Rejected

Attorneys for Wesley Eugene Baker failed yesterday to persuade two courts to postpone Baker's execution by lethal injection, which could occur as early as Monday. Baltimore Circuit Judge Joseph H. H. Kaplan rejected a request to halt the execution based on a claim that the protocol approved for the execution required further review, including public input. Kaplan said that to halt the execution based on the arguments by Baker's attorneys would rewind more than a decade of court proceedings.

The Eastern Shore's civil rights history is not a happy one. From the lynchings of the 1930s to the Cambridge riots of the 1960s, the Shore has struggled with race relations. Much of that is in the past - although perhaps not entirely. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, civil rights groups used federal Voting Rights Act lawsuits (or in some cases, the threat of them) to convince towns and counties with large black populations to create voting districts with majority-minority populations.

A military judge rejected yesterday a request by a Naval Academy oceanography professor to have the sexual harassment charges lodged against him reinvestigated by someone outside the chain of command at the academy. In an e-mail to lawyers involved in the case, a military judge at the Washington Navy Yard denied a defense request contending that Vice Adm. Rodney P. Rempt, the academy's superintendent, created an "unlawful command influence" that biased the charges against Lt. Bryan Black.

The death penalty debate in Maryland is finally over. This spring's decision by the General Assembly to replace the death penalty with life without parole was cemented last week, when right-wing activists failed to muster enough signatures to force the issue onto the ballot. We, the people of Maryland, have sent a clear and firm message: capital punishment belongs in our past, not our future. In doing so, we have joined New Jersey, New York, New Mexico, Illinois and Connecticut as the sixth state in six years and 18th in the nation to abolish the death penalty.

In an unusual move yesterday, state officials rejected a request by Anne Arundel County for $300,000 to pay for a small park to help revitalize an aging Annapolis suburb.Members of the state Board of Public Works said they found the price too high for the 2.8 acres. Members also questioned the logic of buying the property, which largely can't be developed because most of it lies in a flood plain and contains steep banks."If they're not able to build on that, why are we buying it for $300,000?"

The historic Dumbarton House in Pikesville could still be yours. The mortgage company in possession of the 140-year-old Victorian mansion rejected the top bid of $800,000 at a public auction yesterday, so it remains on the market. The asking price is $1.2 million. The main portion of the storied house was built in 1860 by one of Baltimore's wealthiest residents as a wedding gift to his son. It now sits on just one acre, down from 479 acres more than a century ago. It has six bedrooms, 5 1/2 bathrooms, six fireplaces and 12-foot ceilings.

ANNAPOLIS -- The political confrontation hardened yesterday between the administration and the Senate over four fairly routine Schaefer appointments as the full Senate followed a committee recommendation to reject the nominees.But Gov. William Donald Schaefer's patronage secretary said the appointments actually had been withdrawn before they got to the Executive Nominations Committee so that both the committee and ther Senate were acting on something not even before them."I think they certainly went out of their way to make this statement, beyond what the rules are," said Robert A. Pascal, the administration's appointments secretary.

A judge yesterday rejected a motion to dismiss the charges against a former Howard County teacher accused of having inappropriate sexual contact with several students. The trial for Alan Meade Beier, a former science teacher at River Hill High School, had been scheduled to begin this week. Although Judge Luke K. Burns Jr. rejected the defense motion to dismiss the charges during a hearing in Howard County Circuit Court, Howard County prosecutors plan to drop charges against Beier in order to reindict him before a grand jury tomorrow, said Wayne Kirwan, a spokesman for the state's attorney's office.

A bill that would have banned the use of hand-held cellular phones while driving was killed yesterday by a House of Delegates committee. The Commerce and Government Matters Committee voted 14-7 to reject the bill proposed by Del. John S. Arnick, a Baltimore County Democrat. The bill would have made Maryland the first state to adopt such a ban. Advocates had hoped lawmakers would be swayed by a 1999 case in which a car went off the Capital Beltway and killed a New York couple. The Fort Washington driver was talking on his cell phone when the accident occurred.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has rejected a former secretary's charges that the Baltimore County Executive sexually harassed her in 1992 and finally forced her to resign.The brief ruling, received July 1 by the county office of law, declares that the investigation produced no evidence that Niculina V. Robinson's complaints of poor treatment at work resulted from any rejection of sexual advances by Mr. Hayden, or that she was removed from her position and forced to resign.

As we recently celebrated the 45th anniversary of the federal Fair Housing Act, it is significant to note that the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. metropolitan regions are among the most segregated in America. Last month, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law recently reported on a study showing that Maryland's public school system is among the most segregated in the nation. The report, conducted by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, revealed that more than half of the state's black students attended schools with minority enrollments between 90 percent and 100 percent during the 2010-2011 school year, up from 33 percent in 1989.

Anne Arundel County's proposed stormwater fee provided newly appointed County Executive Laura Neuman with her first leadership test, and she failed. Her veto puts the county at risk of sanctions if it does not enact a fee structure by July 1, yet she appears to have no plan for complying with state and federal requirements for reducing the polluted stormwater that is washing into the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. The County Council should override her reckless decision without delay.

A lawyer for John Joseph Merzbacher, a former Catholic school teacher imprisoned for raping a student decades ago, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case after a federal appeals court rejected an earlier argument that he should be set free. In a 21-page petition, Merzbacher's attorney H. Mark Stichel asks the high court to resolve several legal questions, including whether a defendant's claim that he would have taken a plea deal if offered, even while proclaiming his innocence, demonstrates a "reasonable probability" that he would have followed through.

BOGOTA - Colombian lawmakers on Wednesday rejected a polarizing bill to allow same-sex marriage in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation, as hundreds of people took to the streets to demonstrate for and against the measure. The bill was rejected by 51 out of 102 lawmakers in the Senate - with 17 in favor. The negative vote was widely expected, given that lawmakers from the ruling coalition had made an alliance to oppose the initiative. Several hundred people rallied in Bogota's main colonial square as lawmakers debated the proposal to allow people of the same sex to marry.

A 19-year-old naturalized American citizen is accused of committing a crime of violence in the United States, and a gaggle of elected officials are urging for him to be treated as an enemy combatant and placed in the hands of the military. Not just the usual right-wing suspects but Rep. Peter King, Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. John McCain are leading the chorus. Thankfully, President Barack Obama did not listen, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was charged in his hospital bed today by federal officials with using a weapon of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property.

It's the kind of decision that can be lost in the shuffle of more flashy public policy discussions, but the decision last week by leadership at Harford Community College to reject eight bids on a major construction project is the kind of thing more public-funded enterprises should do more regularly. In this instance, the college budgeted $17.423 million for construction of a new building for the Nursing and Allied Health program at the school. Nursing is, and long has been, a cornerstone of community college offerings, particularly at Harford, so it makes perfect sense that HCC would be growing to accommodate such a program.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush suffered a political defeat yesterday when the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected his nomination of Judge Kenneth Ryskamp of Miami to a seat on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.On a party-line, 8-6 vote, the panel bowed to critics who charged Judge Ryskamp with a pattern of insensitive behavior toward minorities, voting against the nomination and, on a 7-7 tie, refusing to send Judge Ryskamp's name on to the full Senate without recommendation.The latter action effectively removed the nominee from consideration.

WASHINGTON -- Maryland's new method of executing murderers with a lethal injection of drugs withstood a constitutional challenge in the Supreme Court yesterday.Without comment, the court turned down the appeal of Tyrone Delano Gilliam Jr., who is awaiting execution for the 1988 murder of a woman outside her townhouse development in Baltimore County.His case was rejected by the justices on the opening day of their new term, as was a new appeal by Vernon Lee Evans Jr., who has been sentenced to die for the murder-for-hire killing in Pikesville in 1983 of two witnesses in a federal drug case.

The Supreme Court left in doubt Monday whether gun owners have a Second-Amendment right to carry a firearm in public, declining to hear a case about concealed-carry laws that is similar to a Maryland suit that still has life in federal courts. Without a comment or dissent, the justices turned down a gun-rights challenge to the New York law, which strictly limits who can legally carry a weapon on the streets. To obtain a concealed carry permit, New Yorkers must convince a county official that they have a "special need for protection" that goes beyond living or working in a high-crime area.

A group of students at the Johns Hopkins University is reviving a campus anti-abortion group that members say will perform "sidewalk counseling" - attempting to discourage pregnant women entering clinics from going through with the procedure. But critics worry that the tactics of Voice for Life will harm the vulnerable women the group says it is trying to help. On Tuesday, a panel of undergraduates will review a decision by the Hopkins Student Government Association to deny recognition to the group.