History > 2007 > USA > States > Justice (IV)

Path to Parole

Becomes Issue in Murder Case

July 31, 2007
The New York Times
By ALISON LEIGH COWAN

STAMFORD, Conn., July 30 — Having committed a string of brazen nighttime burglaries by the age of 22, Joshua Komisarjevsky was facing serious time in a state penitentiary when he stood before Judge James M. Bentivegna in late 2002, with his parents, girlfriend and 9-month-old daughter in the gallery.

He told the court he wanted to apologize to his parents, who were sitting in the front row, and only wished his victims had come to court as well so he could tell them, “I really am sorry for the things I did.” He and his lawyer attributed the crime spree in part to personal troubles, including learning disabilities, childhood sexual abuse and the revelation at age 14 that he had been adopted as a baby.

“I keep hearing from the prosecutor that I’m a wild animal,” Mr. Komisarjevsky (pronounced ko-mi-sor-JEFF-ski) told state officials during a presentencing investigation, according to a transcript of the sentencing hearing. “I’m not.”

Saying “it’s very apparent that you have a loving family that has done as much as they can to support you,” Judge Bentivegna nonetheless concluded that Mr. Komisarjevsky was a “cold, calculating predator,” and sentenced him to nine years in prison, followed by six on parole.

But in a move state officials now acknowledge was not made according to proper procedures, Mr. Komisarjevsky was paroled in April 2007. He now could face the death penalty for a brutal home invasion in Cheshire, the very town where he grew up in a storied and prominent family of Russian descent. What appears to have begun as a mirror image of Mr. Komisarjevsky’s earlier burglaries took a gruesome turn: He and another career criminal he met in a Hartford halfway house, Steven J. Hayes, 44, are accused of murdering Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and her daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11; sexually assaulting the mother and Michaela; severely beating the father, Dr. William A. Petit Jr., 50; and setting the house on fire.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell has ordered a “top to bottom” review of the criminal justice system to see where it failed, but equally perplexing is the transformation of Mr. Komisarjevsky, who was adopted at 14 days old by a couple who believed they could not have children of their own. The grandson of a famous Russian theatrical director and a pioneering modern dancer who once owned vast tracts of land not far from the Petits, he was home-schooled along with his sister, Naomi, in a pre-Revolutionary landmark that is known around town as the Merriman Cook house.

“This was a kid in and out of trouble,” Christopher Komisarjevsky, an uncle, said in an interview. “He was estranged from the family. A lot of what you’re asking is information that we just don’t know.”

A former neighbor who insisted on anonymity said the only mischief he could recall Joshua’s stirring up as a child in the 1980s was when he and his friends scuffed the clay tennis court behind his grandparents’ home with their tricycles.

But the 2002 court transcript quotes his defense lawyer, William T. Gerace, as saying that Mr. Komisarjevsky suffered from attention deficit disorder and the learning disabilities dyslexia and dysgraphia as a child, and suffered eight concussions along the way that affected his personality.

Mr. Gerace also told the judge his client was sexually abused “at several different points in his life,” starting at the hands of foster children his parents had taken in. Health officials at Elmcrest, a psychiatric hospital, tried at one point to put Mr. Komisarjevsky on antidepressants, but his parents balked, suggesting their son “deal with it on a spiritual level” and sent him to “a faith program” instead, according to the transcript.

Efforts to reach Mr. Komisarjevsky’s parents, Benedict, an electrical contractor, and Judé, by telephone at their home Monday were unsuccessful. In a statement last week, they said, “We cannot understand what would have made something like this happen.”

Mrs. Komisarjevsky said at the sentencing hearing that she did not want her son to have antidepressants because she feared he wanted to overdose; her husband said he was proud that Joshua had admitted to his misdeeds on arrest.

“We have stood by our son for all these years and we do love him and care about him and consider him as our true son even though he was adopted,” the elder Mr. Komisarjevsky told the judge. “It’s a privilege to have him as a son since then and to walk all the trials and tribulations that we have experienced.”

One turning point appears to have come in 1995, when Joshua was 14, according to the transcript. That year, his step-grandfather, John Chamberlain, with whom he was close, died. He was a celebrated newsman and syndicated writer who had married Benedict’s mother, Ernestine Stodelle, the dancer, after her first husband, Theodore Komisarjevsky, died in 1954. Also when Joshua was 14, he learned he had been adopted, and it was then, he told the authorities before his 2002 sentencing, that he first broke into a house.

It grew into a habit. Arrest warrants show a series of mostly petty burglaries in Bristol, Burlington, Cheshire and Farmington: He stole flatware, china and a medical bag with a stethoscope from one house; a crystal vase and cigarette case from another; $40 from one purse and $20 from another. He typically broke in through a back screen door or back window, using night-vision equipment, a knife, latex gloves and a green Army backpack, the documents show.

Once, at a state trooper’s house protected by a dog, he took boots, uniform shirts, a sweater and some other items, totaling $624, from a locker in the cellar.

“The warrants kept coming and coming,” Mr. Gerace, his former defense lawyer, recalled of the earlier burglaries in an interview on Monday. “He covered a lot of territory.”

George A. Montowski, whose home in Bristol was burglarized in July 2001 while he and his wife were away on vacation but their 19-year-old was home, said in an interview Monday that the incident “made us feel violated,” recalling the fear of it happening “while my son was sleeping downstairs.”

Another burglary victim, according to the prosecutor’s comments at the 2002 sentencing hearing, said, “Someone like him shouldn’t be out on the streets.”

But Mr. Gerace described his former client as “a shy, withdrawn, quiet polite kid” who was “very, very contrite,” saying he was having trouble squaring the young man he knew with the heinous crimes against the Petit family.

“His pregnant girlfriend would come to court like clockwork,” Mr. Gerace said. “She was very worried about him not being able to see the baby if he did time.”

In fact the baby, Jayda, was born in March 2002, while Mr. Komisarjevsky was behind bars; he pleaded guilty that September to 12 burglaries, having already been convicted of a similar string in Meriden. The former girlfriend, Jennifer Norton, Jayda’s mother, did not return repeated telephone calls in recent days.

The prosecutor in the 2002 cases, Ronald Dearstyne, told the judge that in 15 years of prosecuting burglaries, he could not recall a perpetrator who “had planned it out to this degree.” Beyond the $25,369 in goods Mr. Komisarjevsky’s victims reported stolen, Mr. Dearstyne said, there was “a cost that cannot be quantified, and that’s the emotional trauma suffered by these people.”

“These people are just like us: They’re family people, they go to work, they come home,” he added, in a chilling precursor to the current case, which has spread fear across the middle-class suburbs of this state. “If we can’t go home at night and feel safe in our own home and then go to bed at night and sleep in our own home and feel safe, then where can we feel safe, judge?”

Mr. Dearstyne declined through a secretary to discuss the case Monday.

Judge Bentivegna agreed that the crimes were serious, leaving homeowners feeling violated and vulnerable, and told Mr. Komisarjevsky that between the five previous convictions in Meriden and the dozen in Bristol, “it’s fair to characterize your course of conduct as predatory.” With the sentence of nine years in prison followed by six on parole, he instructed the defendant, “If you can’t change your life around” in the next 15 years, “there’s really no hope for you.”

Stacey Stowe and Christine Stuart contributed reporting.

    Path to Parole Becomes Issue in Murder Case, NYT, 31.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/nyregion/31slay.html

Courts Struggle for Jurors

July 27, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:43 p.m. ET
The New York Times

Madeline Byrne was making a quick trip to the grocery store to buy some cheese when a sheriff approached her car in the parking lot and slipped something through her open window.

Byrne didn't get the cheese, but she did get a jury summons.

The 64-year-old woman was ordered to report for jury duty a little more than an hour later at the Lee County courthouse in Sanford, N.C. When Byrne protested, the sheriff told her: ''Be there or you'll be in contempt.''

''I wasn't too happy,'' said Byrne, one of at least a dozen people handed summonses at random in March outside a Food Lion and Wal-Mart.

Courts across the country have been going to extraordinary lengths in recent years to get people to report for jury duty -- a cornerstone of democracy and a civic responsibility that many citizens would do almost anything to avoid.

Experts say the shirking of jury duty has been a problem as long as anyone can remember, and it is unclear whether it has gotten any worse in the past few decades. But according to one study, fewer than half of all Americans summoned report for duty, in part because of apathy and busy lifestyles.

''Everybody likes jury duty -- just not this week,'' said Patricia Lee Refo, a Phoenix lawyer who chaired the American Jury Project, an effort by the American Bar Association to increase jury participation.

Among other efforts around the country to boost participation:

-- In Los Angeles County, officials have put ads promoting jury service on the court system's mail trucks. They read: ''Jury Service: You Be the Judge.''

-- In New York state, occupational exemptions to jury service have been eliminated, so doctors, lawyers, firefighters, police officers and even judges can no longer get out of jury duty.

-- In Florida, court officials use a poster of Harrison Ford, star of the movie ''Presumed Innocent,'' to encourage people to report for jury duty. The poster was part of a 2005 public service campaign developed by the ABA. ''If a picture of Harrison Ford helps us be a more democratic society, then I'm all for it,'' said Greg Cowan, a court official in Leon County, Fla.

-- In Washington, D.C., judges have summoned no-shows to court, where they must explain why they missed their date or face up to seven days in jail and a $300 fine. In Tulare County, Calif., sheriffs go to the homes of no-shows and hand them orders to appear in court to explain themselves.

-- Around the country, some courts have tried to make jury service less burdensome by raising daily fees paid to jurors, limiting jury service to one day or one trial, and reimbursing jurors for parking costs.

Nationally, about 46 percent of people summoned for jury duty show up, according to a survey of jury improvement efforts conducted by the National Center for State Courts and published in April. It was the organization's first such survey.

Many of the rest did not show up or were excused or disqualified for a variety of reasons, including medical or financial hardship, or employment in a job exempt from jury service. Or, they never received their jury summons because it was mailed to an outdated address.

Ann Blakely, the clerk of Superior Court in North Carolina's Lee County, said sending out sheriffs to find jurors at random is done very rarely, and only when a judge is about to begin a case and there are not enough jurors.

''Not again in my lifetime, I hope,'' she said. ''We got a lot of complaints from people. You do not make friends like that.''

Some people struggle mightily to get out of jury duty. Earlier this month, a Cape Cod, Mass., judge reprimanded a potential juror and reported him to prosecutors after he tried to get out of jury service by saying he was ''not a fan of homosexuals and most blacks'' and was ''frequently found to be a liar, too.''

In Manhattan, about 33 percent of those summoned show up the day they are called -- up from 23 percent in the mid-1990s, before widespread reforms were put in place, including the elimination of all occupational exemptions and the use of five different lists to pick potential jurors from, including voter registrations, licensed drivers, taxpayers, unemployment and aid recipients, said Anthony Manisero, statewide jury manager.

In Boston, about 24 percent of the people called for jury duty in 2006 completed their service before the end of the year -- an improvement from less than 20 percent in the mid-1990s, before the city began updating its address lists.

Nevertheless, the juror shortage in Boston has become so acute that court officials are worried they may run out of jurors before the end of the year.

An increase in the number of homicides in Boston and the use of special grand juries to investigate violent crimes have eaten into the prospective juror list.

The city also has a large number of immigrants, who are exempt from jury duty, and college students, who move so frequently that their summonses are often sent back as undeliverable.

The problem appears to be worse in urban courts, where the population is more transient and address lists can quickly become outdated. But rural and suburban areas also have problems with reluctant jurors.

In Tulare County, Calif., where the trial of two brothers accused of murdering five people in a bar had to be delayed a day because not enough prospective jurors showed up, Superior Court Judge Lloyd Hicks said the warning letters and visits from the sheriff are making a difference. He said the no-show rate has declined from about 56 percent to 39 percent since the crackdown began about a year ago.

''It had been a common problem because people were aware that nothing would happen to them,'' Hicks said. Now, people are calling in to schedule their jury service after watching their neighbors get a visit from the sheriff, he said.

    Courts Struggle for Jurors, NYT, 27.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Reluctant-Jurors.html

Woman Compentent for Baby - Snatcher Trial

July 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:49 a.m. ET
The New York Times

LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) -- A woman accused of slipping into a maternity ward while wearing hospital scrubs and abducting a newborn girl is competent to stand trial, a judge ruled Thursday.

Rayshaun Parson, 21, pleaded not guilty in April to kidnapping in the disappearance of Mychael Darthard-Dawodu. The baby was found a day after her disappearance in Clovis, N.M., where Parson lived.

Parson was arrested and has been in federal custody ever since.

Surveillance footage from Covenant Lakeside Hospital showed a woman wearing blue and flower-print scrubs and a gray, puffy jacket with a hood walking out of the hospital in the middle of the night March 10. She was carrying a purse as she walked past an unstaffed information desk near the exit.

Prosecutors have said Parson scouted security measures at Covenant and also went to another Lubbock maternity ward the day the baby was abducted.

U.S. District Judge Sam Cummings, who has issued a gag order in the case, sealed the report on Parson's mental evaluation. The trial was set for Aug. 20.

    Woman Compentent for Baby - Snatcher Trial, NYT, 26.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Infant-Abducted.html

Therapist Sentenced in Patient Abuse

July 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:12 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Respiratory therapist Wayne Albert Bleyle was in New York state on a wintry day when investigators called him about allegations he had molested patients too sick to defend themselves.

When they asked how many children he molested, investigators said, he looked out his window and asked, ''How many snowflakes are there out there?''

On Wednesday, Bleyle didn't turn to look as a succession of parents and family members of victims spoke at his sentencing hearing. Some wept; others shook with anger.

As part of a plea deal, Bleyle, 56, was sentenced to 45 years and eight months in prison for molesting five of his young, disabled patients and for taking pornographic photographs of others. Prosecutors said he targeted those who were comatose, brain-damaged or too disabled to talk.

''You have violated the trust of your patients, you have violated the trust of your employer, and you have inflicted indescribable anguish on your victims and their families,'' Superior Court Judge Kenneth K. So told Bleyle.

Bleyle, who told investigators he molested as many as half the children he treated in his 10 years working in the convalescent ward at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego, stared straight ahead or cast his eyes down at the table in front of him as victims' relatives spoke.

''I just want you to know it doesn't matter what you say or how many years you spend in jail -- it's not going to be enough,'' Lillian Godfrey, whose daughter is now dead, told Bleyle. ''I don't think you have a soul. You're just an empty human shell.''

Prosecutors said the extent of Bleyle's molestation will never be known because he targeted patients who were comatose, brain-damaged or too disabled to speak.

He was arrested last year after investigators tracing pornography through the Internet found tens of thousands of pornographic images on his computer, including photographs he took of himself abusing his patients.

He allegedly confessed to investigators in March 2006 when they reached him by phone in New York state, where he was visiting relatives. When he was arrested, he was living in a trailer in a casino parking lot because his wife had kicked him out of the house.

Bleyle worked at the renowned Rady hospital for 25 years, the last 10 at the convalescent home, where the most disabled patients live. The 59-bed convalescent hospital treated 176 patients during Bleyle's 10 years working there.

''He wishes to apologize to all the victims and their families,'' said his attorney, Casey Donovan, who noted that Bleyle himself had been sexually abused as a boy. ''He knows he can never make amends for what he has done.''

Investigators identified just four of Bleyle's victims: three girls and a boy who were all younger than 14 when the molestations took place. Two of the children have since died. Investigators were never able to put a name to one of the victims, a 2-year-old girl found in pictures.

Janice Frost, whose 10-year-old daughter died in June 2006, three months after investigators discovered her image on Bleyle's home computer, called it a ''parent's worst nightmare.''

Frost said her daughter was under Bleyle's care from the time she entered the long-term facility as a 10-day-old newborn suffering a brain condition.

''During her dying moments, I told her I would see this through,'' Frost said outside the courtroom, as she clutched one of her three older daughters.

Bleyle faced up to 165 years if he had been convicted on all counts in a jury trial. Prosecutors said they made a deal in part because they were anxious to spare one of Bleyle's victims, a teenage girl who claimed Bleyle inappropriately touched her buttocks while she recovered from a stroke, the strain of testifying before a jury.

Bleyle's arrest prompted the hospital to ban cell phones in patient treatment areas, including rooms, and require doors and curtains around patients be left open most of the time, said hospital spokesman Ben Metcalf.

In court, Pandora Johnson said she had asked her son, who cannot speak because of a breathing device in his throat, whether he had been abused.

''He didn't give his usual yes or no sign. He just looked afraid,'' Johnson said. ''And when I said, 'Wayne will never do this to you again,' he gave me a big smile. That smile broke my heart.''

    Therapist Sentenced in Patient Abuse, NYT, 26.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Therapist-Patient-Molestation.html

Boy to Stand Trial for Killing Principal

July 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:24 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BARABOO, Wis. -- Nearly a year after a 16-year-old shot and killed his principal, jurors will be asked to decide if he was a bullied, immature child or a murderer bent on revenge.

Eric Hainstock is charged with first-degree murder and is being tried as an adult in the shooting death of Weston Schools Principal John Klang. If convicted, he could face life in prison. Hainstock's trial was to begin Thursday.

According to a criminal complaint, Hainstock told detectives he took guns to Weston the morning of Sept. 29 because he was upset that Klang and other school officials had done nothing to stop fellow students from teasing him. He told investigators he wanted to make people listen to him.

But Klang rushed him in a school hallway and tackled him. Hainstock told detectives he shot the principal three times during the struggle. A wounded Klang managed to take the gun from Hainstock.

Sauk County District Attorney Pat Barrett has portrayed Hainstock as a selfish liar who reacts violently whenever adults tell him what to do. He is expected to introduce evidence at the trial that in the two weeks leading up to the shooting, Hainstock threw a stapler at a teacher and a book at a student, saying ''I am going to laugh when everyone in this school gets hurt.''

Hainstock's attorneys, public defenders Rhoda Ricciardi and Jon Helland, have said Hainstock was bullied and that teachers looked the other way.

    Boy to Stand Trial for Killing Principal, NYT, 26.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-School-Shooting.html

3 Teens Indicted in Rape Held As Adults

July 19, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:14 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Three teens suspected in the gang rape and assault of a mother and her 12-year-old son at a crime-ridden housing project were transferred Thursday from juvenile to adult detention at the Palm Beach County Jail.

Jakaris Taylor, 15, and Nathan Walker, 16, were charged Wednesday in a 14-count indictment that included allegations of sexual battery, kidnapping and burglary. The judge postponed a hearing for Avion Lawson, 14, who faces the same charges, after his attorney failed to appear.

Authorities said the three were identified through fingerprints and DNA found inside the woman's home.

If convicted, the boys could face life in prison.

Prosecutors believe the three were among an armed group of as many as 10 teens wearing masks that raped the 35-year-old woman and beat her son. The woman told authorities she was forced at gunpoint to perform oral sex on her son during the June 18 attack at the Dunbar Village housing project. The attackers also beat the boy and poured cleaning solution into his eyes, police said.

Taylor's lawyer, Chris Haddad, said his client maintains he is innocent. ''The indictment is not evidence of guilt,'' he said.

Telephone messages left by The Associated Press for Lawson's and Walker's attorneys were not returned.

    3 Teens Indicted in Rape Held As Adults, NYT, 19.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Gang-Rape-Teens.html

Police Shooting Suspects Are Arraigned Again, This Time for Murder

July 17, 2007
The New York Times
By ANDY NEWMAN

Once again, the shackled defendants were led into a Brooklyn courtroom packed wall to wall with police officers. Once again, the officers clapped and cheered long and loud after the men were formally arraigned.

Yesterday, though, the charge was first-degree murder, for what a prosecutor called the “outright execution” of a police officer who died on Saturday, five days after he and his partner were shot by the occupants of a stolen sport-utility vehicle they had pulled over.

All three men — Dexter Bostic, Robert Ellis and Lee Woods — face life in prison if convicted. New York State does not have a viable death-penalty law, and while the police union called yesterday for federal prosecutors to take over the case, thereby making it eligible for the death penalty, federal officials said they would not step in.

“This is the Brooklyn D.A.’s case, and it’s going to be prosecuted by the Brooklyn district attorney,” said Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for the United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn.

According to prosecutors, Mr. Bostic, sitting in the passenger’s seat of the stolen car, shot Officer Russel Timoshenko in the mouth and throat; Mr. Ellis, in the back seat, shot Officer Herman Yan in the arm and in his bullet-resistant vest; and Mr. Woods drove the car, a BMW that had been taken from the dealership where Mr. Bostic and possibly Mr. Ellis worked. Officer Yan was released from Kings County Hospital Center on Tuesday.

Officer Timoshenko, 23, who never regained consciousness, died Saturday afternoon at Kings County. His mother, weeping profusely, sat beside his stricken-looking father in the front row in Brooklyn Criminal Court as an assistant Brooklyn district attorney, Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi, presented the murder charges.

“Your honor,” she told Judge Richard N. Allman, “this is the third time in the last seven days that we’ve been before this court for the purpose of arraigning these defendants on charges of trying to kill two police officers. Unfortunately, I stand now before you upgrading these charges: the defendants were regrettably successful in their crime.”

The men were again denied bail, prompting two young women sitting among the defendants’ supporters to wipe away tears. All three were arraigned last week on attempted-murder charges. Mr. Woods was arrested hours after the shooting at his girlfriend’s house in Queens, officials said, while Mr. Bostic and Mr. Ellis were arrested later in the week near Interstate 80 outside Stroudsburg, Pa., after a manhunt.

After the charges were read, Mr. Woods, 29, with long dreadlocks, dressed in a white T-shirt and brown pants, opened his mouth wide for a rubber-gloved detective to swab his cheek for a DNA sample. Mr. Bostic and Mr. Ellis, both 34, submitted to the same procedure in open court at their arraignments on Friday. The authorities said they wanted the samples to compare them against DNA found on a soft-drink container found in the stolen vehicle.

All three men have lengthy criminal records.

Parts of New York’s death penalty statute were ruled unconstitutional in 2004, but there is still a federal death penalty that can be applied to murder under certain conditions. After two undercover police officers were murdered in Staten Island in 2003, the defendants were prosecuted under federal racketeering law because, the authorities said, they were part of a violent gang. The man convicted of shooting the officers, Ronell Wilson, was sentenced to death in January 2007.

Law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release information, said that in this case, federal prosecutors would step in only if Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, asked them to, and that Mr. Hynes would be unlikely to do so.

The three defendants are being held separately. Mr. Bostic is in a close-supervision unit at Rikers Island. Mr. Woods is in a punitive-segregation unit on Rikers because he committed so many infractions, including assaulting inmates and correction officers, during previous jail stints that he still owes Rikers more than five years of punitive-segregation time, said Stephen Morello, a spokesman for the city’s Correction Department.

And Mr. Ellis is being held at the Nassau County Jail in East Meadow, N.Y. Mr. Morello said that Mr. Ellis was removed in an effort “to make absolutely certain of the safety of all three and their separation.”

Also yesterday, the State Division of Parole released transcripts of all three men’s parole hearings. The transcripts reveal that Mr. Ellis, who pleaded guilty to rape and sodomy in the early 1990s, was denied parole three times, in part because he continued to deny that he had cut the woman he had sexually assaulted.

    Police Shooting Suspects Are Arraigned Again, This Time for Murder, NYT, 17.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/nyregion/17arraign.html

When the Trill of a Cellphone Brings the Clang of Prison Doors

July 16, 2007
The New York Times
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

It was a Perry Mason moment in the trial of Paul Cortez, an actor and yoga teacher who was ultimately convicted of killing his former girlfriend Catherine Woods, a dancer who was working as a stripper.

After weeks of testimony and a parade of witnesses, the case against Mr. Cortez boiled down to this: a bloody fingerprint and data collected from a cellphone.

A record from a T-Mobile cellphone transmission tower on the day Ms. Woods was murdered showed that Mr. Cortez called her 13 times in the hour and a half before her death, and then never again. He had told the police in a written statement that he made the calls from his home.

But as he called, the record showed his cell signal hitting a tower on East 105th Street, near his apartment, and gradually shifting to towers on East 86th and East 84th Streets, near Ms. Woods’s apartment. At trial, when the prosecutor questioned him about the discrepancy, Mr. Cortez changed course, saying he had made some of the calls from a Starbucks.

Examining cellphone data is a technique that has moved from being a masterful surprise in trials to being a standard tool in the investigative arsenal of the police and prosecutors, with records routinely provided by cellphone companies in response to subpoenas. Its use in prosecutions is often challenged, for privacy reasons and for technical reasons, especially when the data comes during the morning or evening rush, when circuits are crowded and calls can be redirected to other towers. But it is often allowed and is used by both prosecutors and defense attorneys to buttress their cases.

“It’s one of the most important developments in technology in the courtroom in the last five years,” said Mark J. Geragos, a Los Angeles defense lawyer known for his celebrity clients, who challenged cell tower data while defending Scott Peterson, a Modesto, Calif., fertilizer salesman sentenced to death in 2005 for killing his pregnant wife, Laci.

Many people know that cellphones can be used as global positioning devices in real time. Yet few are aware that phone companies keep records from transmitters for months or longer that can be used to trace approximately where a caller was at the time a crime was committed.

“It’s another arrow in the quiver,” said Joyce B. David, a lawyer whose client Darryl Littlejohn, a nightclub bouncer, is facing trial in the death of Imette St. Guillen, a graduate student found strangled in February 2006. When he was arraigned, the police and prosecutors said cell tower records from the day of the killing indicated movement from his home to near the spot in Brooklyn where Ms. St. Guillen’s body was found.

Ms. David said she would challenge the trustworthiness of cell records.

Daniel Castleman, chief of investigations for the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, described tower data as “circumstantial but convincing.”

Defense lawyers have also begun using cellphone, or cell site, records to establish alibis.

In January, George A. Farkas, a defense lawyer, presented such records to a judge in Brooklyn to show that his client Eric Wright, accused of killing a drug dealer, was in Newark about 13 minutes after the killing, which took place in East New York, Brooklyn.

The assistant district attorney who was prosecuting the case, Kenneth Mark Taub, ridiculed the alibi, contending that while the phone might have been in Newark, the defendant was not. Mr. Taub suggested that cell tower technology could lead to a new tactic by criminals of planting their phones “in a place other than where they’re committing the crime.”

Mr. Farkas said in an interview that he got the idea of going to Sprint for transmitter data after a jailhouse interview with his client. As Mr. Farkas was leaving, he said, Mr. Wright told him, almost as an afterthought: “The only reason I knew this happened was I was on the phone, talking to my friend Chris. He was in East New York, around the corner from where the shooting was.”

Mr. Farkas added: “I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and cellphones are relatively new to me. But I know the issue is, was he using his cellphone? If he was using his cellphone, then he’s where the cellphone was.” Mr. Wright’s trial is scheduled to begin on Aug. 13.

In the Peterson case, prosecutors introduced cell tower records to show Mr. Peterson’s movements on the day his wife disappeared.

“One of the theories was that when he said he had left the house at 9:30, in fact around 9:50 or 9:46 his phone call pinged on a tower near the house,” Mr. Geragos said in an interview.

Mr. Geragos conducted what legal observers have come to consider a groundbreaking cross-examination of the prosecution’s expert witness, focusing on the flaws in cellphone transmitter technology. He managed to disqualify two witnesses, he recalled, and forced a third witness, a telephone company employee, to admit that when cellphone traffic is very heavy, a signal can be redirected to a nearby tower.

Ms. David, the lawyer for Mr. Littlejohn, said her search for an expert witness led her to Jeff M. Fischbach, an electronic evidence analyst and chief executive of Second Wave, a consulting firm. Mr. Fischbach said that his first exposure to cellphone data evidence was about four years ago, and that demand for his services to debunk transmitter data had risen rapidly since.

“The important thing about cell tower data is not what it proves, but what it can’t prove,” he said. “Cell tower data cannot place a person at an exact location. And even if it could, if the phone is not surgically implanted, you still can’t prove it.”

Gerald L. Shargel, a Manhattan defense lawyer, vividly remembers the first time a client was confronted with cell tower records, in the late 1990s. “It was one of the earliest cases where cell site information was introduced,” he recalled.

His client was Gurmeet Singh Dhinsa, who rose from car wash attendant to millionaire gas station mogul. In 1999, Mr. Dhinsa was convicted in federal court in Brooklyn of racketeering and orchestrating two contract killings.

Mr. Dhinsa was not just a confident businessman, but also a confident cellphone user. Through tower records, prosecutors traced him to within a short distance of a killing at the time it took place.

That his approximate whereabouts could be traced through cellphone calls came as a total surprise to Mr. Dhinsa. “He didn’t know,” Mr. Shargel said. “I didn’t know. We got late discovery. I was like, ‘Cell sites? What the?’ I didn’t know anything about it. I quickly called some telephone expert. No one had ever heard of it, including the judge.”

Cellphone users who commit crimes are often caught because they are creatures of habit, Mr. Castleman, of the Manhattan district attorney’s office, said. “For the most part, people don’t think about those things,” he said. “Organized crime figures have known for a long time that we can tap cellphones, and yet they continue to talk on them. It’s just human nature.”

But occasionally, those with something to hide are more calculating, as prosecutors have described the hedge fund traders accused of hatching an insider-trading scheme during a meeting at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Terminal. The traders used disposable cellphones, federal investigators said when they announced their investigation in March.

But Mr. Castleman warns that even throwaway phones leave users vulnerable. “I’m not sure I want to advertise it,” he said, “but yes, every time the criminals come up with a new way of using technology, there’s a countermeasure.”

    When the Trill of a Cellphone Brings the Clang of Prison Doors, NYT, 16.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/16/nyregion/16cell.html

Rapper Remy Ma Arraigned in NYC Shooting

July 15, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:43 p.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- Grammy-nominated rapper Remy Ma pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and other counts Sunday in the shooting of a woman in a trendy Manhattan neighborhood.

At the rapper's arraignment, a judge granted the prosecution's request for bail to be set at $250,000. Remy Ma was jailed while the judge reviewed her bail offer.

Police found a woman with a gunshot wound to her lower torso early Saturday in the Meatpacking District, which is usually crowded with late-night revelers on weekends.

Three blocks away, officers discovered a luxury SUV owned by Remy Ma, whose real name is Remy Smith. The vehicle was involved in a single-car crash and abandoned, police said.

The victim, Makeda Barnes-Joseph, 23, was hospitalized in stable condition Sunday. Prosecutors said she and the rapper knew each other.

Remy Ma turned herself in Saturday night. She was charged with attempted murder, assault and weapon possession.

''I ask everyone to keep an open mind,'' said Scott Leemon, her attorney. ''Things are not always as they seem.''

Remy Ma, 26, is promoted on her Web site as an up-from-the-streets artist who escaped the hard-knock life of the Bronx to become a hip-hop star. She was nominated for a Grammy as part of the Terror Squad for the 2004 summer smash ''Lean Back.'' She also earned the Best Female Hip-Hop Artist award at the 2005 BET Awards.

The singer went on to a solo career, releasing last year's ''There's Something About Remy.'' She has appeared on recordings with best-selling performers including Fat Joe, Eminem and R. Kelly, according to her Web site.

    Rapper Remy Ma Arraigned in NYC Shooting, NYT, 15.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-People-Remy-Ma.html

Mistrial in Rape Case With Banned Words

July 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:00 a.m. ET
The New York Times

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) -- Before a jury was even seated, a judge declared a mistrial in a sex-assault case where he had barred the words ''rape'' and ''victim.''

Judge Jeffre Cheuvront of Lancaster County District Court said protests and other publicity surrounding the rape case against Pamir Safi, 33, would have made it too difficult for jurors to ignore everything they heard before the trial, which had been expected to begin next week.

A jury was in the process of being selected Thursday when Cheuvront declared a mistrial.

Safi is accused of raping Tory Bowen in 2004. He said they had consensual sex; she said she was too drunk to agree to sex and that he knew it.

Cheuvront barred attorneys and witnesses from using words including ''rape,'' ''victim,'' ''assailant'' and ''sexual-assault kit,'' and ordered witnesses to sign papers saying they wouldn't use the words. Words such as ''sex'' and ''intercourse'' were allowed.

State law allows judges to bar words or phrases that could prejudice or mislead a jury.

Bowen, 24, was fighting the ban, arguing that it hurt her testimony because she had to pause and make sure her words wouldn't violate the ban. She said: ''I want the freedom to be able to point (to Safi) in court and say, 'That man raped me.'''

The Associated Press usually does not identify accusers in sex-assault cases, but Bowen has allowed her name to be used publicly because of the issue over the judge's language restrictions.

In a written explanation of his ruling, Cheuvront said Bowen and her friends drummed up pretrial publicity that tainted potential jurors.

They signed a petition decrying the word ban and posted it on a Web site that encouraged people to gather in front of the courthouse Monday to protest, Cheuvront wrote. Monday was the first day of jury selection; another rally occurred Wednesday.

''The inescapable conclusion from the petition promoting the rally is that Ms. Bowen and her friends hoped to intimidate this court and interfere with the selection of a fair and impartial jury,'' Cheuvront wrote in his order released Thursday afternoon.

Bowen said she did not intend to taint the jury and wants closure in the matter, but chose to speak out after Cheuvront's order because ''silencing rape victims is something that has been done for far too long.''

Cheuvront also wrote the trial would be continued, with a date to be set later, and that the court may move the trial to a different county.

Advocates for rape victims criticized the restrictions, saying they discourage victims from reporting crimes, and held rallies on Bowen's behalf.

Safi's lawyer Clarence Mock said the restrictions on language would help ensure Safi's rights, and accused Bowen and her supporters of engaging in an ''irresponsible, reprehensible public campaign'' to improperly influence jury selection.

''I think the proper way to influence jurors is in the courtroom, not by placing tape over your mouth and holding placards,'' he said.

One of Bowen's lawyers, Sue Ellen Wall, said the mistrial made it unlikely that they will appeal the judge's language order in federal court.

Messages left with prosecutors were not returned Thursday.

The judge had also ordered the ban in Safi's first trial, which ended in a hung jury in November.

Speaking outside the courthouse Thursday, Bowen said she was disappointed by the mistrial decision but remains resolved to see Safi tried again.

''If I have to turn into a human thesaurus ... I will do it,'' she said.

    Mistrial in Rape Case With Banned Words, NYT, 13.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Censored-Trial.html

Phil Spector's Defense Calls Paramedic

July 10, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:18 a.m. ET
The New York Times

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Defense attorneys tried to shift the focus of Phil Spector's murder trial to the troubled life of Lana Clarkson, calling to the stand a paramedic who once treated the actress.

Paramedic Daniel Stark recalled answering a call in the Hollywood Hills in December 2001 to help Clarkson, who had fallen at a Christmas party and broken both her wrists. He said Clarkson was crying in pain and required a heavy dose of morphine on the way to the hospital. He also said he detected a strong odor of alcohol on Clarkson and others at the party who were slurring their words.

Prosecutor Alan Jackson angrily challenged the paramedic, noting a written report on the incident did not mention alcohol. Stark said his partner, not he, filled out the report.

''You're not suggesting she was blitzed?'' asked Jackson, to which the witness responded, ''No. She was under the influence.''

Prosecutors say Spector shot Clarkson. The defense contends she fatally shot herself Feb. 3, 2003, at Spector's home after a night out, and that alcohol was a factor.

Earlier in the day, Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler reversed his own previous ruling and allowed testimony from celebrity security guard Vincent Tannazzo, who told of confrontations with Spector at two Christmas parties given by comedian Joan Rivers in New York around 1993 and 1994. He said Spector had a gun at one party and spoke of wanting to shoot women in the head.

The judge said he had re-examined the law on the subject and found that although the comments may have been made 14 years ago, they were relevant to questions of Spector's state of mind toward women. ''In this case, you have a woman who is shot in the head,'' Fidler said. ''It is highly particularized.''

Tannazzo, a retired New York City police detective, testified that at both parties, a year apart, he wound up ejecting Spector and once threatened to shoot him if he pulled a gun. He said he never saw Spector with a gun in his hand but at the first party he did a ''light pat down'' and could feel a gun in Spector's waistband.

He said Spector had been yelling obscenities against women and shouting, ''They all deserve a bullet in their heads.''

Spector, 67, rose to fame in the 1960s with a recording technique known as the ''Wall of Sound.'' Clarkson, 40, was a struggling actress best known for her role in the 1985 film ''Barbarian Queen.''

    Phil Spector's Defense Calls Paramedic, NYT, 10.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Phil-Spector.html

Jury Gets Ohio Murder - For - Hire Case

July 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:07 a.m. ET
The New York Times

AKRON, Ohio (AP) -- Prosecutors said Donna Moonda grew tired of her wealthy husband so she hired her lover to kill him for a share of his multimillion dollar estate.

Defense attorneys said Moonda tried to revive her 69-year-old husband, Dr. Gulam Moonda, after Damian Bradford shot him on the Ohio turnpike, proving her innocence. Bradford acted alone, they said.

Jurors were expected to resume deliberations Friday in Donna Moonda's murder for hire trial. If convicted, Moonda, 48, could face the death penalty.

Bradford has admitted fatally shooting Gulam Moonda along the highway during a trip the married couple was taking.

''Two minds were set on murder,'' assistant U.S. attorney Linda Barr told jurors Thursday in closing arguments. ''Two fingers were on the trigger of that gun on May 13, 2005, and two people must be held accountable.''

Jurors began deliberating later Thursday and were sequestered overnight.

Moonda cried during the hourlong statement by prosecutors, her head bobbing up and down as she sobbed.

Her attorney, Roger Synenberg, said in his closing statement that the doctor still had a pulse when paramedics arrived because his wife performed CPR.

''Her doing CPR for 20 minutes, that's evidence of innocence,'' he said. ''That's not evidence you want your husband robbed and murdered.''

Synenberg has maintained that Bradford, 25, of Monaca, Pa., is a thug who acted alone.

''It was a spontaneous decision made by a 'roided-up drug dealer who needed money to buy drugs,'' he said of the shooting.

Bradford, who met Moonda in a drug rehab program, testified that she offered him half of her husband's estate if he killed the doctor. Bradford has pleaded guilty to interstate stalking and a gun charge and promised to cooperate with authorities in return for a 17 1/2-year sentence.

Assistant U.S. attorney Nancy Kelley recounted the numerous text messages and phone calls Bradford and Donna Moonda made to each other, messages that Moonda would sometimes sign as ''your baby girl.''

''They told of sex, drugs, wealth, violence and a future together,'' Kelley said.

Besides the murder for hire charge, Moonda is charged with interstate stalking and two counts of using or carrying a firearm in the commission of a violent crime.

    Jury Gets Ohio Murder - For - Hire Case, NYT, 6.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Doctor-Slain.html

Man Indicted in Va. Minister Slaying

July 3, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:59 p.m. ET
The New York Times

ROCKY MOUNT, Va. (AP) -- A man accused of beating a minister to death in a robbery after eyeing her rural church's collection plate has been indicted on capital murder charges.

A Franklin County grand jury on Monday indicted Charles Vincent Cobler, 40, on charges of capital murder and robbery in the April slaying of the Rev. Nancy Copin. Franklin County Commonwealth's Attorney Cliff Hapgood said he's still considering whether he will pursue the death penalty.

Copin, the 60-year-old pastor of Snow Creek Christian Church, died from blunt force trauma, the result of a beating, an autopsy concluded.

A telephone message left for Cobler's attorney, Carolyn Furrow, was not returned Tuesday.

Cobler told police he saw the collection plate at a Palm Sunday service and decided to rob the clergywoman, according to testimony at a preliminary hearing. He said he later went to the parsonage and asked to use Copin's telephone, then overpowered her and took her purse, according to court testimony.

Cobler was arrested April 8 in northeastern Ohio.

    Man Indicted in Va. Minister Slaying, NYT, 3.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Minister-Killed.html

Guilty Plea From Ex - Funeral Director

June 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:49 a.m. ET
The New York Times

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- An ex-funeral director who stored the corpses of 19 babies in bags and plastic containers in his garage pleaded guilty to theft and abusing a corpse.

Prosecutors withdrew 18 counts of abuse of a corpse against Robert B. Winston Jr., 62, of McKeesport, saying the case essentially involved theft because Winston was paid to have the remains cremated.

In pleading guilty Monday to the remaining charges, Winston agreed to pay $8,910 in restitution for not properly disposing of the bodies.

Prosecutor Janet Necessary said she expects Winston will receive probation when he is sentenced Sept. 6.

The remains came from women treated at Magee-Womens Hospital from late 2000 through May 2002. Prosecutors said Winston was paid $45 to dispose of the remains of each fetus older than 16 gestational weeks and $1 a pound to handle the others.

His divorce and financial problems led him to store the remains in his garage after he accepted payment from Magee-Womens, prosecutors said.

The remains -- the result of miscarriages and abortions -- were found after Winston's ex-wife called police in August 2005. Authorities said more than 300 fetuses were found.

Winston's attorney, James Ecker, said it was a ''fair deal'' for his client to accept limited responsibility for one of the corpses.

''He didn't abuse the corpse. He didn't stab the corpse,'' Ecker said. ''The fetuses were given to him by the hospital to get rid of. As far as their parents were concerned, their children were already gone.''

Prosecutors said several of the parents have lawsuits pending against Winston and the hospital.

    Guilty Plea From Ex - Funeral Director, NYT, 26.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Fetal-Remains.html

Spector Defense Questions Criminalist

June 25, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:01 p.m. ET
The New York Times

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The prosecution's top forensic expert in the Phil Spector murder trial testified Monday she studied evidence in the case for more than a year but could not determine that the music producer fired the gun that killed actress Lana Clarkson.

Defense attorney Linda Kenney-Baden asked sheriff's criminalist Lynne Herold: ''In any of your reports, did you conclude with any degree of certainty that Phil Spector pulled the trigger on that Cobra (revolver) on Feb. 3, 2003?''

''No,'' Herold replied.

It was Kenney-Baden's last question after a two-day cross-examination that focused on the minutiae of blood spatter evidence and the positions of Spector and Clarkson in the foyer of his mansion.

The witness said she also could not say where Clarkson's hands were at the time the gun discharged. She also acknowledged that Spector could have been walking or running toward Clarkson rather than standing in front of her when the gunshot killed her, a scenario described by the prosecution.

Herold testified last week that Spector, arms raised, was within three feet of Clarkson when she was shot through the mouth, based on how close Spector had to be to have blood spatter on parts of his white jacket.

Clarkson was shot Feb. 3, 2003. Her body was found slumped in a chair in the foyer of Spector's home. The defense contends she shot herself.

Kenney-Baden presented Herold with a number of technical questions involving blood spatter on Spector's clothing. Then she walked up to the witness box, held up her arms in the manner the prosecutor had done last week, and said that perhaps he was moving when he held his arms up.

The witness agreed that was possible.

But Herold, who has a doctoral degree, declined to compare the case to many of the scholarly studies that were cited by Kenney-Baden in her questioning. ''There is no other case like this case,'' she said. ''It is a unique case unto itself, as is each case.''

She said she was unfamiliar with a paper in which another expert said that blood spatter in a suicide can travel six feet.

''I'm not familiar with that paper and I will not comment on it unless I can see it,'' she said.

''You are not a medical doctor, are you?'' asked Kenney-Baden.

''No,'' the witness said, smiling. ''I'm a real doctor, as opposed to a body mechanic.''

As jurors and the audience laughed, she added, ''A standard lab joke.''

As Herold testified, three experts who will testify for the defense were seated in the front row of the audience taking notes.

In eight weeks of testimony, prosecutors have not presented any witness to say that Spector fired the shot.

The judge, meanwhile, said an appellate court had rejected an appeal by a former Spector attorney who was ruled in contempt. The lawyer has refused to testify to the jury about seeing a defense forensic investigator pick up a small white object at the death scene that was never given to prosecutors.

The lawyer has claimed attorney-client privilege but the judge said that does not apply to issues of destruction of evidence. The prosecution believes the item was a piece of acrylic fingernail missing from one of Clarkson's thumbs.

The issue has only been discussed outside the presence of the jury, but prosecutor Alan Jackson was allowed to pose hypothetical questions about it to Herold to try to show that the disputed evidence would have been important to the case.

Spector, 67, was a leading music producer in the 1960s and '70s after rising to fame with a recording technique that became known as the ''Wall of Sound.''

Clarkson, 40, was a struggling actress best known for the 1985 film ''Barbarian Queen.'' She was working as House of Blues hostess a few hours before her death.

    Spector Defense Questions Criminalist, NYT, 25.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Phil-Spector.html

Houston Rejects Crime Lab Recommendation

June 14, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:25 a.m. ET
The New York Times

HOUSTON (AP) -- An independent review of Houston's once-troubled crime lab concluded the city had eliminated many of the problems, but it recommended a special master be named to further review ''major issues'' in DNA and blood-analysis cases from the 1980s and '90s. City officials quickly rejected the recommendation.

Wednesday's final report by Michael Bromwich, a former U.S. Justice Department inspector appointed two years ago to lead the investigation, cited hundreds of ''serious and pervasive'' flaws in forensic cases mishandled by the lab's DNA and serology sections.

Past reviews of the lab's work had led to the release of two men from prison, one who had served 17 years for a rape that new forensic tests show he did not commit.

Bromwich's investigation found that in a review of 135 sample DNA cases analyzed by the crime lab from 1992 to 2002, nearly a third of them, 43, had ''major issues.'' The review covered all 18 death penalty cases that involved DNA analysis in that time. It identified major issues in the cases of four death-row inmates.

''The crime lab's substandard, unreliable serology and DNA work is all the more alarming in light of the fact that it is typically performed in the most serious cases, such as homicides and sexual assaults,'' the report said.

Bromwich suggested a special master be appointed to review 180 blood-analysis cases from the 1980s and early 1990s involving convicts now in prison.

But Houston Mayor Bill White, Police Chief Harold Hurtt and Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal said such reviews should be done by the police department, the district attorney's office and the courts.

''We have special masters,'' Rosenthal said. ''They're called judges in our building.''

Rosenthal said his office already had begun acting on some parts of the report.

''We're in the process of pulling files on all the people that they say had bad serology evidence, and what we intend to do is to notify those people that their serology evidence has been called into question and let them deal with a judge as to whether they want somebody to represent them or not.''

The lab's DNA/serology division was reopened last year after being shut down in 2002, when an audit raised red flags about the reliability of its work. Serology involves blood analysis.

The report said problems in the division resulted partly from underfunding as its workload grew and that employees were poorly trained and poorly supervised.

The police department increased the crime lab's budget to $7.66 million last year, more than double its funding from earlier in the decade. New supervisors are in place, standard operating procedures were rewritten and morale has improved among a new crop of forensic analysts, the report said.

------

Associated Press writer Matt Joyce contributed to this report.

------

On the Net:

http://www.hpdlabinvestigation.org/ 

    Houston Rejects Crime Lab Recommendation, NYT, 14.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Houston-Crime-Lab.html

New Charges Filed Against Celeb Designer

June 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:54 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) -- Celebrity fashion designer Anand Jon Alexander has pleaded not guilty to 13 new charges of sexual assault after at least six more women and girls accused him of abuse.

Alexander, who has dressed starlets such as Paris Hilton, is accused of meeting women on the Internet and assaulting them when they visited about modeling opportunities between 2002 and 2007. His defense has claimed some of the women made the allegations to seek fame.

At least 18 women and girls, ranging in age from 14 to 27, have accused him of abuse.

He now faces more than 40 felony and misdemeanor counts of sexual assault that include rape, sexual battery and committing a lewd act on a child, said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.

He has pleaded not guilty to all previous charges and could face life in prison if convicted on all counts.

He is free on bail after being arrested in March. Superior Court Judge Elden Fox denied a prosecution request Tuesday to increase Alexander's bail to $2.3 million.

Alexander's new attorney, Danny Davis, said outside court that there is a ''common, unifying source'' among the victims but declined to elaborate, and he said the evidence would likely be revealed at a preliminary hearing.

''It appears to me this case, fairly, is gossip among young models that has gone a little wild,'' Davis said. ''There's been a great deal of contamination and sharing of stories.''

Alexander was arrested in March at his Beverly Hills apartment. There also are criminal investigations in New York and Massachusetts, Robison said.

Before the court hearing, Alexander also was arrested on three warrants from Dallas, where prosecutors plan to seek indictments on suspicion of sexual assault, said Jamille Bradford, a spokeswoman for the Dallas County district attorney.

Two warrants are include allegations of sexual assault, and a third accuses him of sexual assault of a child younger than 17, all second-degree felonies, Bradford said. Alexander is accused of assaulting two of the victims in both California and Texas.

Bail on the warrants was set at $500,000, and an extradition hearing was waived. It wasn't clear when Alexander would travel to Texas.

    New Charges Filed Against Celeb Designer, NYT, 13.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Fashion-Designer-Charged.html

Respiratory Therapist Admits Molestation

June 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:33 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- A former respiratory therapist pleaded guilty Tuesday to molesting young, brain-damaged patients at the hospital where he worked for 25 years. Wayne Albert Bleyle, 55, admitted to eight counts of forcible lewd acts upon a child and four counts of exhibiting a minor in pornography.

Under a plea agreement, Bleyle would serve 45 years and eight months in prison. With credit for good behavior, he would serve at least 85 percent of that sentence. He had faced a sentence of up to 165 years if he had been convicted in a trial.

Bleyle, who worked at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego, appeared gaunt and pallid in a loose-fitting navy suit. He answered procedural questions in a firm, quiet voice.

Bleyle admitted abusing four of his patients, including a 2-year-old girl. Two of the children have since died, according to prosecutors.

Superior Court Judge Kenneth So denied bail and scheduled sentencing for July 25.

Bleyle was arrested in March 2006 after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents traced child porn Internet traffic to his home computer in suburban Santee. Prosecutor Laura Gunn told a judge then that Bleyle targeted children who were ''the most brain-damaged, most comatose, most nonverbal -- children who could never say anything about it.''

Bleyle confessed to federal agents that he molested ''countless'' disabled patients, the prosecutor told the court last year.

''One of the agents who interviewed him said, 'How many kids are we talking about?''' Gunn said. ''The defendant, who was in New York at the time looking out at the snow, looked out at the snow and said, 'How many snowflakes are there out there?'''

Prosecutors accepted the plea in part to spare one girl, a teenage stroke victim, from testifying before a jury, Gunn said. The girl said in preliminary hearings last year that Bleyle touched her buttocks three years ago while she was in a convalescent ward.

''This is absolutely one of the worst child molestation situations imaginable,'' Gunn told reporters outside the courtroom.

Bleyle's attorney, Casey Donovan, declined to comment after the hearing.

Bleyle worked at the well-regarded hospital for 25 years, including 10 at the convalescent facility. Former colleagues have described him as an engaging, hardworking therapist who volunteered for extra shifts, reassured parents and served as a mentor to new hires.

Affidavits filed in support of search warrants indicate that investigators found images on Bleyle's computer and cell phone that he had created himself using children at the hospital. His arrest prompted the hospital to ban camera phones in the convalescent unit and require that curtains around patients be left open most of the time.

Barely a month after Bleyle's arrest, another hospital employee was charged with molesting a comatose toddler patient after being traced through Internet file-sharing networks. Christopher Alan Irvin, a 32-year-old nurse at the time, pleaded guilty in September and was sentenced to 14 years and eight months in prison.

    Respiratory Therapist Admits Molestation, NYT, 13.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Therapist-Child-Molestation.html

Mo. Man With HIV Gets Life Term for Sex

June 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:11 a.m. ET
The New York Times

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. (AP) -- A man who spent five years in jail for exposing sexual partners to HIV was sentenced to life in prison for knowingly exposing another woman to the virus.

Sean L. Sykes, 33, was sentenced Tuesday. He was found guilty in May of having unprotected sex with a St. Joseph woman without telling her he was HIV-positive. Testimony at his trial -- which was closed to the public to protect witnesses -- indicated that he had exposed at least eight women to HIV. At least three have tested positive.

''I think it's fairly clear he is a very dangerous individual,'' Buchanan County Prosecutor Dwight Scroggins said after the sentencing. ''If he is not in prison, he would likely continue to spread HIV.''

Sykes was convicted in 1997 of knowingly exposing someone to HIV. He was given the maximum sentence of 10 years, but was paroled in 2003.

Scroggins said Sykes has had ''numerous'' other unknown sexual contacts since he first tested positive 16 years ago.

''It's not an immediate death sentence,'' said assistant prosecutor Kathleen Fisher, ''but that's what he's done to these people, his victims.''

A 29-year-old woman who contracted HIV in the mid-1990s after having sex with Sykes testified at the sentencing hearing that her life had been destroyed by the virus.

The mother of two children -- neither of whom has tested positive for the disease -- said doctors have given her about two years to live.

''My family has left me -- they're scared of me,'' she said. ''When I found out that Sean was on trial again for this, it drove me crazy. The main question is why? Why is he doing this?''

Prosecutors said Sykes began having a sexual relationship with a St. Joseph woman in 2004, never telling her that he had HIV.

Sykes contended at his trial that the woman knew he was HIV-positive. He apologized Tuesday for his behavior.

''I will admit my behavior in the early '90s, and up until my first conviction, was not appropriate,'' he said. ''Even though (the St. Joseph woman) was aware of my status, I should have seen nothing good would come as far as a sexual relationship.''

    Mo. Man With HIV Gets Life Term for Sex, NYT, 13.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-HIV-Conviction-Sentence.html

Georgia AG Criticized in Teen Sex Case

June 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:41 a.m. ET
The New York Times

ATLANTA (AP) -- The case of Genarlow Wilson, now serving a 10-year mandatory prison sentence for having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl as a teen, is just the latest to make the state's attorney general the target of protests.

Democrat Thurbert Baker is Georgia's top black elected official, but he has repeatedly found himself at odds with black leaders and his own party.

Wilson's advocates have said race was one reason he received a sentence they describe as appalingly harsh, noting that he and the girl -- both black -- were only two years apart.

But Baker says the law is the law.

He was also the focus of demonstrations in 1999, when he led the charge to prosecute state Sen. Ralph David Abernathy III, son of a civil rights icon, for misappropriating state funds.

His office has vigorously defended Georgia's voter ID law, which has been criticized as disenfranchising poor and minority voters. And some complain that he has done little to stop Georgia's prisons from filling up with black youths.

On Monday, a judge ordered Wilson released, saying the sentence was a ''grave miscarriage of justice.'' But Baker said the state would appeal, keeping Wilson behind bars.

That's Baker in a nutshell, said Ken Hodges, chairman of the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia and district attorney of Dougherty County Judicial Circuit.

''He's by the books, as straight an arrow as there is,'' Hodges said. ''I've seen some people pull out the race card with him but that is just not the way he operates.''

Some black leaders said they were troubled by Baker's history on Abernathy and the mail fraud prosecution of state Sen. Diana Harvey Johnson, who also is black.

''Those cases were nothing but political persecution and lowdown politics,'' said state Rep. Tyrone Brooks, an Atlanta Democrat. ''Prosecutors have discretion and I would like to see him exercise that discretion a little better.''

Baker declined to be interviewed.

Born in Rocky Mount, N.C. in 1952, Baker attended segregated schools until he was a sophomore in high school. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1975. A fencing enthusiast, he won the 1975 Atlantic Coast Conference individual sabre championship.

He went on to graduate Emory University's law school. He managed his own law firm and worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, then served nine years in the state House of Representatives, where he rose to become a floor leader for then-Gov. Zell Miller.

In the statehouse, he helped pass Georgia's ''two strikes'' law, designed to keep violent offenders in jail without possibility of parole. He also succeeded in passing tougher laws to combat financial identity fraud.

When Miller appointed Baker attorney general in 1997, he made history as the first black to hold the post. In 2006 he was elected to his third four-year term.

Now he's under pressure from Wilson supporters, including former President Jimmy Carter, who have said the case raises questions about race and the criminal justice system. A hearing is set for July 5.

------

On the Net:

Attorney general: http://www.state.ga.us/ago 

    Georgia AG Criticized in Teen Sex Case, NYT, 13.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Teen-Sex-Case.html

Celebrity Justice Cuts Both Ways for Paris Hilton

June 9, 2007
The New York Times
By SHARON WAXMAN

LOS ANGELES, June 8 — The national obsession with celebrity collided head-on with the more serious issue of the equal application of justice on Friday, as a judge sent the socialite Paris Hilton back to jail some 36 hours after she was released for an unspecified medical problem.

Judge Michael T. Sauer ordered Ms. Hilton to serve the rest of her sentence in a county lockup after the city attorney, whose office had prosecuted her, filed a petition asking that the sheriff’s department be held in contempt or explain why it had released her with an ankle monitor on Thursday, after she had served just five days.

Ms. Hilton had been sentenced to 45 days in jail for violating the terms of her probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving case. With time off for good behavior, she had been expected to serve 23 days.

Ms. Hilton, 26, wearing no makeup and with her hair disheveled, sobbed and screamed, “Mom, this isn’t right,” as she was taken from the packed courtroom by deputies.

It was a rare moment in this star-filled city, where badly behaving celebrities can seemingly get away with anything — or at least D.U.I. But Ms. Hilton, for all her money and celebrity, seems to have been caught between battling arms of the justice system here, with prosecutors and Judge Sauer determined to make a point by incarcerating her, only to have the sheriff’s office let her go.

“She’s a pawn in a turf fight right now,” said Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School Los Angeles. “It backfired against her because she’s a celebrity. She got a harsher sentence because she was a celebrity. And then when her lawyer found a way out of jail, there was too much public attention for it to sit well with the court.”

The struggle between the judge and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, which runs the jail, incited indignation far beyond the attention normally paid to a minor criminal matter.

Judicial and police officials here said they were inundated with calls from outraged residents and curious news media outlets from around the country and beyond. The Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist, decried Ms. Hilton’s release as an example of “double standards,” saying consideration was given to a pampered rich girl that would never have been accorded an average inmate.

Even the presidential candidate John Edwards found himself drawn into the debate. When asked about Ms. Hilton’s release on Thursday he said, “Without regard to Paris Hilton, we have two Americas and I think what’s important is, it’s obvious that the problem exists.”

California has been struggling to comply with a federal order to ease crowding in its jails and prisons, and Sheriff Lee Baca of Los Angeles County has carried out a program of early release. But that has frustrated prosecutors who believe that early release undermines their efforts to punish those found to have broken the law.

At a news conference on Friday, Sheriff Baca said: “The special treatment appears to be her celebrity status. She got more time in jail.” Under the normal terms of the early release program, he said, Ms. Hilton would not have served “any time in our jail.”

The city attorney whose office prosecuted Ms. Hilton’s case, Rocky Delgadillo, said preferential treatment had led to her being sent home with an ankle bracelet. In the original order sentencing Ms. Hilton to jail, the judge had stated that Ms. Hilton would not be allowed a work furlough, work release or an electronic monitoring device in lieu of jail time. “We cannot tolerate a two-tiered jail system where the rich and powerful receive special treatment,” Mr. Delgadillo said after learning of the release.

In a news conference on Friday, Mr. Baca said Ms. Hilton “had a serious medical condition,” though he declined to say what it was.

In a scene that seemed a parody of O. J. Simpson’s low-speed chase more than a decade ago, news cameras on Friday followed a police cruiser containing a sobbing Ms. Hilton as it drove slowly down the Los Angeles highway to Superior Court from her home.

The issue became nonstop fodder for channels like CNN and Fox News, as legal experts debated how rare the decision was to release her, and whether doing so neutralized, negated or otherwise neutered the judge’s original order.

Amid the debate over serious questions of equal justice under the law came speculation over the nature of Ms. Hilton’s “medical situation,” which Mr. Baca cited as the reason for her release. On television, commentators questioned whether she was a suicide risk or if she was eating properly in jail.

Judge Sauer had ordered the hearing for 9 a.m. When Ms. Hilton did not appear, apparently believing that she could participate by telephone, he sent sheriff’s deputies to escort her from her home.

When she arrived and the hearing began, the judge said he had received a call on Wednesday from an undersheriff informing him that Ms. Hilton had a medical condition and that the sheriff’s office would submit papers to the judge to consider releasing her early. The judge said the papers describing a “psychological” problem had not arrived, and he interrupted Friday’s court session every few minutes to state the time and note that the papers had still not shown up.

In ordering her return to jail, Judge Sauer said there were adequate medical facilities within the system to deal with Ms. Hilton’s problems.

Ms. Hilton was not the only high-profile defendant whose celebrity prompted a raised eyebrow from a judge this week. Also on Friday, the judge who sentenced I. Lewis Libby Jr. to prison this week issued an order dripping with sarcasm after receiving a supporting brief from a dozen prominent legal scholars, including Alan M. Dershowitz of Harvard and Robert H. Bork, the former Supreme Court nominee.

The judge, Reggie B. Walton of Federal District Court in Washington, said he would be pleased to see similar efforts for defendants less famous than Mr. Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

“The court trusts,” Judge Walton wrote, in a footnote longer than the order itself, that the brief for Mr. Libby “is a reflection of these eminent academics’ willingness in the future to step up to the plate and provide like assistance in cases involving any of the numerous litigants, both in this court and throughout the courts of our nation, who lack the financial means to fully and properly articulate the merits of their legal positions.”

“The court,” he added, “will certainly not hesitate to call for such assistance from these luminaries.”

Adam Liptak and Maria Newman contributed reporting from New York, and Ana Facio Contreras from Los Angeles.

    Celebrity Justice Cuts Both Ways for Paris Hilton, NYT, 9.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/09/us/09hilton.html?hp

Wife to Be Sentenced in Preacher's Death

June 8, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:26 p.m. ET
The New York Times

SELMER, Tenn. (AP) -- A woman who killed her preacher husband with a shotgun blast to the back as he lay in bed never apologized and destroyed her husband's character, his family members said at her sentencing Friday.

The preacher's mother, Diane Winkler, told Mary Winkler from the witness stand that the couple's three daughters were having nightmares about people with guns breaking into their house.

''You've never told your girls you're sorry. Don't you think you at least owe them that?'' she asked.

Mary Winkler, 33, went on trial for first-degree murder in April, but a jury found her guilty of the lesser crime of manslaughter after she testified she was physically and emotionally abused by her husband, Matthew Winkler.

She testified during her trial that her husband hit and kicked her, forced her to look at pornography and demanded sex she considered unnatural. Jurors were shown a pair of tall, platform shoes and a black wig Winkler said she was pressured to wear during sex.

''The monster that you have painted for the world to see? I don't think that monster existed,'' Diane Winkler said.

Mary Winkler faces a maximum of six years in prison, but her lawyers have asked for diversion, which would keep her out of prison and eventually clear her record.

She would be eligible for parole after serving 30 percent of her term and get credit for five months already spent in jail while awaiting trial.

Winkler and her defense team arrived about 45 minutes early for her sentencing hearing Friday morning, but she did not talk to reporters.

Church members found Matthew Winkler's body and reported his wife and children missing. They were located the following day in Orange Beach, Ala.

Winkler is fighting with her husband's parents for custody of the children, ages 9, 7 and 2.

Mary Winkler's sister, Tabitha Freeman, called her ''the best example of a good person I can think of'' and asked the judge to give her a chance to be reunited with her children.

''She just needs them. She's not complete without them,'' Freeman said.

    Wife to Be Sentenced in Preacher's Death, NYT, 8.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Minister-Slain.html

Court Hears Appeal in Teen Oral Sex Case

June 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:16 p.m. ET
The New York Times

ATLANTA (AP) -- A man sentenced to 10 years in prison for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17 should have to serve out the widely criticized mandatory term, a prosecutor told a judge Wednesday.

A lawyer for Genarlow Wilson, now 21, asked the appellate judge to throw out the aggravated child molestation sentence on the grounds it is grossly disproportionate to the crime. Defense attorney B.J. Bernstein noted that state lawmakers passed a law to close the loophole that led to Wilson's sentence.

''It gets back to common sense,'' Bernstein said. ''This very act is only a misdemeanor with no sex offender registration today.''

But prosecutor Paula Smith argued that the new law cannot be applied retroactively.

''The General Assembly did not make it retroactive,'' Smith said. ''They had the prerogative to do so; they did not.''

Wilson, clad in a white prison uniform, watched as his legal team again tried to free him while they pursue a claim that his constitutional rights are being violated. Monroe County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wilson said he expects to issue a decision on Wilson's appeal by noon Monday.

Wilson's sentence has been denounced even by members of the jury that convicted him and the author of the 1995 law that put him behind bars.

''The law was designed to protect kids against really, really bad people doing very bad things,'' said the sponsor, former state Rep. Matt Towery, a Republican. ''It was never intended to put kids in jail for oral sex.''

In 2003, Wilson was an honors student, standout athlete and homecoming king preparing for his SATs with an eye toward college. At a New Year's Eve party involving alcohol, marijuana and sex, someone videotaped the girl performing oral sex on Wilson.

The tape also shows Wilson and other male partygoers having sexual intercourse with a 17-year-old girl. Prosecutors sought a rape conviction against him, arguing that the 17-year-old was semiconscious and not capable of consent. But a jury that watched the tape disagreed.

Bernstein compared the case to the recent rape case involving Duke University lacrosse players, saying prosecutors in both cases overreached.

Wilson has served more than 27 months in prison. His case has become something of a cause celebre, largely because of the legal loophole that ensnared him.

If Wilson had had sexual intercourse with the 15-year-old he would have fallen under Georgia's ''Romeo and Juliet'' exception. But under the law in 2003, oral sex between teens constituted aggravated child molestation and carried a mandatory sentence.

Georgia lawmakers changed the law in 2006 to make consensual oral sex between teens a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of one year behind bars. Offenders do not have to register as sex offenders, as Wilson will be required to do.

But the state's top court ruled the 2006 change couldn't be applied retroactively to Wilson's case. An attempt earlier this year to pass a bill that would provide a remedy for Wilson has stalled.

Wilson's most vocal critic has been Georgia's top Republican senator, Eric Johnson, of Savannah.

''This was not two star-crossed lovers on a date,'' Johnson wrote in an opinion piece opposing the bill written to help Wilson.

The five other male partygoers took plea deals. Wilson's case was the only one that went to trial.

Wilson's mother, Juannessa Bennett, said outside the courthouse Wednesday that he has rejected plea deals from prosecutors because he would still need to register as a sex offender.

''A sex offender registry is lifetime,'' Bennett said.

------

On the Net:

Office of Attorney General Thurbert Baker: http://www.ganet.org/ago/

Genarlow Wilson Defense Fund: http://www.wilsonappeal.com

    Court Hears Appeal in Teen Oral Sex Case, NYT, 6.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Teen-Sex-Case.html

U. of Del. Student's Killer Gets Death

June 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:17 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) -- A judge sentenced a man to death Wednesday for raping and strangling a University of Delaware student two years ago before torching her apartment in an attempt to destroy evidence.

The jury convicted James E. Cooke Jr. in March of first-degree murder, arson, rape, burglary and reckless endangering in the death of Lindsey M. Bonistall, whose body was found covered with charred debris in her bathtub.

Bonistall, who was white, was a 20-year-old sophomore. A handwriting analyst testified at trial that Cooke, who is black, had used a marker to write ''KKK,'' ''White Power'' and other phrases on the walls of the apartment where Bonistall lived.

Cooke, 36, also told police in a 911 call before his arrest that Bonistall's death was part of a drug war involving white supremacists.

With DNA from semen in Bonistall's body and found under her fingernails pointing to Cooke, defense attorneys had asked jurors to find him guilty but mentally ill.

Cooke, who denied he was mentally ill, was banished from the courtroom after frequent outbursts, including one in which he had to be wrestled to the floor.

    U. of Del. Student's Killer Gets Death, NYT, 6.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-College-Student-Killed.html

Man to Be Charged for Dragging Death

June 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:46 p.m. ET
The New York Times

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) -- A man accused of dragging a woman's body under a minivan for several miles will be charged with murder when he is returned to Florida, the sheriff's office said Wednesday.

Abdelaziz Hamze, 24, was detained at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on Monday while trying to reach Greece, authorities said.

Hamze denied the allegations at a court appearance Tuesday in New York, according to Kevin Ryan, a spokesman for the Queens district attorney.

Hamze is being extradited to Florida, where he will be charged with first-degree murder, Broward County sheriff's spokeswoman Veda Coleman-Wright said.

Sandra Hall, 44, of Fort Lauderdale, was in a Cadillac struck by a minivan Sunday night. The driver of minivan fled the crash, but the Cadillac pursued.

When both vehicles stopped, Hall stood in front of the minivan. It struck her and she became lodged underneath it, authorities said.

    Man to Be Charged for Dragging Death, NYT, 6.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Dragging-Death.html

Man Sues Over Long - Lasting Erection

June 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:38 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- A man has sued the maker of the health drink Boost Plus, claiming the vitamin-enriched beverage gave him an erection that would not subside and caused him to be hospitalized.

The lawsuit filed by Christopher Woods of New York said he bought the nutrition beverage made by the pharmaceutical company Novartis AG at a drugstore on June 5, 2004, and drank it.

Woods' court papers say he woke up the next morning ''with an erection that would not subside'' and sought treatment that day for the condition, called severe priapism.

They say Woods, 29, underwent surgery for implantation of a Winter shunt, which moves blood from one area to another.

The lawsuit, filed late Monday, says Woods later had problems that required a hospital visit and penile artery embolization, a way of closing blood vessels. Closing off some blood flow prevents engorgement and lessens the likelihood of an erection.

Woods' lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, names Novartis Consumer Health Inc. as a defendant. A spokeswoman for the company, Brandi Robinson, said Tuesday the company was aware of the lawsuit but does not comment on pending litigation.

Woods' lawyer did not return telephone calls for comment Tuesday.

Novartis' Boost Plus Web site describes the drink as ''a great tasting, high calorie, nutritionally complete oral supplement for people who require extra energy and protein in a limited volume,'' in vanilla, chocolate and strawberry.

    Man Sues Over Long - Lasting Erection, NYT, 6.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-ODD-Unwanted-Arousal.html