Janey

The city's Board of Estimates hired two prominent defense attorneys yesterday to advise City Council members during a wide-ranging federal probe into their official and personal finances. The board's decision yesterday authorized the lawyers -- Neal M. Janey and Larry A. Nathans -- to charge up to $230,000 in legal costs and expenses related to U.S. Attorney Thomas M. DiBiagio's investigation into the council. The hiring of Janey, a former city solicitor and District Court judge, and Nathans, past president of the Maryland Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, coincided with DiBiagio's indictment of state police Superintendent and former city Police Commissioner Edward T. Norris on public corruption charges.

The city's Board of Estimates is set this morning to hire two attorneys -- for hourly rates up to $375 -- to assist City Council members with a pending federal probe into their finances, hiring practices and official dealings with two local businessmen. The board, which sets the city's fiscal policy, is expected to authorize up to $230,000 for the legal expertise of Neal M. Janey and Larry A. Nathans, Baltimore attorneys experienced in high-profile grand jury investigations. "This is no determination on my part whether [the federal investigation]

Rain is the carefully textured story of a mother who fears she's losing her sexuality, the daughter just awakening to hers and the man they both look to for succor and (re)affirmation. First-time writer-director Christine Jeffs spent four years adapting Kirsty Gunn's 1994 novel, and the care shows. Her obvious affection for the material comes through most pointedly in the sparse, evocative dialogue - speech that seems well-suited to the pristine New Zealand shores on which the story is set. At the center of Rain is 13-year-old Janey, played with welcome awkwardness by newcomer Alicia Fulford-Wierzbicki.

More than two dozen residents turned out last night for a report on possible solutions if a tie vote were to occur again in a New Windsor election -- as it did in May for the first time in the town's 155 years.Had the town held a run-off election, it could have been sued -- and would have lost -- because there is no provision in its charter for another election, said Neal M. Janey, a municipal law expert who was asked to research the situation.Last night, Janey outlined the report prepared after the town election May 11 produced a tie for one of three open council seats.

Richard Janey, who is appealing an Anne Arundel County Circuit Court murder conviction and 30-year prison sentence, has received another year in prison.Janey pleaded guilty recently to assault on a county jail guard Oct. 15, 1997. Throwing batteries, he hit the officer in the head so hard the guard blacked out briefly, according to charging documents. Janey's jail misconduct records, inadmissible at his April sentencing for second-degree murder, were an inch thick.Janey, 34, of the 100 block of Obery Court in Annapolis was convicted slaying of Susan McAteer, 29, of Annapolis, who was stabbed 58 times in December 1994.

Anne Arundel County police officers whisked Wanda R. Hall to an unidentified drug treatment center in Virginia yesterday after a circuit judge cut short her 14-year prison sentence and approved what prosecutors termed a "necessary evil."Hall, 35, of Annapolis, swapped her testimony against a murder defendant for prosecutors' support of her bid to leave prison after serving about 3 1/2 years for her part in the killing."Cases of this nature never leave me comfortable," Judge Ronald A. Silkworth told Hall, who testified in February that she drove a borrowed car while Richard E. Janey, 34, stabbed another woman to death in the back seat in December 1994.

A Baltimore lawyer criticized the Susquehanna River Basin Commission yesterday, accusing the agency of using inaccurate information to win support for overseeing city access to Susquehanna River water.Neal M. Janey, former city solicitor, said Baltimore officials told the commission in December they had no plans to draw more water from the Susquehanna watershed.But the commission used an outdated 1993 study -- estimating the city will need up to 50 million gallons a day by 2003 -- to muster support for its gaining power over Baltimore's access to Susquehanna water, Janey said.

An Anne Arundel County Circuit Court judge yesterday ordered convicted killer Richard E. Janey, 34, to serve 30 years in prison, the same amount of time he received at his first trial in 1995.Judge Clayton R. Greene tried to order a 35-year sentence, the maximum for second-degree murder, in the 1994 slaying of 29-year-old Susan McAteer of Annapolis. He relented when one of Janey's lawyers noted that the sentence could not be harsher than the sentence from Janey's first conviction -- which was overturned on appeal -- unless there was new evidence.

An Anne Arundel County jury yesterday convicted Richard E. Janey of second-degree murder in the 1994 stabbing death of a 29-year-old Annapolis woman.The body of Susan McAteer was found in woods off Dubois Road outside Annapolis Dec. 27, 1994, about a week after she was stabbed 58 times.In September, a jury convicted Janey, of the 100 block of Obery Court, of accessory after the fact, arson and conspiracy for helping to dump the woman's body and burning the car in which she was stabbed. But that jury deadlocked on the second-degree murder question in Janey's second trial on the charges.

A nervous key witness told an Anne Arundel County Circuit Court jury yesterday that she was identifying defendant Richard E. Janey as her friend's killer because it's the truth, not because that testimony could win her freedom from prison.The opening day of Janey's trial -- his third on a charge that he killed Susan McAteer -- focused on Wanda R. Hall, who had refused to testify in the past but made a deal to take the witness stand this time.The pact that Hall, 34, made with prosecutors Feb. 11 calls for her to testify in exchange for the state's recommendation of her release from a 14-year prison term into a residential drug treatment program or the state's support in reducing her sentence to a year in the county jail and outpatient drug treatment.