Court Of Special

Baltimore County police who arrested a suspected drug dealer at a car wash one night had been tipped off on where he had been hiding crack cocaine: between the cheeks of his buttocks. Police searched. And there it was. But the circumstances of that Sept. 29, 2000, search, done in a secluded area with other officers and the suspect's friend present, have come into question. For the first time, Maryland's highest court is being asked to rule when the search of a private body area need not be so private - and whether this search was private enough.

Baltimore: federal court Olympian denied bail in abduction Canadian Olympic gold medalist Myriam Bedard must remain in jail as she waits for Canadian authorities to bring her home to face charges of parental child abduction and violation of a custody order, a U.S. federal judge said yesterday. Bedard, 37, was arrested a week ago in Maryland and is being held on a warrant for being an international fugitive. She allegedly violated a child custody order by bringing her 12-year-old daughter to the United States.

Maryland's second-highest court threw out a half-million-dollar civil judgment yesterday against two Baltimore police officers who were held liable in the 2000 in-custody death of a 46-year-old man in an incident that sparked protests outside City Hall. The Court of Special Appeals ruled that the family of the dead man, Joseph Wilbon, did not notify city officials that they intended to sue within the 180 days required by law. The judges said a Circuit Court judge erred by granting an exception allowing the suit to go forward.

A West Virginia woman sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing a teenage romantic rival and her infant daughter lost an appeal yesterday to Maryland's second-highest court. The Court of Special Appeals upheld the police search and seizure of a blood-spattered minivan that Sonya Daniels was found driving in Martinsburg, W.Va., hours after Deanne Prichard, 16, and 5-week-old Makayla Frost were shot Oct. 19, 2002, outside Prichard's Walkersville home. Lawyers from the state Office of the Public Defender had argued that Martinsburg police stopped the minivan, owned by Daniels' father, without probable cause.

The state Court of Special Appeals yesterday upheld a Howard County judge's decision that a 33-year-old Columbia man found guilty of second-degree murder and child abuse in the beating death of his 2-year-old stepson in 2003 is not entitled to a new trial though a non-U.S. citizen was on the jury that convicted him. Marcus Dannon Owens, now 35, was convicted in June 2004 in the death of his stepson at their Columbia home. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison. Shortly after his conviction, Owens' attorneys asked for a new trial because one juror was not a U.S. citizen.

A citizens referendum challenging scores of rezoning cases has suffered a major, and perhaps fatal, setback now that Maryland's second-highest court has invalidated the ballot measure on grounds that it gave residents too little information about what the measure would do. The decision, by a three-judge panel of the state Court of Special Appeals, will stand without a successful last-minute appeal to the Court of Appeals, Maryland's highest court....

Tamar's Children is back - somewhat - for now. The popular but troubled alternative-to-prison program for new mothers and their babies won an unexpected reprieve when the Court of Special Appeals reversed an earlier decision siding with the state in its efforts to close the program this month. St. Ambrose convent in Northwest Baltimore, where the program has been housed for most of its three years, reopened its doors yesterday evening to two of the four women who had not completed the inpatient part of Tamar's Children.

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.

Four women and their babies -- the last participants in an alternative-to-prison program called Tamar's Children -- will likely be forced to leave their residential treatment center tomorrow because of a court decision yesterday. The Court of Special Appeals granted an emergency motion by the state Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services to temporarily stop a Baltimore circuit judge's order last week to keep Tamar's Children operating until July. "This could not have been handled worse," said Irene Smith, a lawyer for the Maryland Disability Law Center, which represents the mothers in Tamar's Children.

Mining company fined $50,000 by Md. The Maryland Department of the Environment ordered Buffalo Coal Co. Inc. yesterday to pay a $50,000 fine and take immediate action to abate pollution of a stream in Allegany County near the company's Phillips surface mine near Lonaconing. The agency said Buffalo has violated its pollution permit by discharging waste that exceeds the limits for acidity, manganese and total suspended solids. The company also has ceased proper operation and maintenance of a wastewater treatment system at the site, causing untreated acid mine drainage to enter Jackson Run, a tributary of Georges Creek, state regulators alleged.