Jones Case

WASHINGTON -- In an aggressive new legal assault on President Clinton, lawyers for Paula Corbin Jones accused Clinton and his agents yesterday of repeatedly breaking the law in an effort to scuttle Jones' sexual misconduct lawsuit against him.The most serious allegations -- in a 700-page filing to a federal judge overseeing the Jones case -- parallel those being investigated by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr and a grand jury: "perjury, witness tampering...

Tyrone Jones walked out into the hazy sunshine Tuesday morning and let out a deep breath on the steps of the Baltimore City Circuit Courthouse, his shoulders light for the first time in a dozen years. He had come to court prepared for trial on charges of conspiring to commit murder, only to be told he wouldn't be prosecuted. The case was dropped. "It took all but 10 seconds to undo something that's been going on for 12 years," Jones said, still shocked. He threw an arm around public defender, Michele Nethercott, who began representing him several years ago as part of Maryland's Innocence Project, which works to identify wrongful convictions and get them overturned.

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge, reacting to fears voiced by President Clinton's lawyers of a "media circus," put off yesterday her plan to release scores of sealed documents in Paula Corbin Jones' sexual misconduct case against Clinton.As a result, hundreds of pages of never-disclosed papers -- many of them likely to be embarrassing to the president -- will not become public Monday, as U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright had ordered earlier.Wright said yesterday that she would not release any of the papers for at least two weeks, while she studies a plea by the president's lawyers that she reconsider the issue.

You know who we haven't heard about lately? Adam Jones. And that's a good thing - especially for him. Jones will be submitting a letter to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell today requesting full reinstatement to the league. Jones has been participating in practices and preseason games for the Dallas Cowboys under terms of a partial reinstatement. Neither Jones on the Dallas side - meaning owner Jerry Jones and the player Jones - wants to appear impatient, but, clearly, it seems fair that Goodell at least give a strong hint about his decision by the roster cut to 53 on Aug. 30. It's unclear whether further legal proceedings in Las Vegas, where three people were shot in a 2007 incident that was partially instigated by Jones, might have an impact on Jones' status with the NFL. But for the past few months, the cornerback has not run afoul of the law in any fresh misadventures.

WASHINGTON -- Paula Corbin Jones will receive $200,000 from the money President Clinton paid to settle her sexual-misconduct lawsuit, under a deal made yesterday by several groups of lawyers who had represented her.Clinton and Jones agreed in November to settle her case out of court, after a judge had dismissed it and she began pursuing an appeal, and Clinton paid an agreed $850,000 to end the lawsuit. There was no apology involved, although earlier Jones had insisted on one.Since then, an increasingly bitter fight had broken out among the lawyers who had handled her case at various stages, with competing fee claims along with charges of malpractice and bad faith traded back and forth.

PRESIDENT Clinton's attorneys recently asked the judge in the Paula Corbin Jones case to move up the trial date, arguing that the case needed the controlled setting of a courtroom, away from "gossip, innuendo and hearsay being passed off as fact."But their aggressive tactics are the last thing the president needs. Instead, the better tactic would be to walk away from the matter tomorrow, by taking immediate steps to get the sordid lawsuit off the front page.How to do this? The president would simply tell his attorneys to stop defending the case.

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge in Little Rock, Ark., refused yesterday to hand off to another judge the issue of whether to hold President Clinton in contempt for giving "misleading" testimony in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual misconduct case.U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright said in a brief order: "The court will consider issues of contempt, but will do so on its own terms and in a manner it deems appropriate."Wright rejected a demand that she step aside and a separate plea that, before taking herself out of the case, she start a criminal contempt proceeding against Clinton.

WASHINGTON -- Few points of difference between the two sides in the Senate impeachment trial of President Clinton are as potentially decisive as their divergent views about the lawsuit that started the scandal: the Paula Corbin Jones sexual misconduct case. The president's defense team began outlining its view yesterday. Lyle Denniston of The Sun's national staff examines the differences.Jones' lawsuit was dismissed in April by a judge, and her appeal ended Dec. 2 after the suit had been settled out of court.

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge raised the possibility yesterday that President Clinton might have committed contempt of court for testimony he gave under oath in January, when he denied he had a sexual relationship with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky.If the judge, U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright of Little Rock, Ark., should ultimately hold Clinton in contempt for that testimony, it could add to the president's possible legal troubles when the House considers whether to pursue impeachment.

WASHINGTON -- Kathleen Willey, a former aide who reportedly has said under oath that President Clinton made an aggressive sexual advance toward her in the White House, testified before a grand jury yesterday in a session of critical importance to the independent counsel's investigation.Willey, 51, may be able to shed light on several aspects of Kenneth W. Starr's complex investigation. One issue is whether Nathan Landow, a wealthy Democratic donor from Maryland, urged Willey to remain silent about her encounter with Clinton if called to testify in Paula Corbin Jones' sexual misconduct case against the president.

Victims of Marion Jones As expected, the International Olympic Committee yesterday officially stripped Marion Jones of her medals for the 2000 Olympics - three gold and two bronze - as a result of her admission that she used performance-enhancing substances. Actually, Jones will be sentenced next month for lying to federal investigators in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative case, and Jones has already relinquished the medals themselves. She's also banned from attending the Olympic Games in Beijing.

On what was to be the first day of his trial yesterday, city prosecutors abruptly dropped a rape case against a Baltimore police officer - two months after a city jury acquitted him of another set of rape charges. Prosecutors yesterday declined to give a reason for the move. Officer Jemini Jones, 29, said in an interview afterward that the two cases had "weighed heavy on my heart" and that he was relieved they were over. Both accusers said Jones coerced them into having sex with him in exchange for their freedom, one in October 2005 and the other in December 2005.

A state law passed in June makes it a crime for registered sex offenders to set foot on school grounds, as Melvin L. Jones Jr. did last year when he visited the 11-year-old he is charged with killing. Had the law been in place a year ago, the principal of Collington Square School - who banned Jones from the campus and called the boy's mother when he learned of the man's history as a sex offender - would have been compelled to notify the police. If authorities had known of Jones' contact with Irvin J. Harris, which included helping him with his classwork and accompanying him to the cafeteria, Jones could have been sent back to prison for violation of his probation.

Sex With the Queen: 900 Years of Vile Kings, Virile Lovers and Passionate Politics Eleanor Herman Murder on Maryland's Eastern Shore: Race, Politics and the Case of Orphan Jones Joseph E. Moore The History Press / 256 pages / $24.99 Also from long ago, but something completely different, is former Worcester County prosecutor Joseph E. Moore's book about the Orphan Jones case, one of the most sensational crimes in Eastern Shore history. One day in the fall of 1931, a farmer named Green Davis, his wife, Ivy, and their two young daughters were found shot to death on their farm in Taylorville, their house soaked with kerosene but not set ablaze.

Baltimore prosecutors have salvaged the murder trial of a man accused of killing a 15-year-old girl by changing the mind of a judge who had days earlier thrown out crucial DNA evidence. The murder trial of Terry Darrell Jones, 24, began yesterday afternoon. Circuit Judge Shirley M. Watts said prosecutor "missteps" led her last week to bar "any and all DNA evidence" - a ruling that prosecutors said would have forced them to drop the charges. Yesterday, Watts narrowed her previous ruling: DNA evidence analyzed by the Baltimore crime lab is still prohibited, while DNA evidence analyzed by an independent lab can be presented.

A Baltimore Circuit Court judge denied a motion yesterday for a new trial in the case of a city man who was convicted six years ago in a case that hinged on gunshot residue evidence that his attorneys say is unreliable. Judge John N. Prevas ruled that there was "no need to roll the clock back" in the case of Tyrone Jones, who had asked the judge for a second time to set aside his conviction for conspiracy to commit murder in a June 24, 1998, shooting in East Baltimore. The Jones case is among hundreds that a team of public defenders has been examining in an effort to find wrongful convictions from what they believe to be faulty gunshot residue evidence.

WASHINGTON -- Paula Corbin Jones' sexual-misconduct lawsuit, a sideline diversion for President Clinton as his other legal woes deepened in recent months, may be about to take on a new and trouble-causing life at center stage.Instead of receding further into the background while an appeal by Jones goes forward quietly, her case could soon produce a constitutional battle as important as the one that took the case to the Supreme Court once before. Looming is a threat, which some lawyers say is not an idle one, that the president could be cited by a judge for contempt of court and face potentially serious sanctions.

Legal experts say the case of Noah Jamahl Jones is an almost textbook example of how challenging prosecutions that involve crowds and chaos can be. "You've got all the physical problems - darkness, anger and two big groups of people wanting to fight," said Annapolis attorney Robert H. Waldman, a former public defender. "It's very hard to sort out what happened from what people think happened, or what they want to think happened." To some, the Jones case sounded simple: a black teenager dies in a melee of about a dozen people, and six young white men are charged.

Legal experts say the case of Noah Jamahl Jones is an almost textbook example of how challenging prosecutions that involve crowds and chaos can be. "You've got all the physical problems - darkness, anger and two big groups of people wanting to fight," said Annapolis attorney Robert H. Waldman, a former public defender. "It's very hard to sort out what happened from what people think happened, or what they want to think happened." To some, the Jones case sounded simple: a black teenager dies in a melee of about a dozen people, and six young white men are charged.

PONTIAC, Mich. -- A jury has found the "Jenny Jones Show" at least partly responsible for the murder of one of its guests after he revealed his romantic fantasies about another guest -- a man -- in a segment on secret admirers.After deliberating for more than 6 1/2 hours over two days, the jury in the wrongful-death case awarded $25 million to the family of Scott Amedure, killed by Jonathan Schmitz three days after a "Jenny Jones Show" taping during which Amedure, 24, confessed his crush and described his fantasies about Schmitz while a live audience watched Schmitz's reaction.