Prison Term

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court struck down yesterday a part of California's 30-year-old sentencing law that allows judges to add several years to a criminal's prison term. The ruling could mean new sentencing hearings for several thousand state prisoners who were recently given longer terms. If their sentences are still being appealed, they can take advantage of today's ruling. But the decision does not necessarily mean they will get lighter sentences. Indeed, the Supreme Court's interest was not in whether prison terms are too long or too short, but rather how they are decided.

A long-time Baltimore drug trafficker was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison without the possibility of parole yesterday under a federal program designed to take armed career criminals off the streets.Bernard Anthony Bey, 28, received a 19-year, five-month prison term for being a felon in possession of a firearm.Bey was prosecuted under a program called DISARM, which carries tough penalties for gun-carrying criminals.After the sentencing in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, Bey's mother started to sob. She later screamed at prosecutor Martin Clarke in a fifth-floor hallway.

When award-winning former Dunbar High School wrestling coach Damon Matthews stabbed his wife 10 times with a screwdriver in January, he left her partially paralyzed. He had violated a court order to stay away from her, and it wasn't the first time.One might expect that Harriette Matthews would want him to serve the longest possible prison term. Instead, she wants something else: for him to be out of jail and working, so his health insurance can pay for treating her injuries.Her request -- an illustration of yet another quandary for battered women -- has left a circuit judge with a potentially wrenching sentencing decision next month.

A Westminster man convicted of hitting a city policeman and his dog with a tire iron in April was sentenced yesterday in Carroll County Circuit Court to serve eight years in prison.Robert Leroy Stultz III of East Main Street pleaded guilty last summer to assault with intent to maim in order to avoid arrest. In exchange, prosecutors dropped charges that included assault with intent to murder.Prosecutors have said that Stultz, 30, broke into Eagle Oil Co. on East Main Street on April 20 after a day of consuming large quantities of vodka and cocaine.

A former Taneytown man whose 1994 conviction and 145-year sentence on multiple child abuse charges were overturned last summer accepted a 40-year prison term yesterday rather than face a new trial.Carroll County Circuit Judge Luke K. Burns Jr. sentenced the man to 90 years in prison, then immediately suspended all but 40 years, in accordance with a plea arrangement.The name of the man, who is 30, is being withheld to protect the privacy of his victims.In August, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals overturned the man's July 1994 conviction and his prison term, one of the longest sentences for abuse imposed in Maryland.

Webster Hubbell, a close friend of President Clinton and a former top Justice Department official, was sentenced yesterday to 21 months in prison for defrauding the Arkansas law firm where he and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton once worked together as partners.While Hubbell's crime did not involve the Clintons, he is the most prominent and nearest acquaintance of the first family to be swept up by the wide-ranging Whitewater investigation, which originally focused on the president and his wife.

A former Lutherville securities dealer pleaded guilty yesterday in Baltimore County Circuit Court to fraud and the sale of unregistered securities in several schemes, including a venture that was supposed to import latex gloves for resale in the battle against AIDS.Lee Paul Der, 52, formerly of the 13900 block of Mantua Mill Road in Glyndon was arrested in September in Hong Kong. He and a co-defendant were indicted a year ago, accused of bilking 10 clients of more than $768,000 in multiple counts of securities fraud, conspiracy, theft and other violations dating from 1987.

A panel of Howard Circuit judges has upheld the 30-year prison sentence given to a man convicted of sexually assaulting two Ellicott City girls in 1991, saying it is unlikely he could be rehabilitated.Patrick Leo Cunningham, 54, asked the three-judge panel to review his sentence at a hearing last month, but the judges declined to alter the prison term in a ruling issued Thursday.The panel -- made up of Judges James B. Dudley, Raymond J. Kane Jr. and Cornelius F. Sybert Jr. -- could have reduced or increased Cunningham's sentence, which was set by Judge Dennis M. Sweeney in December.

The leader of a white-supremacist church who sought a reduction of his 18-year prison term for two pipe-bombings instead received a sentence increase of seven years yesterday.Charles Edward Altvater, 32, head of the Baltimore Church of the Creator, had pleaded guilty in Baltimore County Circuit Court in June to the Essex-area bombings of a county police officer's house and a state trooper's patrol car Nov. 5, 1992.At one time, Altvater was in line to become a national leader of the Church of the Creator, which attacks blacks, Jews and others, according to Assistant State's Attorney Mark H. Tilkin.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- As right-hand man to the country's former dictator, Romeo Halloun had it all.In a country where peasants pray for a seat on the bus or for a few eggs from their chickens, he had money, guns and influence.Mr. Halloun moved about the island as if it were his personal fief.During the heyday of Lt. Col. Raul Cedras, United Nations officials here say, Mr. Halloun commanded groups of heavily armed thugs and participated in the illegal import of every kind of product.He had studied in the United States, held U.S. citizenship and spoke several languages well.

NEW YORK -New York financier Bernard L. Madoff might be nearing a deal to plead guilty to one of the most egregious financial crimes in history. Prosecutors who have charged him with operating an alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme notified a federal judge yesterday that Madoff had agreed to forgo a grand jury hearing, a step that is typically a precursor to a plea agreement. "He's going to say under oath, 'I did it,' and that's a huge step in the process," predicted Steven D. Feldman, a criminal defense attorney at Herrick Feinstein in New York.

Gun count yields 15-year term A federal judge yesterday sentenced a Baltimore man to 15 years in prison on a gun-possession charge, according to federal prosecutors. U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake sentenced Stephen L. Russell, 31, for being a felon in possession of a gun. The judge increased Russell's prison term after finding that his three prior convictions for violent crimes or drug offenses now qualified him as an "armed career criminal." According to Russell's plea agreement, Baltimore Police officers searched Russell's home April 10 last year and recovered a 9mm pistol.

A Baltimore police officer accused of having sex with a 16-year-old girl inside a station house will avoid serving time in prison but will have to resign from the force under a deal made yesterday with city prosecutors. William D. Welch, 41, entered an Alford plea, in which he does not admit guilt but concedes that the state has enough evidence to convict him. Circuit Judge John C. Themelis entered a guilty plea for misconduct in office and sentenced Welch to a suspended 10-year prison term and three years of supervised probation.

Former state Sen. Thomas L. Bromwell Sr. will be allowed to start his seven-year prison term for bribery in July, so that his wife can serve a substantial portion of her prison sentence first, a federal judge ordered yesterday. The Bromwells requested the so-called staggered sentencing so that the Baltimore County Democrat could stay home with two of their youngest children while Mary Patricia Bromwell, 44, starts her prison term in January. Sentenced to a year and a day in prison for her role in a bribery scheme, the wife of the former state senator could receive two months off her sentence for "good time" credit and might be able to serve a portion of the remaining period in a halfway house, according to lawyers in the case.

The construction company executive who engineered a years-long scheme to bribe former state Sen. Thomas L. Bromwell Sr. received a prison term of 6 1/2 years yesterday in federal court, slightly less than the seven-year sentence imposed on the Baltimore County Democrat earlier this month. Calling the crimes "extremely serious," U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz also ordered W. David Stoffregen to forfeit more than $5.6 million in cash, vehicles and property to represent the amount of money lost due to rigged contracts and outright theft from his pipe and steamfitting company.

WASHINGTON -- Hearing arguments in a pair of drug cases, the Supreme Court justices said yesterday that they were inclined to give sentencing judges more leeway - but not total freedom - to impose shorter prison terms. In the 1980s, Congress adopted sentencing guidelines that set the range of prison terms for all federal crimes. The stiff guidelines and the mandatory minimum sentencing laws have swelled the prison population. Last year, 181,622 inmates were in federal prisons, up from 24,363 in 1980.

WASHINGTON -- In a move that even Republicans said would spark a firestorm, President Bush spared I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr. from prison yesterday, calling the former White House aide's 2 1/2 -year sentence for lying during a federal investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's identity "excessive." By commuting Libby's prison term, Bush risked political backlash in showing leniency to a man who had loyally served his administration as Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide. Respected for his intellect and reasoned demeanor, Libby is widely viewed as an architect of U.S. policy toward Iraq, and his conviction was interpreted by administration critics as a slap at how the White House misused intelligence leading up to the Iraq invasion.

A Western Maryland mother of two who offered businesses a cheap but illegal way to mail letters and packages was sentenced in federal court to serve 2 1/2 years in prison after admitting she counterfeited hundreds of thousands of dollars in metered postage. U.S. District Judge Andre M. Davis sentenced Julie Hoffman, 33, of Lonaconing to the prison term followed by two years of supervised release. Davis also ordered Hoffman to pay restitution of $251,011.91. Her attorney in federal court in Baltimore said yesterday she had written a $5,000 check to start to pay back the U.S. Postal Service for its losses.

Calling himself a changed man, convicted pension fund manager Nathan A. Chapman Jr. persuaded a federal judge yesterday to postpone his long-delayed prison term on theft charges so he could finish out the semester at divinity school. Chapman, who greeted his sentence more than two years ago by saying "with the crucifixion, there will be resurrection," is enrolled at Howard University in Washington and the nondenominational Spirit of the Faith Christian Center in Southern Maryland. "This is an isolated incident in my life," said Chapman, who has been free pending his appeal since conviction in August 2004.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court struck down yesterday a part of California's 30-year-old sentencing law that allows judges to add several years to a criminal's prison term. The ruling could mean new sentencing hearings for several thousand state prisoners who were recently given longer terms. If their sentences are still being appealed, they can take advantage of today's ruling. But the decision does not necessarily mean they will get lighter sentences. Indeed, the Supreme Court's interest was not in whether prison terms are too long or too short, but rather how they are decided.