Highest Court

Forty years ago today, when African-Americans were referred to as "Negro" in newsprint and "black" or "colored" in conversation, a civil-rights champion from Baltimore was sworn in as the first nonwhite justice on the highest court in the land. "Thurgood Marshall, the first Negro to serve on the Supreme Court, took his seat today as the court convened for a new term," reported a front-page Associated Press story in The Evening Sun and other newspapers across the country. The moment was a key one in the nation's civil-rights timeline, alongside such events as Rosa Parks' defiance on a transit bus and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.-led march from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery, Ala. As the South still struggled with its Jim Crow past, and the nation as a whole grappled with racial, class and ideological strife, Marshall joined the court where he had won the landmark 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education case that ended segregation in public schools.

Ten months ago, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals overturned the child molestation conviction of James T. Brown Jr. because his trial had been delayed many times in Baltimore Circuit Court.The court's action brought to light problems in the city's court system that led to large-scale reforms, including a crackdown on trial delays and construction of courtrooms.Yesterday, the court reinstated Brown's conviction, ruling that his constitutional right to a speedy trial was not violated because any delay did not harm his defense.

The Baltimore state's attorney's office will try again to prosecute four men against whom murder charges were initially dismissed after their trials had been delayed for three years.Yesterday, all four were rearraigned on first-degree murder charges in Baltimore Circuit Court. The dismissal of their cases in January, which spurred massive reform in the justice system, was overturned by the state's highest court this summer.The new trial is scheduled for March 3.Deputy State's Attorney Haven H. Kodeck said prosecutors are pleased to have another chance to convict the four.

Retired Judge Harry A. Cole, the first black to serve on Maryland's highest court and the first elected to the state Senate, died yesterday at Church Hospital in Baltimore of complications from pneumonia. He was 78.Judge Cole made history in 1954 when he became the first black to win a state Senate seat and again in 1977 when he was the first black named to the Court of Appeals, where he served until his retirement in 1991.Among his most notable accomplishments during his 14-year tenure on the court were writing the unanimous opinion that upheld the right of the state to fund abortions for poor women and his lone dissent in a decision upholding Maryland's method of local funding of public schools.

WASHINGTON -- In a major defeat for the campaign to gain a right for homosexual couples to marry, the Hawaii Supreme Court has reinstated a law that allows a marriage license only to a man and a woman.Hawaii was one of two states where gay rights advocates had been hoping to establish same-sex marriage as a right under the state constitution. That effort ended with the state highest court's decision, issued late Thursday.The issue of same-sex marriage remains open in Vermont, where the state Supreme Court held a hearing on a similar test case nearly 13 months ago. That court has set no deadline for a final ruling.

The state's highest court decided this week that it will hear the sensitive case of whether Gov. Parris N. Glendening's telephone records should be made public, pulling the case from a lower appellate court.At issue is to what extent the governor's communications with people outside his office are confidential. The Washington Post, which has been seeking the records from six months in 1996, argues that the documents should be disclosed under the state Public Information Act. Glendening has said he believes executive privilege and the need for confidentiality exempt the records from public scrutiny.

The Court of Special Appeals upheld yesterday a Montgomery County judge's decision to return a toddler to his mother, even though she killed her baby daughter in 1992. The court also denied the adoption request of the woman who is still taking care of the boy.The ruling in the emotionally charged case -- if not appealed to the state's highest court -- clears the way for Latrena Pixley to have her 2-year-old son, Cornilous, returned to her at the end of summer.The case has created a storm of controversy over when -- and if -- a parent who is convicted of killing an infant can be considered rehabilitated and trustworthy with another child, and whether state laws favor biological parents too heavily.

LAST MONTH Maryland's second-highest court upheld a Montgomery County judge's decision to send a little boy back to the mother who killed his half-sister. The woman who has been taking care of 2-year-old Cornilous Pixley can't adopt him, the three-judge panel said, exhibiting the courts' longstanding and often excessive bias toward blood relationships.The Pixley case has rightly troubled many Marylanders and child welfare advocates, who know the presumption that a child is better off with a birth parent falls apart when that parent has committed a heinous crime against another child.

"Closed Chambers: The First Eyewitness Account of the Epic Struggles Inside the Supreme Court," by Edward Lazarus. Random House-Times Books. 518 pages. $27.50.Edward Lazarus has written a long, sometimes lively, sometimes tedious book based primarily upon a single, utterly preposterous premise: Faced with heavy legal controversy, no justice of the modern Supreme Court could or can be counted upon to act out of principle or high-minded motive.To believe that, one has to assume a venality in the temple of justice so complete that redemption would be impossible.

The Court of Special Appeals upheld yesterday a Montgomery County judge's decision to return a toddler to his mother, even though she killed her baby daughter in 1992. The court also denied the adoption request of the woman who is still taking care of the boy.The ruling in the emotionally charged case -- if not appealed to the state's highest court -- clears the way for Latrena Pixley to have her 2-year-old son, Cornilous, returned to her at the end of summer.The case has created a storm of controversy over when -- and if -- a parent who is convicted of killing an infant can be considered rehabilitated and trustworthy with another child, and whether state laws favor biological parents too heavily.

Maryland's second-highest court has thrown out appeals filed by former Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin P. Clark, the latest and the possibly fatal blow in his continuing legal battle to get his job back. City Solicitor George A. Nilson cheered the court's opinion, declaring that the case was "over." But Clark's attorney vowed to take the case back to the state's highest court, where he scored a victory last year. Clark sued the city in 2004, saying he was wrongly fired by then-Mayor Martin O'Malley amid allegations of domestic violence that were later determined to be unfounded.

Court says 2 Ehrlich aides must answer firing queries The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that two former state employees will have to answer questions posed by a special legislative committee that investigated whether former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. targeted longtime state employees for political firings. The committee issued its report two years ago on what were characterized as arbitrary and unfair personnel decisions by Ehrlich, a Republican, without answers to some questions from Gregory Maddalone and Craig Chesek.

Md.'s highest court is asked to hear tower case 1 After encountering a legal setback in July, the developer of a proposed 23-story mixed-use tower in downtown Columbia has asked the state's highest court to hear the case. WCI Communities Inc. requested that the Court of Appeals review a decision by the Court of Special Appeals reversing a string of technical victories for the firm. The Court of Special Appeals ordered the case's return to the Howard County Board of Appeals for a full hearing on the dispute's merits.

In a speech before more than 1,000 law students and attorneys at Baltimore's Lyric Opera House yesterday, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia set out to dispel the notion that his judicial philosophy always leads him to ultra-conservative opinions. He pointed to an instance where he agreed that flag burning was a form of protected and legal speech. Scalia said the morning after the court's opinion was announced, his "very conservative" wife began humming You're a Grand Old Flag over breakfast as a form of protest.

The state's highest court ruled yesterday that a man can be charged with rape if he ignores a woman's calls to stop - even if she had previously consented to sex. With this expansion of the legal definition of rape, Maryland joins seven other states whose courts have determined that a woman can revoke her consent after intercourse begins. "This goes to the heart of women's autonomy," said Lisae C. Jordan, legal director of the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault, which filed a brief in the matter.

Maryland's highest court overturned yesterday a Howard County man's conviction on identity theft charges, ruling that the state law is ambiguous and can't be used to prosecute someone who takes the identity of a fictitious person. The law prohibits someone from assuming the "identity of another" -- which is what police charged Kazeem Adeshina Ishola with doing in 2003 when they said he tried to open bank accounts under two fictitious names. But a majority of judges on the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that the law hadn't properly defined what "another" meant, and that state legislators hadn't explicitly banned the use of fake names in the statute.

The Maryland Court of Special Appeals rejected an effort yesterday by the former head of the Public Service Commission to recover attorneys' costs related to his successful legal battle against the legislature's attempt to remove him from his job. Kenneth D. Schisler, who resigned his $117,000-a-year position last January in the midst of a political fight with top General Assembly Democrats and Gov. Martin O'Malley, had sought to be reimbursed for the...

Gov. Martin O'Malley nominated appellate Judge Joseph F. Murphy Jr. to Maryland's Court of Appeals yesterday, using his first opportunity to make over the state's highest court by choosing a jurist known for his depth of experience and moderate temperament. Murphy, chief judge of the state's second-highest court, would fill the vacancy created by the mandatory retirement of Judge Alan M. Wilner, who left the bench this year. Age limits on the court will give O'Malley two more opportunities to fill vacancies on the seven-member Court of Appeals in the coming months.

Forty years ago today, when African-Americans were referred to as "Negro" in newsprint and "black" or "colored" in conversation, a civil-rights champion from Baltimore was sworn in as the first nonwhite justice on the highest court in the land. "Thurgood Marshall, the first Negro to serve on the Supreme Court, took his seat today as the court convened for a new term," reported a front-page Associated Press story in The Evening Sun and other newspapers across the country. The moment was a key one in the nation's civil-rights timeline, alongside such events as Rosa Parks' defiance on a transit bus and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.-led march from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery, Ala. As the South still struggled with its Jim Crow past, and the nation as a whole grappled with racial, class and ideological strife, Marshall joined the court where he had won the landmark 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education case that ended segregation in public schools.

City and state officials cannot be held liable for failing to protect the Dawson family from the 2002 firebombing that killed the couple and their five children, Maryland's highest court ruled yesterday. The Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling dismissing a $14 million lawsuit filed by surviving relatives of the Dawson family. In the suit, the relatives argued that Baltimore officials endangered the Dawsons with the "Believe" campaign encouraging city residents to report criminal activity and then failed to adequately protect the family after members had repeatedly called police to complain about drug activity.