Washington Lawyer

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, whose personal life has been the stuff of both national myth and melodrama for most of his adult years, plans to get married, his office announced yesterday.Mr. Kennedy, 60, will wed Victoria Reggie, 38, a Washington lawyer whom the senator said he has known for years and has been dating for nine months. It will be a second marriage for both."I love Vicki and her children very much," Mr. Kennedy said in a news release. "We began dating last June, and she has brought enormous happiness into my life.

Breckinridge L. Willcox, a retired Washington lawyer who served as Maryland's top federal prosecutor from 1986 to 1991, died yesterday morning at his wife's ranch in southern California after a battle with cancer. The Bethesda resident was 62. Former colleagues praised Mr. Willcox for his transformative impact on the U.S. attorney's office headquartered in Baltimore. They noted his creation of a cadre of career prosecutors inside the office while roughly doubling the size of his staff and extending its reach into the prosecution of savings-and-loan institutions as well as large-scale illegal drug organizations.

Bruce Loatman was numbly trying to make funeral arrangements for his son, killed in the Feb. 16 train crash in Silver Spring, when the first lawyer called Keith S. Franz, of Towson, who said he had videotapes of the wreckage."

Recently, two events have brought the name of John Wilkes Booth back into the news. Last month, Harford County officials announced they were considering purchasing Tudor Hall, the boyhood home of Booth, Abraham Lincoln's assassin, who had lived there with his father and brother, who were also noted 19th-century Shakespearean actors. The other was the publication of Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, a fast-paced, well-researched and tightly written account by James L. Swanson, a Washington attorney and Lincoln scholar, of the pursuit of the president's killer, which launched the greatest manhunt in American history.

WASHINGTON -- Oh, how the money rolls quietly in for Gov. William Donald Schaefer.Last night, at a fund-raiser not listed on his official public schedule, Mr. Schaefer picked up another $100,000 for his 1990 re-election campaign.About 200 Washington-area supporters paid $1,000 a couple to eat seafood hors d'oeuvres and hear a campaign speech. The governor was described by Bill Wrench, president of the Greater Washington Board of Trade, as "a true friend of the business community."Norman Glasgow, a Washington lawyer said, "The governor is a master at touching our hearts, our minds and our pocketbooks."

WASHINGTON - When the Supreme Court determined the outcome of the presidential election in Bush vs. Gore, it was quickly tagged as an openly partisan institution whose decisions were grounded in the conservative ideology of the Republican Party. Critics pointed to other opinions on issues of federal-state power and criminal law, arguing that the court was rolling back civil liberties and eroding precious freedoms. With five Republican justices in the majority, the court was firmly settled on the right, these detractors charged, with no ringing liberal voices to influence key constitutional decisions.

Eli S. Jacobs did what came naturally, what he'd done so many times during the go-go 1980s when he'd been busy buying companies that built everything from computer parts to chil- dren's toys.He saw a good deal, and he grabbed it.The business was the Orioles -- Baltimore's year-round obsession and chief source of civic pride. Owning a baseball team appealed to Mr. Jacobs, who grew up outside Boston rooting for the Red Sox. But as always with the hard-charging financier, the real lure seemed to be the investment.

WASHINGTON -- Inside the Beltway, you don't need the polls to tell you the Democrats are poised to descend upon the White House.The "Plum Book," a half-inch-thick reference guide to the top jobs and salaries in the executive branch, has been sold out at the Government Printing Office for the last three months -- not so coincidentally, since the Democratic convention.And all through the fall, Democratic fund-raisers, where party activists and "wannabes" have a chance to make themselves known through their pocketbooks, have been so oversubscribed that guests have had to sit on the floor in hotel ballrooms.

WASHINGTON -- Mary E. Stansel, the elusive Washington lawyer whose lawsuit against NAACP Executive Director Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. has caused serious turmoil in the 85-year old civil rights organization, is scheduled to appear in court here today for a hearing in an unrelated case.Ms. Stansel has steadfastly avoided media attention since her suit against Dr. Chavis became public late last month. She has not returned repeated phone calls from The Sun and has not commented publicly on the case.

WASHINGTON -- Special prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr has opened a third front in his legal battle with President Clinton, using a federal grand jury in Virginia to broaden his investigation of the White House sex scandal, The Sun has learned.The grand jury now sitting in the Northern Virginia suburb of Alexandria has issued a subpoena for records of the Washington lawyer recruited by presidential adviser Vernon E. Jordan Jr. to represent former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky.The lawyer, Francis D. Carter, represented Lewinsky only briefly.

WASHINGTON - When the Supreme Court determined the outcome of the presidential election in Bush vs. Gore, it was quickly tagged as an openly partisan institution whose decisions were grounded in the conservative ideology of the Republican Party. Critics pointed to other opinions on issues of federal-state power and criminal law, arguing that the court was rolling back civil liberties and eroding precious freedoms. With five Republican justices in the majority, the court was firmly settled on the right, these detractors charged, with no ringing liberal voices to influence key constitutional decisions.

WASHINGTON -- Special prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr has opened a third front in his legal battle with President Clinton, using a federal grand jury in Virginia to broaden his investigation of the White House sex scandal, The Sun has learned.The grand jury now sitting in the Northern Virginia suburb of Alexandria has issued a subpoena for records of the Washington lawyer recruited by presidential adviser Vernon E. Jordan Jr. to represent former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky.The lawyer, Francis D. Carter, represented Lewinsky only briefly.

WASHINGTON -- Barry Johnson and Jeff King boast no clients, haven't taken the bar exam and do their best work in the library. They are law students. But for a summer, as they stride the halls of one of this city's most politically connected law firms, they are also something else:Power brokers in training.The two are among hundreds of attorneys-to-be who migrate here every year to work as summer associates -- law students recruited for a few months to research case law, do lunch and otherwise try on the life of the Washington lawyer.

Bruce Loatman was numbly trying to make funeral arrangements for his son, killed in the Feb. 16 train crash in Silver Spring, when the first lawyer called Keith S. Franz, of Towson, who said he had videotapes of the wreckage."

Scotland E. Williams, accused in the shooting deaths of two Washington lawyers in their weekend home in Winchester on the Severn, may be a thief, but he is no killer, Craig M. Gendler told an Anne Arundel County jury yesterday.Mr. Gendler, Mr. Williams' defense lawyer, said the prosecution's evidence may show that Mr. Williams drove one of the lawyer's cars, used her bank card and was wearing her watch when he was arrested, but it can't place him inside the house where she was killed.Mr. Williams, 31, of Arnold went on trial on first-degree murder charges yesterday in the deaths of Jose Trias, 49, and Julie Gilbert, 48. The lawyers died of single bullet wounds to the backs of their heads.

The NAACP will not pay the Rev. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., its recently fired executive director, any of the more than $300,000 in salary due on the balance of his three-year contract, according to a settlement agreement to be made public today.Sources close to parties on both sides of the agreement said the Baltimore-based civil rights group would pay only $7,400 to cover two mortgage payments on Dr. Chavis' Ellicott City home, as well as extend his family's medical benefits and his life insurance through April.

WASHINGTON -- On his visit to the town that will soon be his home, President-elect Bill Clinton ventured out beyond the marble monuments to a distant stretch of neon signs, laundromats and liquor stores where some of his new neighbors live.And in true neighborly fashion, thousands of area residents poured onto the block of mostly black-owned businesses in Northwest Washington to welcome the incoming leader with everything from a Redskins cap to carry-out Chinese food to a saxophone solo."I expect to be out in this city quite a lot," Mr. Clinton told the largely black crowd that had lined a block of Georgia Avenue, not far from open-air drug markets and boarded-up buildings.

WASHINGTON -- Stephen G. Breyer would have been on the Supreme Court a year earlier, his friends believe, if he had met President Clinton at the top of the judge's form as a charmer and a truly funny man.Instead, when the two men had lunch at the White House late last spring, Judge Breyer was well below par, suffering from a broken rib and a punctured lung, and weary from a 10-hour train trip after leaving a hospital bed. He could not fly because of the...

WASHINGTON -- Mary E. Stansel, the elusive Washington lawyer whose lawsuit against NAACP Executive Director Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. has caused serious turmoil in the 85-year old civil rights organization, is scheduled to appear in court here today for a hearing in an unrelated case.Ms. Stansel has steadfastly avoided media attention since her suit against Dr. Chavis became public late last month. She has not returned repeated phone calls from The Sun and has not commented publicly on the case.

WASHINGTON -- Stephen G. Breyer would have been on the Supreme Court a year earlier, his friends believe, if he had met President Clinton at the top of the judge's form as a charmer and a truly funny man.Instead, when the two men had lunch at the White House late last spring, Judge Breyer was well below par, suffering from a broken rib and a punctured lung, and weary from a 10-hour train trip after leaving a hospital bed. He could not fly because of the...