Second Trial

A 20-year-old woman accused of burning her daughter in a bathtub filled with scalding water and bleach in 1997 was arrested yesterday for allegedly failing to comply with a plea agreement that would have spared her a second trial on child-abuse charges.The trial of Mary V. Cabassa of Severn is scheduled for late next month.She was to be sentenced yesterday by Howard Circuit Judge Lenore R. Gelfman under a plea agreement reached with prosecutors.Cabassa had pleaded guilty in February to charges of child abuse and second-degree assault, and prosecutors were going to recommend that Cabassa spend 18 months in jail while attending parent classes and undergoing psychological counseling.

ROCKVILLE -- They don't have enough spaces filled for a game of Hollywood Squares yet, but jailers at the Montgomery County Detention Center say they've set the rules for celebrity inmates.The sprawling complex off Interstate 270 is home to two national headline-getters this weekend: boxer Mike Tyson and former politician Ruthann Aron.Tyson was sentenced Friday to spend a year in jail for attacking two motorists after a Gaithersburg fender-bender last summer. Aron was given two consecutive 18-month sentences in November for trying to hire a hit man to kill her husband and a lawyer.

The Maryland Court of Appeals has overturned the conviction of a Northwest Baltimore man who was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 1992 fatal shooting of a teen-age girl.The appeals court ordered a new trial for Steven Daniel, 23, who allegedly shot 16-year-old Chaquista Spriggs. Her body was found Dec. 19, 1992, on railroad tracks that run along Wabash Avenue in Northwest Baltimore.It will be the third trial for Daniel, whose first-degree murder conviction in his first trial was overturned in 1994 by the Court of Appeals.

Scotland E. Williams' second trial in the slaying of two lawyers in their weekend home near Annapolis will begin Nov. 3.Anne Arundel Circuit Court Judge Pamela L. North scheduled the trial yesterday after a day of legal sparring by defense and prosecution lawyers over what evidence the state should be required to provide to Williams for his defense.North told the lawyers to set aside 17 days for the trial, which has been moved to Howard County Circuit Court at the request of the defense.Williams, 34, of the 800 block of Bradford Ave. in Arnold, is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Jose E. Trias, 49, and Julie Noel Gilbert, 48, who were found shot to death May 16, 1994, in the bedroom of their weekend home at Winchester on the Severn.

THE FIRST QUESTION many Americans asked about the second O. J. Simpson trial was: Why? The Constitution prohibits double jeopardy -- trying a person twice for the same crime. If Mr. Simpson was tried for first-degree murder and acquitted, how could he be tried again for the deaths?The catch is that the second trial involved civil charges, not criminal charges. The penalties are different -- imprisonment or even death for guilt in the criminal charge of first degree murder, but only financial penalties for the civil charges of being found liable for a death.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- O. J. Simpson's civil trial on wrongful-death charges, now in its fourth month and scheduled to go to the jury late tomorrow, has lacked the high drama and excitement of his criminal trial on murder charges.But it has not been without its moments, including Simpson's taking the stand for the first time, the judge's ruling that race could not be made a major issue in the case and the plaintiffs' suddenly producing 30 photographs that raised fresh doubts about Simpson's contention that he did not kill his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald L. Goldman.

An Anne Arundel Circuit Court judge yesterday postponed the second trial of Scotland Williams, who could face the death penalty in the 1994 slayings of two lawyers in their home near Annapolis.Williams, 34, of Arnold was convicted of killing Jose Trias, 49, and Julie Gilbert, 48, prominent Washington lawyers who were found shot to death in their weekend home overlooking the Severn River in May 1994. Williams won a new trial last year when the Court of Appeals ruled that prejudicial evidence was used against him.Williams was scheduled to be tried May 27 in Howard County, where the trial was moved because of pretrial publicity.

Brace yourself for more of the same: Posturing attorneys, headline-making testimony, nightly news footage of witnesses leaving a courthouse trailed by minicams and microphones.Those will be powerful, perhaps unwelcome reminders of the O. J. Simpson murder trial, which ended in October in his acquittal. As nearly everyone who reads a newspaper or watches TV surely knows, he is on trial again. But there are key differences between the criminal trial of 1995 and the civil trial that began this week.

It is nightmare time at the O. J. Simpson trial.The trial has been halted and is not scheduled to resume until Tuesday."Nobody knows what is going on anymore," a court official told me Friday. "It's chaos here."The chaos began when a dismissed juror (the sixth juror to be dismissed since January) gave a TV interview last week in which she said jurors have been discussing the case among themselves and have been discussing the case on the phone with outsiders.If the jurors really have been discussing the case among themselves, this would be a violation of Judge Lance Ito's orders, but probably not fatal to the trial.

A judge yesterday refused to let a North Laurel man out of prison pending appeal of his conviction for the 1987 robbery and murder of a popular 85-year-old vendor at area horse-racing tracks.The attorney for Nuri Tuncer Icgoren argued that his client met all the bail requirements before his November 1993 conviction and that the same standards should be applied to the case now.But Howard Circuit Judge Raymond Kane Jr. said that the circumstances are different now -- Icgoren is serving a life sentence for first-degree murder in the stabbing death of Raymond Jerman Sr. on Sept.

At the behest of Mayor Sheila Dixon's legal defense team, the theft and perjury charges against the mayor will be separated into two trials. Her lawyers aren't talking about the strategy behind the shift, but other attorneys tell The Sun's Annie Linskey that trying the charges separately might make Ms. Dixon look less culpable - it lessens the possibility of a cumulative effect on jurors in which a profusion of charges might make her seem guilty -...

The 2006 trial of Adan Canela and Policarpio Espinoza was one of the longest in Baltimore history - stretching two months and including 21 days of testimony about the near-beheadings of three of their young relatives. The jury passed 31 notes to the judge before finding the men guilty. But yesterday, attorneys for Canela and Espinoza were back in court for an unusual proceeding that could get their clients a new trial. They allege that retired Circuit Judge David B. Mitchell never shared some of those jury notes with defense attorneys.

Baltimore man convicted of second-degree murder A 23-year-old Northeast Baltimore man was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison Tuesday in the death of Jamal Hill. This was the second trial for Issac Smith of the 5600 block of Carter Ave. The state's second-highest court overturned the original first-degree murder conviction on a technicality. Baltimore Circuit Judge John C. Themelis had not asked potential jurors in 2004 whether they had any racial bias against the defendant.

Nov. 16 1966 Dr. Samuel H. Sheppard was acquitted in his second trial of charges he'd murdered his pregnant wife, Marilyn, in 1954.

For an afternoon, it was the summer of '77. Jimmy Carter was president. Gas was 62 cents a gallon. "You Light Up My Life" topped the pop charts and Maryland Gov. Marvin Mandel and five co-defendants were on trial for an elaborate bribery scheme. Memories of the Mandel trial may have faded in the public consciousness, but yesterday in a packed moot courtroom in downtown Baltimore, they were crystal clear again - thanks to members of Baltimore's Federal Bar Association and the University of Maryland School of Law who assembled many of the still-prominent (and alive)

Nearly 15 years after Albert Givens was initially suspected of bludgeoning, stabbing and sexually assaulting his friend's mother in her Arnold home, he is on trial for her killing a fifth time. As the trial of the former handyman began yesterday in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court, longtime prosecutors said they could not recall another case that had earned the dubious five-time distinction. "The fifth? Wow," said Byron L. Warnken, a University of Baltimore law professor and expert in criminal law. He said multiple retrials can be complicated by challenges to witnesses' credibility: The more times a person gives an account, the greater the likelihood that it isn't exactly the same each time.

A former Navy physicist standing trial for the second time on charges that he used the Internet to try to seduce a teen-age girl was convicted yesterday after a federal jury in Baltimore rejected the defendant's claim that he was engaged merely in an online sexual fantasy. Jurors also found George Paul Chambers, 46, guilty of possessing child pornography. Chambers originally stood trial in December 2002, becoming the first defendant in Maryland's federal courts to contest such charges with the argument that he was only role-playing when he exchanged sexually graphic e-mails and photographs with an undercover FBI agent who assumed the online identity of a 13-year-old cheerleader.

In Baltimore City Judge revokes bail for supremacist charged in arms case Bail was revoked yesterday for a white supremacist who was arrested last month after detectives and federal agents found a ton of weapons and ammunition in his home. Originally, bail for Lovell A. Wheeler was set at $2 million, but Circuit Judge M. Brooke Murdock ordered Wheeler held on a no-bail status yesterday. Also yesterday, Wheeler pleaded not guilty at his arraignment before Administrative Law Judge Ellen M. Heller.

Attorneys representing an Ellicott City ballet teacher convicted of sexually assaulting a student during private lessons are asking a Howard Circuit judge to grant their client a new trial based, in part, on jurors' actions during a visit to his dance studio. The motion, which was filed this week, lists six ways the lawyers say they believe Jose Anibal Macedo's right to a fair trial was compromised this month and includes the jury site visit to Advance Dance Academy on Baltimore National Pike.

Attorneys representing an Ellicott City ballet teacher convicted of sexually assaulting a student during private lessons are asking a Howard Circuit judge to grant their client a new trial based, in part, on jurors' actions during a visit to his dance studio. The motion, which was filed this week, lists six ways the lawyers say they believe Jose Anibal Macedo's right to a fair trial was compromised this month and includes the jury site visit to Advance Dance Academy on Baltimore National Pike.