House Arrest

The teen-ager said she was panicked: at age 17, she had given birth to a baby few knew she was carrying. After she went into labor on a toilet and was unable to reach a confidante, a plan to leave the baby boy at a church had gone awry, her lawyer said. But an Anne Arundel County Circuit Court judge ruled yesterday that it was "inconceivable" that the former Broadneck High School student could not understand what she was doing when she left the newborn submerged in the toilet for as long as 10 minutes, then disposed of him in a trash can on a cold night in December 2005.

Former Howard County teacher Kirsten Ann Kinley told the judge at her sentencing hearing yesterday that she was sorry she had a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy at her Columbia apartment more than two years ago. "I want to apologize for the pain anybody had to suffer because of these actions," said a soft-spoken Kinley, who cried throughout the hour-long hearing. "I want the opportunity to become a productive citizen." Howard County Circuit Court Judge Diane O. Leasure sentenced Kinley, 27, to three years in prison, with 18 months suspended, which means she is to serve 18 months at the county detention center.

Carrying a green trash bag containing everything he owns and flashing a broad but tentative smile, Brady G. Spicer walked out of the Anne Arundel County Detention Center yesterday afternoon, savoring his first moments of life out of jail in 7 1/2 years."

A retired, decorated Navy captain was sentenced yesterday to house arrest and probation while he finishes repaying more than $300,000 he embezzled from the Annapolis company that trusted him as its chief financial officer.Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Ronald A. Silkworth sentenced Victor A. Karcher, 60, of the 300 block of Martins Cove Road, outside Annapolis, to a year of house arrest, five years on probation and 300 hours of community service. Silkworth also fined Karcher $1,000 and ordered him to write an apology and repay the nearly $120,000 remaining of the $353,000 he stole from Tritech Field Engineering.

JERUSALEM -- Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat provided unsettling evidence this week that if a Palestinian state comes into being, it could fall far short of the democracy that his people say they want.During the weekend, his security forces arrested 11 critics who had signed a harsh condemnation of the Palestinian National Authority's alleged broken promises and who accused Arafat of fostering corruption.The Palestinian government's past attempts to silence opponents have drawn strong criticism from human rights organizations.

Actress, playwright and professor Anna Deavere Smith has a deep affection for what she calls "misfit theater."She means it as a compliment. It's a term she applies to plays she first saw as a girl growing up in Baltimore. At Arena Players, she would see black actors cast in traditionally white roles. And although she went to Western High School, she often attended all-girl plays at Roland Park Country School, where her best friend was a student."Those two things were my experience of what theater was. I always thought theater was when the wrong person played the wrong role -- misfit theater," Smith said.

In a ruling that might affect hundreds of criminals, Maryland's highest court said yesterday that judges cannot limit the freedom of probation by placing probationers under house arrest."

An Anne Arundel County circuit judge has interpreted a mentally ill man's demand that police shoot him during a standoff last year as a suicide attempt and sentenced him to lengthy house arrest and a probation that includes intensive therapy."

WASHINGTON -- A one-star Navy admiral accepted a finding of guilt yesterday on charges that he improperly steered military contracts to his partner in an adulterous affair. He agreed to early retirement at a substantially reduced pension and to penalties that included 30 days of house arrest, Navy officials said.The officer, Rear Adm. John Scudi, 54, effectively pleaded no contest to the charges at a closed administrative hearing in Norfolk, Va., which was a less severe alternative to a criminal investigation and precluded any court-martial or prison sentence.

John Lawson Pasquella, who twice violated probation after being convicted in 1994 for a drunken driving accident that killed a friend in 1994, was released from the county jail yesterday in a reprieve from a sentence on a more recent drunken driving conviction.Anne Arundel Circuit Judge Ronald A. Silkworth released Pasquella, who lives in the 800 block of Shady Oaks Road in West River, but ordered him to serve 60 days of house arrest followed by five years of supervised probation.Pasquella also must appear in court once a month for the next year and four times a year for the rest of his probation.

Baseball Report: Slugger Sosa failed drug test in 2003 Former slugger Sammy Sosa tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug in 2003, The New York Times reported Tuesday on its Web site. The Times, citing lawyers familiar with the case, reported that Sosa is one of 104 players who tested positive in a 2003 baseball survey. The paper did not identify the drug. Sosa is sixth on baseball's career home run list with 609, most of them for the Chicago Cubs. He played for the Orioles in 2005 and has not played in the majors since 2007 with the Texas Rangers.

A pregnant woman accused of driving the getaway car after a double homicide in Odenton has been placed under house arrest to await trial in January on charges of being an accessory after the fact. Relatives of the two victims wailed and shouted as they strode from an Anne Arundel County courtroom Tuesday after Circuit Judge William Mulford II said Kecia Veronica Liverpool, 31, could be released from the county jail to live with her grandmother while she awaits the birth of her child in July and could continue to stay there with the newborn.

For killing a woman who had let him stay at her Anne Arundel County home, Christopher Perkins O'Brien was sentenced to a decade in prison - but all but a year and a half behind bars and an equal amount of time on house arrest were suspended. Now he is accused of running afoul of the conditions set for doing time outside of prison. O'Brien was ordered yesterday to be held at the county detention center until an August court hearing, where he could be ordered to serve the balance of his suspended sentence.

BANGKOK, Thailand - Foreign aid workers have begun reaching remote areas of Myanmar hardest hit by the May 2-3 cyclone, relief agencies said yesterday. These first admissions of foreign workers, issued over the past two days, breach the barrier erected by the government that had delayed delivery of supplies to more than a million people in the remote Irrawaddy River delta. The opening comes more than three weeks after the cyclone, which left 135,000 people dead or missing. The United Nations estimates that 1.5 million survivors deep in the Irrawaddy delta have not yet received any aid. The permissions follow an agreement announced Friday by Ban Ki Moon, the U.N. secretary-general, after a meeting in Myanmar with the leader of that nation's junta, Senior General Than Shwe.

20-year term imposed in light rail rape case A serial sex offender was sentenced yesterday to the maximum 20 years in prison for repeatedly raping a 22-year-old woman he had met at an Anne Arundel County light rail station. Eugene Waller, who was linked to the victim through DNA, entered an Alford plea to second-degree rape Friday, denying guilt but conceding that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict him. Waller, 50, could have gotten up to life in prison on a charge of first-degree rape, but the prosecutors' case was damaged by convenience store security footage showing Waller and the victim holding hands before the assault.

An Anne Arundel County teenager who held up a Severn fast-food restaurant at gunpoint -- and left behind his cell phone -- was sentenced yesterday to a year of house arrest. Assistant State's Attorney Jennifer M. Alexander had requested 18 months of jail time for Michael Steven Williams, 19, of the 1500 block of Provincial Lane in Severn for the Oct. 27 robbery of Wings, Things & Pizza. Circuit Judge William C. Mulford II sentenced Williams, a Meade High School senior who netted about $270 in the theft, to a five-year sentence with all but one year suspended.

ISLMABAD, Pakistan -- Deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, an icon of resistance to the rule of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, emerged late yesterday from nearly five months of house arrest. He was freed as the first act of a Benazir Bhutto loyalist elected as prime minister hours earlier. It was the latest tumultuous twist in a Pakistani political saga that over the past year has seen the fall from grace of the U.S.-backed Musharraf, the Dec. 27 assassination of Bhutto and the triumph of her party in last month's elections.

Former Howard County teacher Kirsten Ann Kinley told the judge at her sentencing hearing yesterday that she was sorry she had a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy at her Columbia apartment more than two years ago. "I want to apologize for the pain anybody had to suffer because of these actions," said a soft-spoken Kinley, who cried throughout the hour-long hearing. "I want the opportunity to become a productive citizen." Howard County Circuit Court Judge Diane O. Leasure sentenced Kinley, 27, to three years in prison, with 18 months suspended, which means she is to serve 18 months at the county detention center.

The teen-ager said she was panicked: at age 17, she had given birth to a baby few knew she was carrying. After she went into labor on a toilet and was unable to reach a confidante, a plan to leave the baby boy at a church had gone awry, her lawyer said. But an Anne Arundel County Circuit Court judge ruled yesterday that it was "inconceivable" that the former Broadneck High School student could not understand what she was doing when she left the newborn submerged in the toilet for as long as 10 minutes, then disposed of him in a trash can on a cold night in December 2005.

A rookie Anne Arundel County police officer was stripped of his badge and sentenced to serve six days in jail yesterday after admitting to snapping a picture of himself fondling a teenager's breasts during a traffic stop. Joseph Francis Mosmiller, 23, pleaded guilty to misconduct in office for the Jan. 20 offense and apologized, adding, "I made a mistake. and I'm ready to accept the consequences of my actions." Anne Arundel Circuit Judge William C. Mulford II suspended all but six days of a three-year sentence and ordered Mosmiller to serve 30 days under house arrest, cooperate with a continuing internal affairs investigation and be placed on supervised probation for three years.