Chief Judge

The right to a fair trial is such a fundamental freedom in this country that the charges leveled against the U.S. Coast Guard's administrative court system merit serious attention, at the very least. The single most damning piece of evidence is the sworn statement made by a retired Coast Guard judge who says she was told to always rule in the government's favor. Imagine a U.S. District Court adjudicating civil cases under the same guidelines. Impeachment proceedings couldn't be arranged fast enough.

Courts Krauser named to lead appeals courts Judge Peter B. Krauser, a seven-year member of the Court of Special Appeals and a former federal prosecutor, will take over as chief judge of the state's second-highest court, Gov. Martin O'Malley announced yesterday. Krauser will replace Chief Judge John G. Murphy, whom O'Malley appointed this week to the Court of Appeals, Maryland's highest court. A graduate of Northwestern University and the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, Krauser will be responsible for assigning cases, ruling on motions for injunctions pending appeal and other tasks.

The turmoil in Baltimore's criminal justice system has prompted the city's top judge to decide to resign his post after being effectively stripped of his power to lead reform of the courts.Judge Joseph H. H. Kaplan said in an interview that he plans to announce his resignation in September -- his 15th anniversary as administrative judge -- and return to the bench as a trial judge early next year.Kaplan, 62, said he believes that Chief Judge Robert M. Bell of the Maryland Court of Appeals has wanted his ouster for the past two years.

Maryland's Court of Appeals yesterday overturned a lower court's ruling that a convicted sex offender was denied a "speedy trial" under state law because his case was delayed nine times in Baltimore Circuit Court over 16 months.The opinion issued by the state's highest court gives Baltimore judges and prosecutors some breathing room after an embarrassing courthouse crisis that shook public confidence in the justice system.The unanimous opinion, written by Chief Judge Robert M. Bell, said the sex crime conviction against James T. Brown Jr. should not have been dismissed under state law. The ruling calls into question the status of other cases recently dismissed because the suspects waited far beyond the state's 180-day "speedy trial" deadline for their trials to begin.

FOR the first quarter-century of its existence, Maryland's District Court system and Robert F. Sweeney were synonymous. He gave birth to it, nurtured it and watched it grow into a highly competent and efficient judiciary handling 2.4 million cases annually with 99 judges, 1,300 employees, 35 courthouses and a budget of $90 million.It is a professional and well-run operation, thanks to Mr. Sweeney, who was chief judge of the District Court from its inception in 1971 until his retirement in 1996.

Whenever the chief judge says nothing is broken, there is a reluctance to fix it. So he had better be right.Chicken biz is not chicken feed. It is run by chicken hawks, and is not for the chicken-hearted.Bribery has at last been accorded its deserved recognition as an Olympic sport.Juanita Broaddrick might as well write a book. Everyone else is.Pub Date: 3/03/99

NOT CONTENT with stop-gap measures, the Maryland General Assembly wants to revamp Baltimore's malfunctioning criminal-justice system. Legislators have frozen $17.8 million until they are satisfied that comprehensive reform is under way. To free that money, Court of Appeals Chief Judge Robert M. Bell must submit by Oct. 1 a blueprint to overhaul the city's problematic prosecution and court practices."

Chief Judge Robert M. Bell told the General Assembly yesterday that more judges are not the cure for the backlog of delayed cases in Baltimore's Circuit Court.Delivering his State of the Judiciary address to a joint session of the Senate and House of Delegates, Bell warned legislators that the city's public defender and state's attorney's office will need more lawyers to handle an increased criminal caseload.Referring to newspaper accounts of repeated trial delays leading to dismissals of serious criminal cases, Bell said, "Those stories have not furthered our quest to inspire the public's confidence in the judiciary."

After years of steadfast resistance, Maryland's two top judges agreed yesterday to assign a judge to Baltimore's jail, defusing a political battle with state lawmakers who threatened to cut the court's funding.The surprise turnabout comes as the judiciary comes under increasing scrutiny by lawmakers because Baltimore's courts are so backlogged that serious criminal charges, even murder, have been dismissed.The move follows a report last week by public safety officials which determined that $21 million could be saved, and hundreds of cases could be handled, if a full-time judge with jurisdiction over felony and misdemeanor cases staffed a jail-house courtroom that has sat mostly empty for two years.

IN RESPONSE to a mandate by the Maryland General Assembly, Court of Appeals Chief Judge Robert M. Bell has submitted a 39-page report on revamping Baltimore's malfunctioning criminal-justice system.It describes problems succinctly. But it fails to spell out timetables for reform or who is responsible for implementing them."It's not a bad discussion piece," says Montgomery County Del. Peter Franchot, who has scheduled a public safety subcommittee hearing Oct. 19 to discuss the report. "But it needs goals, time lines, actions to be taken so that we on the outside can hold the system accountable."

State officials began looking yesterday into ways to tighten oversight of hospitals' charity care and debt- collection practices, ranging from new legislation to regulate hospital policies to new court procedures to help people sued over unpaid hospital bills. Del. Peter A. Hammen, chairman of the House Health and Government Operations Committee, said he is drafting legislation to impose a statewide standard for providing free or reduced cost care to patients. These policies now vary widely among the state's 46 nonprofit hospitals, and the industry has resisted efforts to make them uniform.

The state's chief judge is working on a way to ensure that poor defendants have lawyers now that budget cuts have forced the Maryland Office of the Public Defender to stop paying private attorneys to represent clients that the office can't. The public defender's office frequently calls on private counsel because it can't represent more than one defendant in a criminal case or a jailhouse informant testifying against one of its clients. Last year, more than 2,700 indigent defendants in Baltimore were represented by private attorneys under those circumstances, according to the public defender's office.

Election judges at a predominantly black precinct in Annapolis mistakenly required voters to fill out personal information- including party identification and address - during the first several hours of primary voting Tuesday, Anne Arundel County's top election official said yesterday. Joseph A. Torre III said that the chief judge at Mills-Parole Elementary School asked voters to fill out "contingency voter authority cards" between 7 a.m. and 1 p.m. Those forms are supposed to be used only if the electronic poll books are unusable, Torre said.

Courts Krauser named to lead appeals courts Judge Peter B. Krauser, a seven-year member of the Court of Special Appeals and a former federal prosecutor, will take over as chief judge of the state's second-highest court, Gov. Martin O'Malley announced yesterday. Krauser will replace Chief Judge John G. Murphy, whom O'Malley appointed this week to the Court of Appeals, Maryland's highest court. A graduate of Northwestern University and the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, Krauser will be responsible for assigning cases, ruling on motions for injunctions pending appeal and other tasks.

Gov. Martin O'Malley nominated appellate Judge Joseph F. Murphy Jr. to Maryland's Court of Appeals yesterday, using his first opportunity to make over the state's highest court by choosing a jurist known for his depth of experience and moderate temperament. Murphy, chief judge of the state's second-highest court, would fill the vacancy created by the mandatory retirement of Judge Alan M. Wilner, who left the bench this year. Age limits on the court will give O'Malley two more opportunities to fill vacancies on the seven-member Court of Appeals in the coming months.

JOHN GARRETT PENN, 75 Former federal judge U.S. District Judge John Garrett Penn, the former chief judge of the federal court in Washington, died Sunday in Washington after a lengthy illness. President Jimmy Carter appointed Judge Penn to the federal bench in 1979. He served as chief judge from 1992 to 1997 and took a reduced caseload as a senior judge in 1998. Judge Penn served in the Army's Judge Advocate General's Corps from 1958 to 1961. He joined the Justice Department in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy and served in various positions there until 1970, when President Richard M. Nixon appointed him to the District of Columbia Superior Court bench.

The right to a fair trial is such a fundamental freedom in this country that the charges leveled against the U.S. Coast Guard's administrative court system merit serious attention, at the very least. The single most damning piece of evidence is the sworn statement made by a retired Coast Guard judge who says she was told to always rule in the government's favor. Imagine a U.S. District Court adjudicating civil cases under the same guidelines. Impeachment proceedings couldn't be arranged fast enough.

By the time Judge Joseph P. McCurdy stepped off the bench and packed up his robe Thursday, the Baltimore Circuit Court had shed 64 years of experience in less than two months. McCurdy, a judge for 15 years, was the third of three prominent senior city judges to retire this fall. Chief Judge Joseph H.H. Kaplan left Oct. 1, taking with him nearly 29 years, and Chief Judge Clifton T. Gordy left Nov. 7 with 21 years. By state law, judges must retire at age 70. These three retired earlier.

Nearly 2 million Marylanders are expected to go to the polls today - but with a record number of requests for absentee ballots, it's anyone's guess when the outcome of two down-to-the-wire statewide contests will be known. More than 191,000 people have requested absentee ballots, which could determine close races for U.S. Senate and governor but which won't begin to be counted until Thursday morning. The tallying of votes during the next 10 days is expected to be a crucial test of the state's electronic voting equipment and the politicians and election managers who promoted it. Today's election comes eight weeks after a chaotic primary, in which electronic check-in equipment malfunctioned and hundreds of precincts in Montgomery County and Baltimore failed to open on time when equipment was not delivered and election judges failed to show up. It also will put Maryland in the national spotlight as voters across the country grapple with new, federally required electronic equipment.

With Baltimore scrambling to make sure next week's voting goes smoothly, city elections officials expressed concern yesterday about reports that a caller was contacting poll workers and changing their Election Day assignments. State elections chief Linda H. Lamone contacted the FBI yesterday after Baltimore officials reported that someone had called at least 10 poll workers and falsely told them that their precinct assignments had been switched. Baltimore Board of Elections Chairman Armstead B. Crawley Jones Sr. said that poll workers are receiving legitimate calls this week from employees at the University of Baltimore's Schaefer Center, reminding election judges where to go and what time to arrive.