Court Hearing

WASHINGTON - For the first time in history, Americans will be able to listen to a full Supreme Court hearing on the day it happens - perhaps within an hour after it is over. The justices voted yesterday to release an audiotape "as soon as possible" after Friday's question-and-answer session in the Florida election case. That broke with the court's long-standing resistance to prompt public access to the sound of its hearings. The arrangement is not a live broadcast, but court aides said the release won't be long after the estimated 11:30 a.m. finish to the proceeding.

A lawyer for John Joseph Merzbacher, a former Catholic school teacher imprisoned for raping a student decades ago, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case after a federal appeals court rejected an earlier argument that he should be set free. In a 21-page petition, Merzbacher's attorney H. Mark Stichel asks the high court to resolve several legal questions, including whether a defendant's claim that he would have taken a plea deal if offered, even while proclaiming his innocence, demonstrates a "reasonable probability" that he would have followed through.

Maryland's new legislative map might look odd, but there is a logic behind the squiggles and protrusions that protects voting strength in Baltimore and bolsters minority voices statewide, one of the redistricting plan's chief architects argued in court yesterday. Secretary of State John T. Willis, a lawyer, historian and ally of Gov. Parris N. Glendening, defended the most notable idiosyncrasies in the governor's redistricting plan during the second day of a court hearing in Annapolis.

In a Maryland case that's garnered the attention of the other 49 states, the federal Department of Justice and the national science community, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday over whether to restrict police in collecting DNA to solve crimes. The justices will rule on a police practice common in Maryland: taking genetic information from individuals arrested — but not convicted — to link them to unsolved crimes. In the past, the court has acknowledged the power of DNA but has not allowed it to run afoul of fundamental American rights such as the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches.

A shortage of clerks at the county's Circuit Court office has created a backlog of paperwork. The result? Court files are incomplete, routine services are delayed and defendants sit in jail longer than usual, waiting for bond hearing dates.Since January 1991, the clerk'soffice has lost seven employees. One more will depart at the end of the month, leaving a staff of 27. The vacant positions have remained unfilled because of state hiring freezes and budget cuts.Meanwhile, caseloads have increased.

WASHINGTON - In a grand Greek revival-style building in downtown Tallahassee, featuring a rotunda of eight columns of Maryland Verde antique marble surrounding a seal with a motto translated as "Soon enough if done rightly," the Florida Supreme Court will meet today in emergency session. A hearing, due to be televised nationally, could lead to a decision settling the presidential election. The Sun's Lyle Denniston explores the event. What will happen today? Beginning at 2 p.m., the court's seven justices will hear at least eight lawyers argue the pending cases.

A 12-year-old Baltimore girl accused in the beating of a 4-year old boy had been given significant caretaker responsibilities, police said yesterday. Besides babysitting the boy, she was also watching a baby when the beating occurred, according to the victim's grandmother. The girl, whose name is being withheld by The Sun because of her age, appeared at a juvenile court hearing yesterday where she was ordered to remain in custody until her Dec. 8 trial. The case has stunned police and prosecutors because of the ages of the victim and the accused, and because the suspect is a girl.

SANTA ANA, Calif. -- All they want is to go home.They have said so, over and over, for 10 months. They have told the psychiatrists, the lawyers, the judges and the caretakers who have come in and out of their lives like shadows.But Dr. Forrest Hayden Howard, 85, a retired obstetrician and gynecologist, is not going home. Not now, anyway. And neither is his wife, Catherine Marie Howard, 70, a retired nurse.Since August, their lives have been in the hands of a court-appointed conservator, who intervened after an Orange County social worker reported that the Howards' house was "dirty and disheveled" and their health neglected.

FORT BRAGG, N.C. - The first public court hearing for Pfc. Lynndie R. England was postponed yesterday until mid-July, signaling possible plea negotiations that could allow the young woman who became one of the most visible faces in the Iraqi prison abuse scandal to avoid a military trial. Asked in a brief phone interview yesterday whether she was involved in plea talks, an attorney for England said: "Yes, I have been." But the Colorado-based lawyer, Rose Mary Zapor, quickly amended her remarks to say she would not comment.

A federal judge has granted the request of a death row inmate who sought to videotape John Thanos' execution as possible evidence that Maryland's gas chamber poses cruel and unusual punishment.But the issue will become moot if legislation authorizing lethal injection as a second form of execution is signed into law, as expected later this week.The written order, signed by U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis, affirms an earlier oral ruling that was contingent on his first-hand inspection of the gas chamber.

A judge on Wednesday lifted a ban prohibiting political activist Kim A. Trueheart from entering City Hall — and she promptly returned to the building, where she attended the mayor's news conference. At a District Court hearing Wednesday morning, Trueheart, 55, of Baltimore rejected a deal that would have put her misdemeanor trespassing and disorderly conduct charges on an inactive docket. Trueheart said she did nothing wrong and wanted the opportunity to be cleared of wrongdoing.

Maryland's highest court upheld Gov. Martin O'Malley's new legislative redistricting map on Friday morning. The Court of Appeals issued an order, but no opinion, denying the claims in three challenges. The order comes only two days after the challenges were argued in court. The order said the judges found the plan, which will take effect with the 2014 elections, passed constitutional muster. The new map shifts the districts of Baltimore County Democratic Sens. James Brochin – whose new district is majority Republican – and Delores Kelley, both of whom objected to the plan.

The Exxon Mobil Corp. asked Maryland's highest court Monday to erase most of the more than $1.5 billion awarded in two lawsuits over a large gasoline spill that Jacksonville residents claimed polluted their well water, left them fearful of getting cancer and made their property worthless. The oil giant's attorneys asked that new trials be held only on property value issues. That would leave the corporation and homeowners to argue over which homeowners to compensate for losses in property value.

On a roll in recent years, a gun-rights group pressed its advantage in a federal appeals court Wednesday, seeking to extend Second Amendment rights through a challenge to Maryland's handgun permit laws. "We're not challenging the constitutionality of having a licensing system," Alan Gura, a lawyer for the Second Amendment Foundation, told the three-judge panel in a case involving a Baltimore County man's permit renewal. Rather, he argued that Maryland unnecessarily restricts the right to carry firearms.

— In a challenge to the Obama administration's efforts to jump-start the lagging restoration of the Chesapeake Bay, lawyers for farmers and homebuilders argued in federal court here Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency overstepped its legal authority and relied on a flawed computer model in setting a pollution "diet" for the ailing estuary. Lawyers for the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Association of Home Builders, poultry and pork producers, and other farming groups argued that states in the Chesapeake watershed, not the federal government, should be in charge of deciding how and where to reduce pollution fouling the bay. They also complained that the far-reaching "diet" was rushed into place despite gaps and errors and without giving the public enough time to review and comment on it. "It will affect urban growth; it affects how agriculture land will be used," said Richard E. Schwartz, one of the industry groups' lawyers.

Calling DNA collection from those arrested for certain felonies a "valuable tool for investigating unsolved crimes," Chief Justice John G. Roberts on Monday said there was a "fair prospect" that the nation's high court would overturn a Maryland ruling striking down the practice as unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court has not yet agreed to take on the issue, but statements made by Roberts in a four-page opinion signaled that was likely. The Maryland attorney general's office plans to file a petition asking for the court's review by mid-August.

Taking up the cause of public access to government information, Baltimore officials filed a lawsuit yesterday against the state prison system, demanding an uncensored version of a consultant's report about problems at the Central Booking and Intake Center. The city solicitor's office filed the unusual challenge in Circuit Court in Baltimore, citing the state's Public Information Act. The city argues that state prison officials, who operate the center, have "improperly and unlawfully withheld a public document by redacting so much of a report as to be tantamount to withholding it."

NEW YORK -- Delta Air Lines yesterday backed out of its deal to bankroll Pan American World Airways, leaving the historic but battered airline hoping for a last-ditch miracle to keep it alive.Pan Am will operate its routes today while its creditors hunt for a savior to provide $15 million to keep the airline flying the rest of this week. If no buyer steps forward today, the 64-year-old airline could shut down as early as tonight.Trans World Airlines Chairman Carl C. Icahn is negotiating with the creditors.

The state's highest court will hear arguments over whether the Anne Arundel County Council was within its rights to oust former Councilman Daryl D. Jones when he was imprisoned for failing to file a tax return. Jones' lawyer, Linda M. Schuett , said Saturday that the Maryland Court of Appeals' decision to hear the case speaks to the importance of the issues involved. "The fact that they have decided to take this case on and hear arguments means they believe the case is an important one," she said.

Maryland's top court agreed Wednesday to hear appeals of two multimillion verdicts affecting hundreds of Jacksonville-area residents who sued ExxonMobil Corp. over 2006 underground gasoline leak. The Court of Appeals is expected to hear arguments in October in the two cases. Last year, a Baltimore County jury returned a $1.5 billion verdict against the oil giant. ExxonMobil appealed, and attorneys for residents asked the top court to bypass the intermediate appeals court. In March, in the second case, the state's second-highest court rejected much of a $147 million verdict, and both ExxonMobil and the residents appealed.