Dontay

John Deros can't even go to the doctor for a routine physical without being asked, "How can you do that?"As in: How can you defend Dontay Carter?To Mr. Deros, a nine-year veteran of the public defender's office who is no fan of the bright spotlight that has been aimed on the Carter case, representing a convicted murderer such as Dontay Carter is no different than representing any other defendant. In his mind it's his job. An honorable one at that."Really," he said yesterday while preparing documents to be submitted as evidence when Carter's latest kidnapping trial resumes, "a case is a case, in my view."

Is Dontay Carter a murdering, lying "snake," as the prosecution suggested, or was he framed by police, as his lawyer argued?That question now rests with a Baltimore jury.The jury, which deliberated for five hours yesterday without reaching a verdict, was to return this morning to consider the East Baltimore teen-ager's fate. Carter, 19, is charged with first-degree murder and kidnapping in the Feb. 11 beating death of Vitalis V. Pilius.During yesterday's closing arguments, prosecutors said Carter was stripped of his cloak of presumed innocence during the four-week trial.

TO THE SURPRISE of no one, one of the victims kidnapped by Dontay Carter last year has filed a lawsuit against the owners LTC of the garage where the abduction took place and against the garage's private security firm.Oh, what's that? You say it was a surprise to you, Reader? It shouldn't have been. You haven't been paying attention.Crime-related "premises liability" suits are a hot ticket in the law. The number filed in the nation doubled in the last five years.Profitably for some. For example, recently the Delaware Supreme Court upheld a $600,000 verdict in a case involving a Dover restaurant whose practice was to have busboys escort waitresses to their cars in the establishment's parking lot after work.

For yet another day, Dontay Carter, a kid from East Baltimore, had obsessed a city.Neighbors warned each other to beware. Citizens phoned City Hall and the State House. Listeners called radio talk shows to shout about a 19-year-old killer who had disappeared into Baltimore's streets.Dontay Carter now symbolized more than urban crime. He was a metaphor for a system that that seemed out of control.For some, Carter's escape caused very specific concern:Witnesses who had testified in his first trial worried that Carter would come looking for them.

At worst, Transportation Secretary O. James Lighthizer's department may have bent the law when it awarded a $35,000 contract to the wife of his friend without competitive bidding. At best, Mr. Lighthizer reinforced his image as a politician with a penchant for cronyism.The former Anne Arundel County executive has been good to his friends since his appointment as MDOT secretary two years ago, hiring seven former county government colleagues.Now, he faces an ethics investigation for granting a no-bid contract to a firm owned by the wife of Francis J. "Zeke" Zylwitis, his former Anne Arundel criminal justice and corrections aide.

One day after Vitalis V. Pilius was last seen alive, Dontay Carter told a friend that he had abducted and beat a man and dumped the body in a basement, according to testimony yesterday in the East Baltimore teen-ager's murder trial.The friend, a 16-year-old boy, said Carter made the claim Feb. 12 in a room at the Marriott Inner Harbor hotel. "He said they took the man, took the body around Mura and Chester, and he forced the man in an old house and he hit the man over the head with a pipe.

A multimillion-dollar computer system that will enable Motor Vehicle Administration employees to check pictures and fingerprints of license applicants was being proposed today by the state transportation secretary as a means of reducing fraud.The new technology under consideration by Secretary O. James Lighthizer is aimed at stopping the issuance of bogus driver's licenses -- a problem that came to light nearly three weeks ago when an 18-year-old black murder suspect obtained a license at the Mondawmin MVA office in the name of the 37-year-old white victim.

Martin Parker testified that he had been bored, sitting on a bench waiting for his friends Dontay Carter and Clarence Woodward to return from the parking garage at the Harbor Park Cinema. Carter, who didn't own a car, then pulled up in a station wagon with Mr. Woodward and another man in the back seat, Mr. Parker recalled.Taking the stand yesterday in the eighth day of Carter's murder trial in Baltimore Circuit Court, Mr. Parker said he got into the car and noticed the man was covered by a coat.

Before being sentenced yesterday to life in prison with no chance for parole -- plus another life term plus another 190 years -- a defiant Dontay Carter turned to widow Aldona Pilius to offer his views on race relations and crime in the city."

Yesterday the children of Vitalis V. Pilius stayed home from school. The man found guilty of killing Pilius was moved to a new cell, where prison officers could keep a steady eye on him. Heaven forbid, he should attempt to hurt himself. The widow of Vitalis Pilius planned a picnic.Life has to go on, for the Pilius family and even for Dontay Carter. Pilius' widow, Aldona, wanted to draw her children around her after a nine-month ordeal. The captors of the 19-year-old Carter wanted to put him into the general prison population and hope for the best.