreclosure cases in the city can charge only flat fees instead of billing by the hour, a move aimed at reducing the amount of money homeowners have to pay to keep their homes. The ruling by Evelyn Omega Cannon, the judge in charge of the Baltimore Circuit Court civil docket, capped a yearlong review that she began after realizing that many requests for fees and expense reimbursement in tax-sale cases were not documented.

No American serviceman has been executed since 1961. But in the past month, new cases in Iraq have led to charges against 12 American servicemen who could face the death penalty in connection with the killing of Iraqi civilians. Military officials caution against seeing the cases as part of any broader pattern, noting that the incidents in question are isolated and rare. But the new charges represent an extraordinary flurry in a conflict that has had relatively few serious criminal cases so far. As investigators complete their work, military officials say, the total of American servicemen charged with capital crimes in the new cases could grow substantially, perhaps exceeding the total of at least 16 other Marines and soldiers charged with murdering Iraqis throughout the first three years of the war. Some military officials and experts say the new crop of cases appears to arise from a confluence of two factors: an increasingly chaotic and violent war with no clear end in sight, and a newly vigilant attitude among U.S. commanders about civilian deaths.

Many Baltimoreans were outraged when a city jury recently acquitted Davon A. Neverdon in connection with the 1993 street robbery and slaying of Joel E. Lee, a Towson State University student.The verdict sparked outrage from the victim's Korean-born parents, who blamed racism for the "not guilty" verdict.Mr. Neverdon is black, and a predominantly black jury rejected the testimony of four eyewitnesses who claimed to have watched Mr. Neverdon shoot Mr. Lee. Two other witnesses also linked Mr. Neverdon to the slaying.