Orphans Court

A candidate for the Orphans' Court of Baltimore City has erroneously suggested in official correspondence that she is a current member of the court, according to a letter released yesterday by the Maryland Judicial Campaign Conduct Committee. The committee criticized Ramona Moore Baker for having a business card and signing letters as "Ramona Moore Baker, Judge of The Orphans Court. Balt. City" and for sending a fax with the heading "Judge of the Orphans Court." "It is the committee's determination that the materials disseminated by you or those under your authority ... are misleading," said the Aug. 28 letter, addressed to Moore Baker and signed by committee co-chairmen George Beall, a former U.S. attorney for Maryland, and Stephen H. Sachs, a former Maryland attorney general.

Howard County's state legislative delegation voted yesterday to support legislation that would allow Sherae M. McNeal to keep her job as a private attorney while acting as a Howard County Orphans' Court judge.All three Republican senators voted in favor of the bill, sponsored by Del. Frank S. Turner, a Democrat. Among delegates, the vote was split along party lines, with five Democrats voting in favor and three Republicans voting against the measure, Turner said."This will allow anybody in the future who practices law and [is]

A bill that would allow a Howard County Orphans' Court judge to continue practicing law in Columbia has passed its first obstacle.The House of Delegates voted 120-16 on Thursday to ease a general rule that prohibits private legal practices for orphans' court judges in Howard, Harford, Montgomery, Prince George's and Calvert counties and Baltimore City.The legislation would permit Orphans' Court Judge Sherae M. McNeal, a Democrat, to resume her private practice in Columbia.Democratic Del. Frank S. Turner, the bill's major sponsor and a former Orphans' Court judge, compared the exception to one given to former County Executive Charles I. Ecker about eight years ago when he benefited from a retirement plan from the school system as he ran for county executive.

IT MADE sense to change a law that prevented new Howard County Orphans' Court Judge Sherae M. McNeal from working as a lawyer. ot just for her, but for others who have practiced estate law and might be interested in running for the probate position.A local bill approved Wednesday adds Howard to the counties that have been granted exceptions to the state code that says lawyers can't be Orphans' Court judges. The Howard legislation stipulates that lawyers who do serve on that court can neither represent clients before it nor practice estate law while on the bench.

At the bottom of Howard County's primary election ballot, far from the televised buzz of this year's big-ticket political campaigns, four people are vying Tuesday for jobs that voters often forget.They are running for office, but they do not want to be lawmakers. They align themselves with a political party, but the jobs they seek are about as partisan as a librarian's.They are the candidates for clerk of the Circuit Court and register of wills, and even the best-connected politicos barely know who they are.Said Carole Fisher, chairwoman of the Howard County Democratic Central Committee: "I'd be just as happy if those were appointed positions.

Three years out of four, the guardians of justice in the Towson courthouse keep drug dealers and deadbeat parents in check, settle divorce and estate disputes and track mountains of legal files.In the fourth year, they also become political animals -- and it's that time again -- with everyone from the state's attorney to the judges of the Orphans' Court hitting the campaign trail.Thirty-one people have filed this election year for the courthouse offices that always seem so popular -- and where sometimes obscure incumbents can prove tough to unseat.

Business at the Carroll County Courthouse annex in Westminster was interrupted for more than an hour yesterday after authorities received a bomb threat, police said.A man called the parole and probation office about 9: 15 a.m. to say a bomb was in the three-story building, police said. The North Court Street building was evacuated and dogs searched for explosives. Nothing was found, police said.A criminal case in Circuit Court was moved to the historic courthouse across Willis Street, while a traffic case in District Court and all other courthouse annex business were delayed until about 11 a.m., officials said.

A correctionCharles M. Coles Jr., who was mentioned in last week's column, is a judge of the Orphans' Court.Pub Date: 9/28/98

In the Baltimore County courthouse campaigns, the most hotly contested races were for some of the most obscure jobs, while higher profile positions -- including state's attorney -- went unchallenged in the primary.In the race for register of wills -- a little-known, $75,000-a-year job being vacated by Peter J. Basilone after 20 years -- Democrat Grace G. Connolly defeated Bonnie Lou Leisure 71 percent to 29 percent. Connolly had resigned as chief judge of the Orphans' Court to run.On the Republican side, Patrick L. McDonough, a former state legislator, defeated William J. Withers Jr., an accountant and employee in the Baltimore City court clerk's office, 79 percent to 21 percent.

THE DEMOCRATS' victory in Baltimore County -- where the party's candidates captured legislative majorities as well as the sheriff's office and Orphans' Court -- is a triumph for re-elected County Executive C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger. In just four years, he has rebuilt the Democratic power base that had been so badly fractured that a Republican grabbed the executive's job in 1990.Particularly significant in Tuesday's election was the inability of Republicans to make inroads in the eastern county, a past Democratic citadel that had been voting Republican in recent years.

Herbert Joseph Reisig Sr., a retired FBI agent and Orphans' Court judge, died Nov. 22 of liver disease at Carroll Hospice's Dove House in Westminster. He was 72. Mr. Reisig was born in Baltimore and raised on Aisquith Street. He was a 1954 graduate of City College. Mr. Reisig was a Baltimore police officer for five years before joining the FBI in 1969. While working as a police officer, he earned his law degree at night while attending the University of Baltimore. "He worked in the Baltimore field office handling white-collar crime cases," said Paul T. Baker, a retired FBI agent and friend.

A candidate for the Orphans' Court of Baltimore City has erroneously suggested in official correspondence that she is a current member of the court, according to a letter released yesterday by the Maryland Judicial Campaign Conduct Committee. The committee criticized Ramona Moore Baker for having a business card and signing letters as "Ramona Moore Baker, Judge of The Orphans Court. Balt. City" and for sending a fax with the heading "Judge of the Orphans Court." "It is the committee's determination that the materials disseminated by you or those under your authority ... are misleading," said the Aug. 28 letter, addressed to Moore Baker and signed by committee co-chairmen George Beall, a former U.S. attorney for Maryland, and Stephen H. Sachs, a former Maryland attorney general.

For the first time in two decades, Anne Arundel County will have a new register of wills, as longtime incumbent George M. Nutwell Jr. is retiring. Both candidates seeking to succeed him, Democrat Jacqueline Boone Allsup and Republican Lauren M. Parker, say they have no interest in overhauling an office known for kind and reliable service. The office is a quiet space in the county courthouse where bereaved and often bewildered relatives, along with attorneys and accountants versed in probate law, deal with the intricacies of wills and estates.

Baltimore's elected criminal justice officials in last night's primary appeared to be keeping their jobs, with city State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy holding a comfortable lead over her opponent with more than half of the precincts reporting and the three sitting circuit judges leading their three challengers. Jessamy, 58, who has been the city's top prosecutor since 1995, faced off yesterday against Stephan W. Fogleman, 37, a local attorney and resident of Canton who said he entered the race for state's attorney because no one else did. Both are Democrats, and Jessamy, completing her second elected term, will be unopposed in the general election.

When Howard County Orphans' Court Judge Sherae M. McNeal's husband lost his job more than a year ago, the couple and their two children found themselves without health insurance until McNeal realized she could be insured through her job by the county. But about 30 days later, she received a letter from the county informing her that at the end of 2006, it would no longer cover health benefits for Orphans' Court judges. And so at the end of her term next December, McNeal and her family will once again be without health insurance.

After years of wrangling, a major step has been taken toward moving the quirky Barnes Foundation and its fabled collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art from a cozy Philadelphia suburb to an urban site near the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The foundation announced on Friday that the executive committee of Lincoln University, a historically black school that nominates four of the five Barnes board members, agreed to support the move....

Pat Liberto has a sure-fire strategy for deciding who gets her votes for those obscure offices that fill out the bottom of ballots in Maryland: She selects them randomly. "It's just `pick 'em,'" Liberto said yesterday on her way out of the Carney Elementary School polling station with her husband, Tom, and two grandchildren. "Sometimes, I'll just take the three at the top because I don't know anything about any of them." It doesn't make sense, she says, asking her to vote for Orphans' Court judges, register of wills or sheriff.

Incumbents of both parties in several Anne Arundel County courthouse posts were hoping to hold on to their posts as they kept a close eye on last night's election returns - and with nearly a fifth of 195 precincts reporting, all were leading last night. Sheriff George F. Johnson IV, a former county police sergeant strongly supported by the county's Democratic leadership, had about 57 percent of the vote over Republican challenger John E. Moran IV, a University of Maryland, Baltimore County mountain bike officer.

In the most closely watched of the courthouse races in Carroll County, incumbent Sheriff Kenneth L. Tregoning defeated former Deputy Charles C. "Chuck" Paulsen Jr. last night. Tregoning won by a margin of more than 2-to-1, drawing nearly 23,000 more votes than Paulsen. Meanwhile, Republican Jerry F. Barnes, 54, two-term incumbent state's attorney for Carroll, won by nearly 30,000 votes over Democratic challenger Richard S. Nacewicz, 70, an Eldersburg lawyer and community activist. Incumbents also won by substantial margins in the races for clerk of the Circuit Court and for the three seats on the Orphans' Court, which oversees settlement of estates.

Two incumbents are among the six candidates of diverse backgrounds who are vying for the three judicial seats on the Anne Arundel County's little-known Orphans' Court. Three part-time judges, who handle routine estate matters and who decide disputed wills, held 340 hearings from July 2000 to June 2001, down from a five-year high of 422 in the same period from July 1997 to June 1998. Democrats and Republicans each are fielding a slate of three candidates. On the Democratic ticket is Annapolis resident Joan Duckett, 38, daughter-in-law of retiring Orphans' Court Judge Judy Duckett and former Circuit Judge Warren B. Duckett.