Patel

After a second day of apparently raucous deliberations, jurors in Alpna Patel's manslaughter trial failed to reach a verdict yesterday and will resume sorting through the evidence Monday. Baltimore Circuit Judge John N. Prevas told jurors to deliberate into the night yesterday, but about 6:30 p.m., the jury of 10 women and two men told Prevas in a note from the forewoman that they could reach "no fair decision." Prevas also denied a motion for a mistrial from defense attorney Edward Smith Jr., because of allegations that a juror was "calling all over town" asking friends' opinion on the case.

Rij Patel is every golf coach's nightmare. His swing is as unconventional as they come. Rij describes it as "weird" and "bad," and it's enough to make nearby golfers do a double take. But their amusement turns to awe as his contorted clubface finally straightens itself out at the last possible moment before impact. Rij is also every coach's dream. As metal meets ball, one can't help but wonder how such power comes from the Rij's frame - small, even for a 14-year-old. He's mature beyond his years, is intelligent and spends much of his time practicing at Hunt Valley Golf Club, where he and his parents belong.

Alpna Patel, the Canadian woman charged with killing her husband, testified yesterday she was blessed with sudden "enormous strength" that allowed her to fend him off when he attacked after she threatened to leave. The prosecution and the defense rested yesterday, and the case should go to the jury today after closing arguments. Patel, 27, could face life in prison if convicted of murdering her husband, Viresh Patel, 26, last March. Prosecutors say Alpna Patel, a dentistry resident who lived with her in-laws in Buffalo, N.Y., made a surprise visit to Baltimore in a calculated plot to kill her husband of 10 months.

A Reisterstown pharmacist was arrested Tuesday morning on federal charges claiming he illegally sold more than 23,000 prescription pills. The amount is the equivalent of 63 kilograms of cocaine or nearly 28,000 pounds of marijuana, federal authorities said. A six-count indictment, unsealed Tuesday, alleges that Ketankumar Arvind Patel, 47, used his Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy at 11813 1/2 Reisterstown Road to fill phony prescriptions for the anti-anxiety medication Xanax, along with thousands of Oxycontin and Percocet pills, both of which contain oxycodone.

An official of the largest women's rights organization in Canada is demanding that a Baltimore Circuit judge free Alpna Patel on bail while she awaits sentencing and possible appeal of her voluntary manslaughter conviction. Patel, a Canadian dentist who fatally stabbed her physician husband in Baltimore, has been in the Baltimore City Jail since Monday's verdict. A bail review hearing scheduled yesterday for Patel - who showed up in leg chains and handcuffs - was delayed until tomorrow because her lead attorney was out of town.

After a mistrial in which 11 of 12 jurors decided Alpna Patel was not guilty of murder, the state's attorney's office has decided to retry the Canadian dentist accused of killing her husband in March. Prosecutors, who will try Patel on charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter, made their request yesterday morning to Circuit Judge David Mitchell. The judge set June 5 for the new trial. The first trial ended Friday with a deadlocked jury when the lone male juror held out for a guilty verdict on the manslaughter charge.

Jurors in Alpna Patel's manslaughter trial are scheduled to resume deliberating today, after attorneys engaged in fiery closing arguments yesterday that included a flurry of personal attacks. Amid shouts echoing from the jury room, jurors deliberated for less than two hours before asking Circuit Judge John N. Prevas if they could resume this morning. The apparently contentious deliberations mirrored the tenor of closing arguments by Assistant State's Attorney William McCollum and defense attorney Edward Smith Jr. Smith referred to McCollum as "Still Bill" and "Tricky Bill."

A Baltimore jury will resume deliberations today in the trial of Alpna Patel, a dentist from Canada who is accused of murdering her husband after he refused to shield her from a traditionalist Hindu father-in-law. Patel is charged with first-degree murder, but the jury, which began deliberations yesterday, could decide to find her guilty of second-degree murder or manslaughter. Prosecutors contend that Patel stabbed her husband, Viresh Patel, at his Pimlico apartment in a fit of rage.

Despite prosecutors' demands that she be jailed, the Canadian dentist charged in the slaying of her husband was placed under house arrest yesterday after pleading she "had no way of defying" a father who ordered her not to return to Baltimore for trial. Alpna Patel's trial is scheduled to begin today, four days late. Patel, who flew to Baltimore Wednesday night, is charged with manslaughter in the stabbing death in 1999 of her physician husband at his Pimlico apartment. The case has sparked wide interest in part because their marriage had been arranged.

A Canadian-born dentist who fatally stabbed her physician husband four years ago will not face a third trial, the Baltimore state's attorney's office announced yesterday. Dr. Alpna Patel had been released after serving two years of a three-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter when her conviction was overturned in October by the Court of Special Appeals. Even if she was retried and again found guilty of manslaughter, Patel would not have received additional prison time. "My decision not to retry this case is weighted by many factors, including the extensive allocation of court resources that would be needed," city State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy said in a prepared statement.

A Columbia woman pleaded guilty to felony theft and conspiracy to commit theft in Baltimore Circuit Court yesterday as part of an elaborate plot to defraud the city school system of millions of dollars. Ashita Patel, 47, conspired with a business associate, Rajiv Dixit, to create a fake maintenance firm and to bill the school system for unnecessary work, according to attorneys with the Office of the State Prosecutor. At the time, Dixit was head of the school system's facilities and maintenance department, and he had the authority to sign off on invoices.

So many historic structures have been threatened with demolition in Baltimore lately that it almost seems hard to believe when someone moves to save a building. Especially when that someone volunteers to do so, rather than having to be prodded. That's what an Odenton developer wants to do with the Furncraft building, an early 20th-century warehouse at 301 Fallsway that has been home to a furniture store for the past 65 years. If all goes according to plan, the 100-year-old building will be reborn by mid-2008 as a 63-room Sleep Inn, within easy walking distance of downtown and the Inner Harbor.

In Baltimore, where a downtown hotel stay easily costs $200 a night, a developer has ambitious plans that would bring three alternatives to the budget-conscious traveler. Sanket Patel, an Annapolis-based developer, plans to build side-by-side hotels, a $35 million project, on Front Street near the base of the Jones Falls Expressway. One would be a 63-room Sleep Inn to be built in the old Furncraft building. He would demolish the former Hillen Tire shop next door to build an 11-story Cambria Suites.

The Baltimore engineering company recruited Raj Patel from Ontario, Canada. In the hope that he would stay for good, the firm applied for a green card from the federal immigration service to ensure that Patel would be able to live and work permanently in the United States. Patel seized the opportunity, expecting to become a legal permanent resident within a year. Two years later, he is among an estimated 350,000 skilled professionals forced to live in limbo as their applications meander through a huge backlog of immigration cases, a wait that can take a decade.

Nilesh Patel owns a Subway sandwich store in Odenton. It's in a quiet part of town, he says, and since he took ownership of the establishment a year ago, things have gone smoothly. "It is a real good area, you know. It is real quiet," Patel said. But on April 3, the window of his store was smashed with a rock, the cash register was pried open and his safe was stolen. He said $2,281 was taken, and the store was damaged. Plus he lost a sense of security. "The employees who work nighttime, they are a little scared to work.

MAROJEJY NATIONAL PARK, Madagascar -- Since daybreak he has been scanning the treetops for the creatures that move as if by pogo stick and look as if they wear white fur coats and big, black, round sunglasses. It is after 2 p.m., and the dense, hilly rain forest has yet to give primatologist Erik Patel a glimpse of Propithecus candidus, the rare monkeylike lemur known as the silky sifaka. It is one of the world's 25 most-endangered primates, the animal order that includes humans. Fewer than 1,000 silky sifakas are thought to exist, all of them in this rugged patch of northeast Madagascar.

The last day of testimony in Alpna Patel's manslaughter trial in Baltimore Circuit Court began much the same as the first day a week and a half ago: Prosecutors tried to poke holes in the Canadian dentist's claim of self-defense - that her husband was killed when she thwarted his attack - but presented little direct evidence to the contrary. Jurors are expected to begin deliberating today, but Circuit Judge John N. Prevas said yesterday that he was considering throwing out the manslaughter charge because prosecutors presented a "purely circumstantial case."

Faulting a prosecutor for "outrageous" remarks to the jury, a state appeals court yesterday overturned the manslaughter conviction of a Canadian dentist whose arranged Hindu marriage to a physician in Baltimore ended after 10 months when she stabbed him in 1999. The Court of Special Appeals noted that its 30-page ruling does not exonerate Alpna Patel of charges that she killed Viresh Patel in his Pimlico apartment, but sends the case back to Baltimore Circuit Court for a possible retrial.

Raghid Shourbaji finds it difficult to put into words. There's something about Ramadan that is just different from the rest of the year. "You feel it almost in the air everywhere," said the Clarksville man, a board member of the Howard Council Muslim Council. "Not only among Muslims -- even among non-Muslims. It's a serene and peaceful feeling that you get during this time." With the sighting of the first crescent of the new moon this evening, Muslims in Maryland and around the world will begin the observation of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and a period of fasting, prayer and good works.

When floodwaters swept through their home, Marianne and Steve Konka began asking themselves: Do we salvage or rebuild? Two years ago, Tropical Storm Isabel sent two feet of water rushing into their five-room house in Bowleys Quarters. The water subsided in a day. But in its wake, there were sloped walls, a warped floor and a foundation as twisted as any pretzel. "The house was like a funhouse after that, everything was crooked," said Marianne Konka, 49, a nurse at St. Joseph Medical Center.