Court

MOSCOW -- The Moscow City Court has ruled against Vil Mirzayanov, the chemist who first blew the whistle on Russia's secret chemical weapons program, in his attempts to collect damages from the Russian prosecutor's office and from the top-secret lab where he once worked.The court's ruling on Friday overturned a lower court decision that had awarded Dr. Mirzayanov a 30 million-ruble compensation (worth $15,000) for wrongful prosecution.The case was sent back to the lower court for reconsideration -- on the condition that a different judge hear the testimony.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court sent a clear message yesterday that it is not about to launch a wholesale constitutional attack on Congress' power to deal with crime -- even crime that has only a local connection.Five days ago, the court sent a wave of anxiety through Congress and the White House by striking down a federal ban on guns near schools. By a 5-4 vote, the court said that carrying a gun in a school zone was a crime too local for Congress to reach. The justices seemed to put Congress on notice to stick to crime with a clearly national impact.

Maryland's highest court has dismissed charges against a man arrested for loitering and drug violations in a "drug-free zone" in Baltimore but delayed a decision on whether the city's zones are constitutional.The Maryland Court of Appeals' decision on Wednesday came two days after the high court upheld a separate state law setting up drug-free zones within 1,000 feet of schools in Maryland.Baltimore's ordinance provides for misdemeanor penalties against anyone loitering to sell narcotics in areas designated as drug-free zones.

A flood of drug cases combined with tight budget restraints threatens to cripple Baltimore's court system, says the administrative judge of the city Circuit Court.Judge Joseph H.H. Kaplan warns that, in order to survive under the city's proposed $6.3 million budget appropriation, the court would have to stop paying jurors and eliminate its community services division, eliminate juvenile court masters or get rid of HTC the court's medical services division.Kaplan also said yesterday that the court system would not have the estimated $78,000 needed for staff support for a newly created judgeship to handle felony cases.

There was order in Howard County District Court yesterday morning despite a bomb threat that cleared the Ellicott City building for about an hour and a half.A male caller reached the court's criminal clerk division about 9 a.m. and warned that there was a bomb in the building police said.The building was evacuated, and dogs from the sheriff and the Baltimore County police searched the building. They found no explosives, and the building was reopened about 10: 30 a.m."We take every bomb threat seriously, but it appears that this was a hoax, and that's how we have to look at it," said police spokesman Steven Keller.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that employers cannot meet their financing obligations to employee pension plans by selling or transferring real property to the plans.In an 8-1 decision, the court overturned a ruling by a federal appeals court in New Orleans that federal pension regulators had viewed as opening a loophole in the rules governing defined-benefit plans.Under these plans, employees earn the right to a particular level of retirement benefits, usually based on pay and length of service, with the employer required to maintain the plan at an adequate fund level.

WASHINGTON -- Clarence Thomas became a full-fledged justice of the Supreme Court yesterday in an unannounced, private oath-taking ceremony that he had requested personally just hours before.Rather than waiting another eight days for a public ceremony that would follow the tradition of the past 50 years, Justice Thomas gained the full powers of a justice when -- with no advance public notice -- he took the judicial oath required by law at 12:05 p.m. yesterday.The court had planned a traditional oath-taking ceremony Nov. 1 and will go ahead with that ceremony, merely repeating the oath in a ritual that now will have no formal legal meaning.

Maryland's court clerks and registers of wills will receive 25 percent pay raises for the next four-year term, the state Board of Public Works decided today.The pay increases will bring salaries for court clerks now earning $45,000 annually to the highest amount allowed under law, $56,250. Those earning $40,000 -- the lowest amount -- will see their salaries rise to $50,000.Salaries for registers of wills will climb from a current top of $45,000 to $56,250, and from a low of $37,500 to $46,875.

ANNAPOLIS -- On a warm June night two years ago, a Galesville woman slowly roused from sleep to what she thought were the caresses of her boyfriend only to find it was her next-door neighbor who had wandered through her unlocked door.The neighbor, Tony Wade Irvine, was convicted in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court of burglary, attempted rape and a fourth-degree sexual offense and sentenced to 15 years in prison.The trial included testimony from another neighbor who said he had done the same thing to her 15 months earlier, and yesterday the Court of Special Appeals overturned the conviction on grounds that she should never have been allowed on the witness stand.

WASHINGTON -- With a combination of power and solidarity seldom seen on the modern Supreme Court, the five most conservative justices swept through the just-ended term, leaving their wake a major overhaul of the nation's law.In nine months of activity rivaling the conservative intensity shown since January by the Republican-led Congress just across the street, the five justices who held voting control at the court chose to exercise it often, freely and...