Court Of Special

A Gamber couple who fought to gain a small strip of land from the High Ridge homeowners association to develop farmland has asked the Maryland Court of Special Appeals to throw out a decision by the Carroll County Commissioners that returned the land to the association.Two weeks ago, the commissioners voted 2-1 to overturn a previous board of commissioners that condemned the 50-foot-by-15-foot parcel in 1992 that belonged to the High Ridge Association.The previous commissioners had ruled that Aaron E. and Ruth E. Green should be allowed to extend High Ridge Drive to build houses.

Richard P. Gilbert, chief judge of the Maryland Court of Special Appeals from 1976 until his retirement last November, died early yesterday at the home of friends in White Hall. He had been ill with leukemia.A memorial service for Judge Gilbert, who was 67 and lived in Annapolis, will be held at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, Charles Street and Melrose Avenue.Recently, he was the recipient of the Heeney Award of the criminal section of the Maryland State Bar Association.

When he announced his retirement from Maryland's highest court in 1979, Judge Charles E. Orth Jr. said he wanted "time to relax and to do some things I want."But work remained the thing he most wanted to do, and he continued to hear cases from the bench and write legal opinions that shaped Maryland law until he died of heart failure Wednesday at Ferry Farm, his home near Annapolis. He was 80.Judge Orth was one of the five original members of the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, created in 1967 as an intermediate appellate court.

The O'Malley administration has joined the chorus calling upon Maryland's highest court to review a decision by the Court of Special Appeals that would render all but meaningless the extensive work local governments and citizens contribute to shaping comprehensive development plans. The state's request to file a supporting motion on behalf of the citizens group appealing the ruling, which was announced last week by state Planning Secretary Richard E. Hall, reflected both short-term and long-term concerns horrifying enough to keep an anti-sprawl advocate up all night.

Five judges and a Baltimore civil rights lawyer have asked to be considered for the soon-to-be vacant seat on the Maryland Court of Appeals.The list of applicants for the state's highest court includes Alan M. Wilner, chief judge of the Court of Special Appeals, and Barbara Kerr Howe, administrative judge of the Baltimore County Circuit Court. Howe was the only woman to apply for the seat.Also applying were Court of Special Appeals Judges James R. Eyler and Joseph F. Murphy Jr. and Baltimore County Circuit Judge Lawrence R. Daniels.

Retired Court of Special Appeals Judge Ridgely P. Melvin Jr., who was on the judicial panel that recommended the disbarment of former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, died Saturday of heart failure at his Annapolis home. He was 82.In November 1974, Gov. Marvin Mandel elevated Judge Melvin from Anne Arundel County Circuit Court to the Court of Special Appeals, the state court that is second to the Court of Appeals in legal authority in Maryland.Colleagues described Judge Melvin as a moderate.

A state appeals court affirmed yesterday a judge's decision to reduce a $9 million jury award to a Baltimore police officer who sued for being wrongly accused of stealing from the Caldor Inc. store where he worked as a teen-ager in 1988.The Court of Special Appeals ruled that Baltimore Circuit Judge John N. Prevas acted properly in 1994 when he reduced to $350,000 the punitive damages awarded to Officer Samuel D. Bowden.Bowden sued Caldor a year after he was accused by store security of stealing merchandise and cash.

Gov. William Donald Schaefer announced three appointmentsto Maryland appellate courts yesterday, including a highly regarded black jurist named to fill a vacancy on the state's highest court.Robert M. Bell, a Court of Special Appeals judge, will move up to the Court of Appeals to replace Harry A. Cole, who retired in January. Judge Cole was the first black appointed to the position, in the 1970s.Diana J. Gibbon Motz, a former Maryland assistant attorney general, and Glenn T. Harrell Jr., an Upper Marlboro attorney and former state's attorney, were appointed to the Court of Special Appeals.

A man twice convicted of killing a woman in Charles Village 15 years ago -- only to have both verdicts overturned on appeal -- was again found guilty of first-degree murder yesterday by a jury in Baltimore Circuit Court. Jurors deliberated a few hours before convicting Mohammad Biglari of killing Barbara Halsey in her apartment in the 2800 block of N. Calvert St. in March 1991. Sentencing is set for June 15. Biglari and Halsey lived in the apartment building, and prosecutors said Biglari used electric tape and cable ties to bind her before shooting her three times and repeatedly stabbing her. Experts testified that the same type of tape and cable ties found at the crime scene match those found in Biglari's apartment.

The lawyer for Wesley Baker, whose execution was halted by Gov. Parris N. Glendening's death penalty moratorium, claims in a state appeals court case that the Harford County judge who sentenced Baker lost his judicial authority when he moved out of the county in 1986. Stuart Robinson, Baker's lawyer, says in papers filed with the Court of Special Appeals that Harford Circuit Judge Cypert O. Whitfill lost his judicial authority when he moved to a Cockeysville apartment for at least a year.