Investigations sit idle as LAPD detectives hit overtime caps

With its overtime budget decimated, the department is forcing officers to put cases on hold and take days or even weeks off. Despite an uptick in killings, the homicide unit is among the hardest hit.

By Joel Rubin

April 12, 2010

In January, Los Angeles Police Det. Nate Kouri was ordered to stop working.

One of the LAPD's most productive homicide investigators sat idle for six weeks, unable to follow any leads on old cases or pick up new ones. Kouri was not being punished for misconduct or for botching an investigation. He was benched for working too hard -- and he is not the only one.

With the city reeling from its worst financial crisis in decades, the LAPD has stopped paying officers overtime wages, except in rare situations. In lieu of cash, officials have implemented a strict policy of forcing cops to take time off when they accrue large amounts of overtime hours. Because of demanding work schedules that routinely require them to investigate a case into the night or through the weekend, homicide detectives have been among the first officers to be sent home in significant numbers.

The drain on homicide squads has hampered investigations, several detectives and top department officials said in interviews. Detectives said their investigations are frequently put on hold while they take days off, delaying witness interviews and other potentially important leads. And, in the crucial first hours after a killing, several supervisors said they now dispatch fewer detectives to the crime scene.

A rash of homicides in recent weeks has compounded the problem, placing increased strain on detectives already running up against overtime limits and leaving homicide supervisors to worry that a prolonged surge in killings will quickly overwhelm the stop-gap measures they are currently using to get by.

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck has used the rise in killings to underscore his frequent warnings to city lawmakers that further cuts to the department's budget would continue to compromise its ability to fight crime.

"The hours have to come from someplace," Beck said last week at a meeting with the Los Angeles Police Commission, which oversees the department. "It has a serious impact on our ability to respond to some of the large, violent incidents we've been experiencing lately. That is especially true of homicide investigations because of the long hours they demand."

In past years, the LAPD typically spent about $100 million in overtime. The department is planning to set aside less than $10 million for the upcoming fiscal year to cover certain work scenarios mandated under federal labor laws.

Before the city's fiscal crisis, an agreement between the department and police union called for officers to build up a bank of about 100 hours of overtime and then be paid cash for hours worked beyond that. Late last year, the department renegotiated the agreement and now officers are not paid until they have accrued 400 hours of extra work. To make sure no officer reaches that trigger point, the department's new policy forbids them from banking more than 250 hours.

In the Southeast Division, where Kouri works, the 11-person homicide squad was ordered to take off 700 hours in February -- a month when they opened five new investigations. The same group responded to five killings last February, but worked 500 hours of overtime to solve them.

Nine of the 14 killings this year in the Southeast area remain unsolved.

"That is horrible compared to our typical rates," said Det. Sal LaBarbera, a 24-year homicide veteran who supervises the Southeast squad. "All of those cases are solvable. None of them are mysteries. A few of them would likely already be solved, if I could just let my guys loose to work."

Similar situations are playing out elsewhere. Late on a recent Saturday night in the Newton Division, two killings took place in quick succession. Det. Kelle Baitx, the homicide supervisor, said typically he would have sent a team of two detectives to each of the crime scenes. That night, however, he had one team take care of both crime scenes because other detectives were approaching their overtime limits. One of the cases was later reassigned to another team during regular working hours.

"It's not ideal," Baitx said of the overtime cap, noting that as a general rule detectives handling a case should work the crime scene as well.

In the Foothill Division, when five slayings occurred in March, a detective assigned to work on old, unsolved killings was enlisted to help. It's a move supervisors in other divisions have made, highlighting concerns that the overtime crunch will deal a blow to the department's ability to solve cold cases.

Trying to balance the overtime limits with the need to solve cases, the supervisor in Foothill watched one of his detective's overtime hours climb as she worked one of the recent cases. After three days, when she typically would have pressed on through the weekend, he ordered her to stop and stay home for several days.

Supervisors said they are also seeing the policy take a toll on morale among their detectives. "It's really disheartening," said Kouri, who solved more than a dozen cases last year. "It goes against the mentality of homicide detectives. All we want to do is work our cases. That's what we feel we owe to the families of victims -- to work straight through."

Several detectives said they don't always drop their cases during down days, making phone calls and filling out paperwork on their own time.

The detectives are taking a financial hit as well, since roughly a third of their pay has traditionally come from overtime wages.

Many, like Kouri, who were over the cap from the start were forced to take extended leaves to lower their totals. Going forward, Beck put field commanders on notice that they were responsible for keeping their officers below the limit. At weekly meetings once reserved for reviewing crime-fighting strategies, the commanders are grilled on what they are doing to keep work hours in check.

Homicide squads are not the only units feeling the brunt of the overtime rule. Large numbers of officers in other specialized assignments, such as the SWAT, canine and bomb units, are also at or above the limit. And, in several stations situated in high-crime areas, the number of regular patrol and anti-gang officers above 200 hours of overtime has reached double digits.

The policy has had a significant effect on the number of officers available to work. Last year, officers decided to take about 17,000 hours off each month in compensation for overtime, department figures show.

In March, that number soared to nearly 60,000 hours. The increase in lost work hours was the equivalent to removing about 290 officers from the department roster.

"In homicide, we create our own luck by staying out there and beating bushes until we find what we need," said Det. Chris Barling, who oversees the LAPD's South Bureau homicide unit. "Are we going to miss something because my guys are being forced to take two days off in the middle of an investigation? Could this cause us to not solve a case? Sure."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lapd12-2010apr12,0,4994609,print.story

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L.A. County to launch scaled-down effort to combat gang violence

The 15-month pilot program will target 100 youths under the custody of the Probation Department. It will attempt to prevent them from sliding into gangs once they return home.

By Rong-Gong Lin II

April 12, 2010

A long-delayed Los Angeles County effort to combat gang violence is set to begin in May, officials said.

The $1.1-million initiative is much smaller than what was initially envisioned in 2007 -- a Marshall Plan-style effort to tackle Southern California's persistent gang problems through a multi-agency approach, focusing not only on law enforcement, but also child development, job creation, education and public health programs in areas dominated by gangs.

In its place is a limited, 15-month pilot program targeting 100 youths under the custody of the county's troubled Probation Department. The program was approved Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors.

The Regional Gang Violence Reduction Initiative calls for programs to be set up in four neighborhoods -- the Florence-Firestone and Harbor Gateway neighborhoods in the South Los Angeles area, Pacoima in the San Fernando Valley and the Monrovia-Duarte area in the San Gabriel Valley.

Each program is to serve 25 youths who are in probation camps and will attempt to prevent them from sliding into gangs once they return home, said Vincent Holmes, a principal analyst for county Chief Executive William T Fujioka.

The effort is to be headed by Probation Department employees, but also will include other departments, such as social services.

Each team will assist probationers and their family with issues including finding work, obtaining additional aid such as cash and food stamps, and making sure that mental health medications are being taken, Holmes said.

The program also calls for more programs for youths at parks and libraries, such as basketball games, arts and crafts classes, poetry festivals and theater troupes, Holmes said.

The goal is to keep each youth monitored for at least six months, Holmes said. County officials said they hope to learn from these programs as a way to bring systemic change to how the county handles probationers and their families.

The county's effort was sparked after the public policy group Advancement Project issued a major report in January 2007 that called for a massive, coordinated regional effort to fight gangs and spurred a rethinking of both city and county efforts.

But Connie Rice, co- director of the Advancement Project , said the county's effort doesn't come close to what was recommended in 2007.

"This is 100 kids," Rice said. "This is not comprehensive."

Rice faulted in particular the county's reliance on the Probation Department to lead the issue.

The Probation Department has long been troubled .

In March, officials admitted that at least 170 of its employees committed misconduct, including cases of excessive force and abuse, but so far have escaped punishment because there isn't enough staff to discipline them.

"Probation is a disaster at this point," Rice said. "Probation is run so badly, gangs recruit inside the juvenile camps."

Rice said that some county leaders understand what needs to be done but that "there is no mandate to move to the comprehensive level."

In contrast, after the 2007 report, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa created the Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development and appointed a gang czar, focused on reducing gangs' influence in neighborhoods. Its budget for the current fiscal year is $18 million.

"L.A. city has the right thinking about the program," Rice said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gang-program12-2010apr12,0,48455,print.story

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An exodus out of addiction

Beit T'Shuvah is both synagogue and drug rehab center.

By Kurt Streeter

April 10, 2010

As a reminder of how much his life has changed, Rabbi Mark Borovitz wore a starched blue prisoner's shirt.

He reveled in the symbolism, stroking his beard, dancing a jig, smiling broadly. Then, from a low stage in a well-lit sanctuary, he looked out at his congregants and turned the tale of Exodus into a parable on fighting addiction.

"How," he shouted, "are you going to get out of Egypt this year? What's the inner slavery you are going to leave behind?"

For many inside the temple this night, the question cut to the bone. They have long been chained to trouble -- to drugs or drink or sex, to gambling or stealing or running cons. The story of the Jewish flight from bondage is one they can deeply feel.

It was Passover, the beginning of a Seder feast at Temple Beit T'Shuvah, the House of Return. Occupying a drab two-building complex in Mid-City Los Angeles, it is both a full-fledged synagogue and a drug rehabilitation center, home to 120 addicts, men and women, most of them Jewish.

Its guiding principles are steeped in the Torah: 12 steps meets the 12 tribes.

Borovitz, 58, a burly, effervescent ex-thief who spent most of the 1980s behind bars, and his wife, Harriet Rossetto, 72, a social worker and free spirit, run Beit T'Shuvah. Rossetto founded the place 23 years ago .

The rabbi scanned the sanctuary, packed with residents, guests and plates of symbolic food: lamb bone, boiled egg, matzo, parsley, apple paste and horseradish. He raised a glass -- kosher grape juice instead of wine -- and sang a Hebrew prayer.

A chorus of voices joined him, straining to the heavens for redemption. They came from every corner of society. A mother who couldn't say no to crack. A businessman who lost his house to gambling. A musician who ditched his family for heroin. A lawyer who succumbed to rum.

At the front of the room, near the rabbi, sat Rachel Lurie and Luke Chittick, holding hands. During last year's Passover, they were in back, still new to Beit T'Shuvah, still fresh from the brink, still uncertain if sobriety could bring anything good.

The Seder last week was "a milestone we've looked forward to for a long time," Luke said. It wasn't just that they were a couple now, propping each other up. It was that they felt their lives had meaning. They could see a future.

Rachel and Luke arrived at Beit T'Shuvah in November of 2008. He came first, just after his release from a hospital after another bout of alcohol poisoning.

When Luke entered Beit T'Shuvah, he was 27, bloated and ashen. His brother had found the temple, and because Luke was still woozy, he did not know where he was.

"Just what the hell am I doing in a synagogue?" Luke, the son of a Lutheran minister, recalls wondering.

That day, he was at the bottom of a descent that had begun at the University of Massachusetts and quickened when he moved to Los Angeles in 2004, hoping his handsome looks would lead to acting jobs.

What he found instead was a bartending job -- and OxyContin, the prescription pain drug that mirrors heroin. It seemed to fight the depressive storms that had swept over him since childhood.

"Everything just blew up in my face," he says, remembering terrible moments -- like the day he snorted OxyContin from the grimy floor of a urine- and feces-soaked public bathroom in Tijuana.

By 2007, he was able to replace OxyContin with something cheaper: vodka and bad wine. Soon, living in a string of shabby Compton motels, he had a routine. Drink for two hours and pass out. Wake, drink again, pass out, wake, start over.

He was strapped to gurneys in mental wards. He flunked his way out of rehab stints by getting drunk. With each failure he hated himself more, but he could do nothing to change.

He was taken to an emergency room one day, his blood-alcohol level at 0.53, when a doctor pulled his brother aside.

"You know the actor in 'Leaving Las Vegas'?" the doctor said, speaking of Nicolas Cage, who in the movie drinks himself to death. Luke "is Nicolas Cage."

Rachel understood those depths too well. She grew up in a middle-class Canadian family that practiced a conservative brand of Judaism -- a family that, according to her mother, never quite figured out how to deal with their rebellious daughter.

At 15 she ran away from home, living for a spell on the streets of Toronto. That year, in a rough part of downtown, she was cornered by a neo-Nazi skinhead and sexually assaulted.

By her mid-20s, even though she had kept a string of bookkeeping jobs, Rachel was sinking fast, getting loaded on drugs or alcohol almost every night. Yet somehow she kept her family from knowing the extent of her addiction. She was good at lying.

"Smart enough," she says, "to manipulate, so I could get what I want."

As her drinking and cocaine use increased -- some nights she would go through nearly a gallon of vodka -- she grew delusional. She shut herself inside her apartment and barely spoke. White-hot anger was her preferred mode of expression. She suffered a nervous breakdown.

As she turned 32, Rachel knew that if she didn't get help, the worst was going to happen. "I was going to die," she says flatly.

She flew to Los Angeles to check herself in to Beit T'Shuvah, a place she'd heard about from a friend. She drank the entire way. Then she skulked through her first weeks, crying, green baseball cap covering her eyes.

"Mad as hell," she says. "Mad at what I let myself become."

To hear his wife tell it, Mark Borovitz "was a good Jewish boy who became a crook."

It started in Cleveland, his hometown, when he was 14 and his father died of a heart attack. Lost, Borovitz began peddling stolen goods and drinking heavily. In 1977, in his mid-20s, he moved to Los Angeles. He became an alcoholic, a con man, a purveyor of bad checks and a thief.

From the late 1970s to the late '80s, he was behind bars almost as much as he was free. At the state prison in Chino, he met Rossetto, a high-spirited social worker who backed down to no one. By then, after meeting a rabbi who volunteered at the prison, he'd begun reconnecting full-bore with his religious roots.

When he complained to Rossetto that there were no halfway houses that fit the needs of Jewish ex-cons, she replied that she'd started just such a facility in downtown Los Angeles. "If you know so much," she told him, "when you get out of here why don't you come to help out?"'

He did. He also kept trying to soften his edges, kept immersing himself in Judaism. He helped Rossetto with everything, even leading Torah study and Friday services. In 1990, they married.

Especially in the beginning, their work faced resistance from some in Los Angeles' Jewish community who blanched at the thought of addiction and crime as problems. Beit T'Shuvah, a nonprofit getting by on donations and grants, was a world removed from the fancy rehab centers of Malibu. But as more residents arrived, respect and acceptance grew.

In 2000, after six years at the Zeigler School of Rabbinical Studies, Borovitz was ordained a rabbi. By 2004 -- the year "The Holy Thief," a book about his life, was published -- he and Rossetto had moved Beit T'Shuvah to Mid-City.

Today it pulses with the pair's unflagging energy and offbeat philosophy: a progressive view of Judaism mixed with soul-searching psychology.

There are 20 counselors, including one who leads "surf therapy" groups on a Santa Monica beach. There's a small music studio, a house band and a cantor who doubles as a spiritual advisor. Most of the staff have fought their own addictions.

Weekdays start with sunrise Torah study, mandatory for every resident, including the small percentage of non-Jews. Then come ethics classes, group therapy sessions, chores and private counseling.

Friday services, attended by addicts and non-addicts alike, are the week's highlight. The no-frills sanctuary, which partly doubles as a cafeteria, sways with a vibe more common in African American churches. The band rocks, the cantor sings Jewish spirituals -- and when the barrel-chested Borovitz strides to the stage, it seems anything can happen.

He jokes, curses, dances and delivers fiery sermons. A favorite theme is seeing the humanity in everyone -- even in the self-proclaimed enemies of Israel.

Recently, he spoke of a former resident who had died of an overdose. The man, he shouted, was a "narcissist who didn't care enough for his kids to stay alive!" He turned to the congregants, many of them parents. "Are you gonna be so smart, so 'I know everything so I don't need nobody's help,' that you're gonna rip the hearts of your children? . . . You don't got the right!"

It was that kind of truth-telling -- sacred and profane -- that grabbed Rachel and Luke.

In the beginning, just knowing Luke was a saving grace for Rachel. Because they arrived the same month, they were in the same therapy sessions. They became inseparable.

Judaism would be their road map to recovery.

Rachel embraced her faith as never before. She immersed herself in Torah classes and prepared for her Bat Mitzvah, the coming-of-age ceremony for Jewish girls, which she had missed.

For Luke, Judaism was a fresh way of seeing the world -- one that matched his own struggles. The rabbi told him about the constant wrestling match between man and God. He said all who walk the earth are engaged in an inner battle between yetzer tov and yetzer ra -- good and bad impulses -- and that taming the bad ones meant embracing them.

But there was a part of Luke that still could not imagine life without a high. One day, he bought vodka at a nearby grocery store.

When Rachel found him, booze on his breath, he slumped in her arms. "What did I do?" he asked, sobbing. "What did I do?"

The question now was: What to do next?

Rachel told a counselor what happened, even though it could have gotten Luke kicked out.

"It was a turning point for both of their lives," Rabbi Borovitz said. Rachel learned she could tell the truth and live with the consequences. Most rehab centers would have expelled Luke. Not Beit T'Shuvah. Luke learned he could stumble -- and bounce back.

They both got stronger, looked steadier.

Luke opened up emotionally as never before. He got a part in a commercial and a job helping out at Beit T'Shuvah. Rachel's anger lessened. She had her Bat Mitzvah and became the rabbi's assistant.

By the start of 2010, Luke and Rachel were in love. Instead of keeping them apart, as would have happened at many other rehabs, Borovitz and Rossetto blessed the relationship, believing it would help.

"Where would we be without this bond?" Luke wonders, noting how many times the relationship has helped give them the strength to stay sober, most recently when Rachel's grandmother died.

Passover was a chance to take stock.

"We've used enough!" Rabbi Borovitz bellowed at the Seder. "Used dope enough! Used booze enough! Used people enough! Enough, enough!"

He asked each congregant to write on scraps of paper the one thing that enslaves them.

"Shame," wrote Luke.

"Fear of the wonder of life," wrote Rachel.

The Rabbi walked just outside the sanctuary and leaned beside a garbage can on Venice Boulevard. Rachel and Luke knelt beside him, watching as he lit a fire and burned the scraps until all that remained were billowing smoke and glowing embers.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-jewish-addict10-2010apr10,0,2865358,print.story

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Florida ordinance targets people who give to beggars and peddlers

Supporters of the measure cite traffic safety. Critics say it violates free-speech rights.

By Lisa J. Huriash and Susannah Bryan

April 12, 2010

Reporting from Oakland Park, Fla.

Dare to buy red roses or a newspaper from a street vendor, and soon you could be breaking the law.

At least in Oakland Park, Fla.

Citing traffic safety concerns, officials in the Fort Lauderdale suburb of 42,000 tentatively approved an ordinance targeting not only panhandlers and peddlers, but the people who give to them or buy something from them.

Under the ordinance initially passed last month, anyone who responds to a beggar with money or any "article of value" or buys flowers or a newspaper from someone on the street would face a fine of $50 to $100 and as many as 90 days in jail.

"You're going to put someone in jail for giving someone a coat when it's cold or a hamburger if they're hungry?" City Commissioner Suzanne Boisvenue said Wednesday. "For me, it's so wrong."

She cast the only "no" vote at the March meeting.

Other critics say the measure violates free-speech rights and unfairly targets the homeless.

"I assume you have the right to beg," resident D. Michael Iradi said. "And anyone should have the right to give money.

"My civil right to contribute is being violated," he said.

Said Laura Hansen, chief executive of the Coalition to End Homelessness: "To make it a crime to help a human being in need? That is so antithetical to everything I know to be ethical, moral and right. We have an obligation to help each other. To penalize people for doing that makes no sense."

The ordinance had been scheduled for a final vote Wednesday, but the vote was delayed until June 16 to allow more time for the city to research the ramifications.

The measure prohibits "beggars, panhandlers or solicitors" from selling any item on a public street because it "distracts drivers from their primary duty to watch traffic and potential hazards in the road."

Those who give are covered as well, said City Atty. Donald J. Doody, because "an operator of a vehicle is prohibited from stopping his or her vehicle that is in traffic on a public street to exchange money or other things of value."

Doody said there were other places to beg or sell: Newspapers can be sold from racks and people can beg on sidewalks. "It's just a different location."

The ordinance exempts registered nonprofits and is modeled after a law in Gainesville, Fla., he said.

Boisvenue said the city was just trying to make money.

"This is a violation of the 1st Amendment," she said. "And the city of Oakland Park should not be looking for a way to imprison motorists who want to give money. And it targets the people without jobs, the homeless, at a time when the economy is the worst."

Boisvenue fears the ordinance would invite legal challenge and cost taxpayers money.

"If they are indigent, the city will have to hire an attorney to represent them," she said, noting that the city also would be paying its attorney to prosecute.

But a supporter of the ordinance, Commissioner Steven Arnst, sees it differently.

"People and cars don't mix," he said. "How would you like it if you were the person who hit somebody because somebody walked in front of you on the roadway?"

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-florida-panhandling12-2010apr12,0,7174444,print.story

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OPINION

Updating our view of coal miners

Downtrodden, wretched, bitter? Hardly. We need a truer understanding of modern mine workers and their huge contribution.

By Homer Hickam

April 11, 2010

Last week was a terrible one for the coal mining industry. The loss of nearly 30 miners in an explosion deep inside a huge West Virginia mine simply should not happen, not with all the regulations in place and all the required safety equipment and techniques, including modern methods of ventilation that avoid large concentrations of explosive methane. When I heard about the accident in the Massey Energy Co.'s Upper Big Branch mine, I was shocked. I never expected such a large loss of life would ever happen again in one of our coal mines.

When an accident in an American coal mine occurs that results in killed or trapped coal miners, the major networks and radio stations start calling me for commentary. My grandfather and father were coal miners, but I'm called on mostly because I wrote a memoir set in West Virginia coal country that was made into the film "October Sky." I usually agree to go on the programs and give background and context to the mining and rescue operations, but my real purpose is to take the opportunity to tell the public what kind of men and women still mine coal in our country and what life in their little towns is like.

It doesn't take long into the interview before the host asks me something along the lines of, "Considering how dangerous the work is, why would anybody want to work in a coal mine?" In other words, how could anyone in this day and age be so stupid?

That's when I get to educate the interviewer, pointing out that far from being a pick-and-shovel guy, most miners today work in a high-tech environment of electronic monitors, computers and complex machinery. They also possess a pride in their chosen occupation, not to mention a puckish humor and gentle nature. And they are certainly aware of the dangers of their workplace but love what they do. In other words, coal miners are modern Americans who, like many other Americans, probably have high-definition televisions in their dens. I also describe the towns in which they live, usually old villages set within the hollows of scenic, forested hills redolent of aromatic pine.

After I'm finished with my description of people and place as they actually are, the disappointment is almost palpable. That's because most of the interviewers already have an idea of what life is like in a coal company town, or at least, they think they do. This is because of another company town, namely Hollywood. Over the years, the movies set in coal country have pretty well established how most Americans and the media view coal miners and their communities. "Coal Miner's Daughter," "Matewan" and, yes, "October Sky," all telling stories of an era decades ago, are the films most of the interviewers have seen. Some of them even cite "How Green Was My Valley" as their reference, never mind that it was set in Wales a century ago.

Rather than the little towns in the hills I describe with their snowy white churches, interviewers want to hear how awful these places are, how gritty, ugly and dirty. They also want to hear how downtrodden, bitter and wretched coal miners are. I hate to disappoint them, but they just aren't like that any more, and thank goodness they're not.

The truth is, without the American coal miner and his willingness to work in his profession, we'd all be sunk. Coal provides well over 50% of our country's electrical production and it also keeps the average price per kilowatt-hour cheap. In other words, coal is the backbone of our economy. When we turn on a light, use a computer, watch television or do anything using electricity, we should all thank the coal miners. We should also as a nation take it as our sacred duty to keep them safe, and that means supporting the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration.

MSHA is a powerful federal regulatory agency that sends its inspectors into mines on routine and surprise inspections. Much has been made of the citations given by MSHA inspectors to the Massey operation before this deadly explosion. Understanding is low in the media, however, on what these inspectors do. To me, they are heroes, and the best of them take no guff from mine owners. Smart mine owners and managers use these inspectors as a resource and fully comply with their recommendations. We don't yet know if the mine owner and managers of the Massey mine were smart or dumb. The truth will come out.

A novel I had published last year -- set in a modern West Virginia coal town and presenting miners as they are today (not to mention a big methane explosion very similar to what happened last week) -- has led to a possible reality show. If it happens, viewers could see what miners are really like, including, in an unsparing way, the hazards of their jobs and the still pervasive problem of black lung disease. It would also show the healthy (and often dramatic) tension that exists between MSHA inspectors and company foremen and owners. Then maybe all Americans, including the media, would get a truer picture of mining.

Homer Hickam is the author of "Rocket Boys/October Sky," "Red Helmet" and many other books.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-hickam11-2010apr11,0,5905386,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Equestrian Charged With H.I.V.-Related Offense

In Ocala, the heart of Florida's horse country, the equestrian rider Darren Chiacchia is a boldface name.

Mr. Chiacchia is an Olympic bronze medalist who gained national attention in 2008 when he was thrown from his horse in an accident that put him in a coma and led to a heated debate about the safety of his sport. He jokes that he is Ocala's second-most-famous resident, behind John Travolta .

In late January, however, Mr. Chiacchia made headlines of a different sort. He was arrested by the Marion County Sheriff's Office after a former sexual partner accused Mr. Chiacchia of exposing him to H.I.V. , the virus that causes AIDS.

Mr. Chiacchia, who pleaded not guilty in February, faces up to 30 years in prison under a Florida law passed in 1997 that makes it a felony for people with H.I.V. to have sexual intercourse without informing their partners of their condition. His trial is scheduled to begin in June, his lawyer said.

Florida is one of at least 32 states nationwide that have criminal statutes specific to H.I.V., many of which date to the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, when fear of spreading the disease was at its peak. As the science and treatment of H.I.V. and AIDS have changed considerably in the ensuing decades, fear of infection has subsided. However, the laws remain on the books, and prosecutors continue to enforce them.

In Pennsylvania and Louisiana, people with H.I.V. can be sentenced to as much as 10 years in prison for spitting at or biting another person, even though scientists have long concluded that transmitting the virus through saliva is virtually impossible. In Missouri, people can be sentenced to life in prison if they infect others without their knowledge.

Although many of the laws were created in the wake of highly publicized cases in which people exposed dozens of sexual partners, the statutes make little distinction between such extreme situations and more nuanced recent cases like Mr. Chiacchia's, which involved a consensual relationship.

A recent survey by the Center for H.I.V. Law and Policy documented at least 50 cases nationwide since January 2008. But laws can be unevenly applied, even within a state. Although records show that at least 71 people have been arrested under Florida's H.I.V. law since it was enacted, Mr. Chiacchia is believed to be the first in his five-county region to be prosecuted under the law, said the assistant state attorney handling the case.

In 2004, Mr. Chiacchia helped the United States equestrian team win an Olympic bronze medal in the eventing competition in Athens. He was preparing for the Beijing Olympics in March 2008 when his horse tumbled over a jump during a competition. He broke several bones, punctured a lung and sustained a severe brain injury that affects his memory.

While being treated for his injuries at a hospital in Gainesville, Mr. Chiacchia tested positive for H.I.V, according to a sheriff's report.

Mr. Chiacchia, 45, and his former partner met on a gay-oriented Web site and began dating in February 2009, according to a statement the partner made to investigators. The relationship ended in June, after his partner said he came across medical documents in Mr. Chiacchia's home and discovered that Mr. Chiacchia was H.I.V. positive. The man filed a complaint with the Sheriff's Office in August.

Reached by telephone, Mr. Chiacchia's former partner declined to comment.

Those who support the H.I.V.-specific laws say they are necessary to punish people whose reckless behavior puts others at risk.

“Based on the facts of the case, we felt filing charges was appropriate, and we believe the crime was committed,” said Timothy McCourt, the assistant state attorney in Mr. Chiacchia's case. “Failing to inform somebody can put their life at risk. And I think in a real sense, you're playing Russian roulette with another person's life.”

Mr. Chiacchia is charged with a first-degree felony because he and his former partner had sex more than once. Records show that the former partner tested negative for H.I.V. before August 2009, and Mr. McCourt declined to say whether he has since tested positive for the virus.

Advocates for people with H.I.V. and AIDS argue that criminal laws cause more harm in that they discourage people from being tested.

“These laws always were a bad idea, and the fact that they were a bad idea only becomes increasingly obvious the more we know about H.I.V. and how it is transmitted,” said Catherine Hanssens, executive director of the Center for H.I.V. Law and Policy.

Mr. Chiacchia's lawyer, Baron Coleman, said the problem with cases involving a couple is that they often pit the word of one against the word of the other. Many times, they end in plea agreements for reduced sentences, calling into question the laws' purpose, he said.

“These statutes are not meant to create he-said, she-said lovers' quarrels at the end of the breakup,” said Mr. Coleman, who said he had consulted on several other H.I.V.-specific criminal cases.

After Mr. Chiacchia's former partner contacted the Sheriff's Office, an investigator and prosecutors subpoenaed Mr. Chiacchia's medical records, interviewed the men's friends, collected text and e-mail messages, and advised the partner on how to record a phone conversation with Mr. Chiacchia.

In the August 2009 e-mail message that is part of the prosecution's case, Mr. Chiacchia told his former partner that he had kept the information a secret because he did not trust him.

“I could not share with you and have you leave me with this information about me,” he wrote.

According to a partial transcript of the recorded phone conversation — the tape is distorted and difficult to decipher — Mr. Chiacchia can be heard dismissing H.I.V. as a “minor inconvenience.”

In an interview, Mr. Chiacchia disputed many of the details of the case and said it was “nothing more than a relationship gone bad.”

He even raised questions about whether he was H.I.V. positive in the first place, calling the test at the Gainesville hospital questionable, adding: “I am 100 percent healthy.”

Mr. Coleman cautioned against drawing conclusions from his client's statements, saying Mr. Chiacchia is not a scientist. When asked about whether Mr. Chiacchia's injury may come into play at trial, Mr. Coleman declined to comment, but said, “It's not unusual for someone with a traumatic brain injury to have severe memory loss or to recover memories at a later date.”

Mr. Chiacchia would not say whether he ever told his partner that he was H.I.V. positive. But, he said, “Everyone close to me had this information,” and he later added, “I certainly never intended to put anyone in harm's way.”

In an interview recorded by an investigator, one acquaintance of both men said the former partner told him about Mr. Chiacchia's positive status on Easter, months earlier than he told the Sheriff's Office he had made the discovery.

Mr. Coleman said the law under which Mr. Chiacchia is being charged is unfair because criminal acts can be prosecuted under more generic laws.

“If you're trying to kill somebody, there are statutes to protect against that,” Mr. Coleman said. “Why do we need a second layer to determine how you attempt to murder somebody?”

James Subjack, a former district attorney in Chautauqua County in upstate New York, disagreed. Mr. Subjack was the prosecutor in the case of Nushawn J. Williams , accused in 1997 of infecting more than a dozen women with H.I.V. The Williams case led several states, although not New York, to create or strengthen H.I.V.-specific laws.

Mr. Subjack said the absence of such laws in New York hampered his prosecution of Mr. Williams, who pleaded guilty to four sex-related felonies, including rape and reckless endangerment. He was sentenced to 4 to 12 years in prison. Without H.I.V.-specific laws, Mr. Subjack said, “How would you convince a jury, for example, that when some guy is having random sex with somebody else, that it was his intent to kill them as opposed to have sex?”

To advocates for people with H.I.V., the most egregious criminal cases are those involving spitting or biting. In 2008 in Dallas, an H.I.V.-positive man was found guilty of spitting at a police officer and is serving 35 years in prison. The man was not convicted under an H.I.V.-specific law; instead, the jury found that he had harassed a public servant with his saliva , which they deemed a deadly weapon. Jeanne Bergman, a longtime advocate who now works for AIDS Truth, which seeks to dispel myths about H.I.V. and AIDS, said these kinds of cases perpetuate misconceptions about the virus and unfairly single out people who are infected.

“Down the line, it stigmatizes everybody with H.I.V. because it makes them potential criminals,” Ms. Bergman said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/sports/12hiv.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Oakland Priest's Accuser Describes Sexual Abuse

OAKLAND, Calif. — A San Francisco woman who says she was molested by the Oakland priest at the center of a case that has raised questions about Pope Benedict XVI 's handling of sexually abusive clergy members described in vivid terms on Sunday how she was sexually abused and intimidated by her attacker.

The woman, Melinda Costello, said she had been abused for several years, beginning at age 7, as a parishioner in nearby Fremont, Calif., where the Rev. Stephen Kiesle was working at a church as a seminarian in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Ms. Costello, now 48 and on disability because of arthritis, says that Mr. Kiesle — who was ordained as a priest in 1972 — first playfully invited her to sit on his lap, part of a youthful demeanor that he fostered, she said, including wearing purple tennis shoes in church.

“He was considered to be the Pied Piper,” Ms. Costello recalled in an interview. “He was a kid. And who doesn't like a big kid?”

But Ms. Costello says Father Kiesle's touching and tickling soon progressed to fondling her chest and genitals. “He told me the devil was inside me,” she said, adding that the priest sometimes cast his actions as an exorcism. “I always knew that I was uncomfortable and that it wasn't right.”

Her account came on the same day a priest in Massachusetts used his sermon to condemn the church's handling of the broader sexual abuse scandal, describing some in the clergy as “felons” and suggesting that Benedict resign.

“We must personally and collectively declare that we very much doubt the veracity of the pope and those of church authority who are defending him or even falling on the sword on his behalf,” said the priest, the Rev. James J. Scahill of St. Michael's Parish in East Longmeadow.

“It is beginning to become evident that for decades, if not centuries, church leadership covered up the abuse of children and minors to protect its institutional image and the image of priesthood.”

Nearly a decade after the abuse described by Ms. Costello, Father Kiesle was convicted in 1978 of tying up and molesting two boys in another California church rectory. But he was not defrocked until 1987 — despite concerns voiced to the Vatican over several years by Bishop John S. Cummins of Oakland.

Mr. Kiesle, who could not be reached for comment, served three years of probation for his 1978 conviction and underwent treatment. In 2004, he was convicted of a second sex offense — molesting a girl in 1995 in Truckee, Calif. — and sentenced to six years in prison.

He now lives in Walnut Creek, Calif., where he is registered as a sex offender.

Questions about the slow pace by which Father Kiesle was removed from the clergy have intensified since it was learned that Benedict — then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and a top Vatican official — had signed a 1985 letter telling Bishop Cummins that Father Kiesle's case needed more time and that the “good of the universal church” should be considered in coming to a decision.

A Vatican lawyer has defended the church's handling of Father Kiesle's case, saying that it had acted “expeditiously” by its own standards and that the onus was on Bishop Cummins to make sure the priest did not abuse again.

The handling of the sexual abuse problems by the church — and the future pope — has caused deep rifts.

From his pulpit on Sunday, Father Scahill, a vociferous and frequent critic of the church's handling of the sexual abuse crisis, delivered a scathing sermon in which he said, “There surely is solid ground here for severe doubt” about what the Vatican says it knew about the sexual abuse.

“And if by any slimmest of chance the pope and all his bishops didn't know — they all should resign on the basis of sheer and complete ignorance, incompetence and irresponsibility,” Father Scahill said.

For the last eight years, Father Scahill, 63, has criticized how the church and the Diocese of Springfield, where his church is located, have handled the sexual abuse crisis. His criticism began, he said in an interview after his sermon, after parishioners came to him in 2002, distraught about the crisis that was shaking the Archdiocese of Boston and the Diocese of Springfield.

“They said something has to be done, shepherd our concerns,” Father Scahill said. “That's what priests are supposed to do, be a shepherd.

Mark Dupont, a spokesman for the diocese, said Father Scahill's comments “don't reflect the Diocese of Springfield or the priests of this diocese or the bishop.” He said, “We think the comments are unfortunate and an unfortunate use of the pulpit.”

Other reaction to the sermon was mixed. One parishioner stood up and yelled “heretic” during one reading of the sermon, Father Scahill recalled, and said he supported the pope. But others praised the priest.

“I think it's very brave,” said Jean Montana, 82, who greeted Father Scahill after the 10 a.m. Mass, where he received a standing ovation. “You have to give him a lot of credit.”

She added: “I agree with him. I totally agree that something has to be done.”

In Oakland, the diocese has confronted sexual abuse scandals in the past. On the grounds of the Cathedral of Christ the Light, where Ms. Costello spoke with reporters on Sunday, there is a small “healing garden” devoted to victims of such crimes. “We remember, and we affirm,” reads a plaque in the garden, which contains a shattered heart-shaped stone. “Never again.”

Mike Brown, a spokesman for the diocese, said Father Kiesle was removed from active ministry in 1978.

“For all purposes, his life in the diocese was over,” Mr. Brown said, adding that his continued membership in the priesthood from 1978 to 1987 had been mischaracterized. “It's been implied that the diocese just let him roam about as an employee, but that's not the case.”

Mr. Brown said, however, that the diocese would be examining records this week to determine what role — if any — Father Kiesle might have had in church activities during that period.

At the cathedral on Sunday, Hector Rivera, an unemployed construction worker attending services, said he was frustrated by the continued reports of pedophilic priests. “They work for God,” Mr. Rivera said, his 4-year-old son standing beside him. “They shouldn't be doing it.”

Mary Barnes, a nurse from Berkeley, said she believed Benedict should step down because he failed to lead in a time of crisis. “To have the highest levels of our church giving out excuses for not protecting our children is unforgivable,” Ms. Barnes said. “It's the farthest thing imaginable from the message of Jesus.”

For Ms. Costello, who settled a civil suit with the church several years ago, it took years to come to grips with her abuse, she said. No longer a Catholic, she said she could not even tell anyone about the attacks until she was safely into her adulthood.

“I was terrified,” she said. “He was God.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/us/12abuse.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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In a Tough Economy, Old Limits on Welfare

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Kimberly E. Kaplan recently received a notice telling her that she and her three children were about to lose their monthly welfare benefit of $584 because they had reached the time limit on cash assistance and she had not made adequate efforts to find work.

Ms. Kaplan, 43, is required to work 20 hours a week, but is seeking a hardship exemption. Her 4-year-old son, Landon, has psychological and behavioral problems, and she said that “it's a full-time job to take care of him.”

Rhode Island has the nation's third-highest unemployment rate, but the welfare rolls here continue to decline because of the time limits and stringent work requirements.

Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of Americans receiving benefits under the main federal-state welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families , or TANF, has increased less than 10 percent, even though unemployment has nearly doubled and the number of people receiving food stamps has grown more than 40 percent, to 39 million.

Congress overhauled the welfare law in 1996 to emphasize work, and in a booming economy the changes were widely considered a great success.

But the latest trends are prompting federal officials to ask whether welfare is fulfilling its mission in tough economic times. Congress and the Obama administration are considering changes as the program comes up for renewal this year.

“TANF seems far less responsive to the growing need than other safety net programs, such as food stamps or unemployment insurance,” said Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington and chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Income Security.

Carmen R. Nazario, the assistant secretary of health and human services in charge of welfare policy, said, “Some states with some of the worst economic conditions are not seeing significant caseload increases.”

Indeed, in a recent report, the Government Accountability Office , an investigative arm of Congress, said, “We found no clear association between the change in the number of families receiving cash assistance in a state and its unemployment rate.”

Ronald T. Haskins, who helped write the 1996 law as an aide to House Republicans, said, “There's definitely a problem.”

“Many states have been too slow to take destitute families back on the rolls,” Mr. Haskins said. “In 1996, both Republicans and Democrats assumed that welfare rolls would rise during a recession as jobs got harder to find.”

Rhode Island changed its welfare program in 2008. Under the new program, known as Rhode Island Works , people can receive cash assistance for no more than 24 months in any 60-month period, with a lifetime maximum of 48 months of benefits. The lifetime limit had been 60 months.

Benefits go mostly to families headed by women. For Coralis I. Concepcion and her three boys in Woonsocket, R.I., cash assistance ended on Jan. 31.

They lost a monthly benefit of $584, and the impact, she said, has been drastic. “If we go out locally, we usually walk instead of using the car,” she said. Ms. Concepcion, 23, began receiving cash assistance four years ago, when her first son was born, and she said she had filed more than 200 job applications in the last year.

“It's very difficult to find any job,” Ms. Concepcion said. “I am competing against people with bachelor's and master's degrees. I went to high school through the 10th grade.”

Cash assistance is also running out for Meagan L. Fontaine, 24, and her 5-year-old girl and 2-year-old boy. She has a temporary subsidized job as an administrative assistant at Project Hope, a social service organization run by Catholic Charities in Pawtucket, R.I.

“It's horrible,” Ms. Fontaine said. “I apply for 45 jobs in a week. You don't get calls back, or you get an interview but no job. Employers are so picky. They can pick anyone they want in these hard times.”

Workers in the Head Start program see the effects of the new welfare rules in several ways.

Many children eligible for Head Start are from families receiving cash assistance. But Dee L. Henry, who has worked at the Woonsocket Head Start program for 35 years, said, “For the first time, we are seeing significant numbers of families who report no income whatsoever, zero, because they have reached the time limit on cash assistance or have been sanctioned for not meeting work requirements.”

Besides teaching the children, Head Start workers visit the families at home at least three times a year. And sometimes they observe ominous signs of domestic violence.

Jody A. Ragosta, a Head Start worker in Woonsocket, said: “I see moms who have been cut off cash assistance and can't find work. In some cases, they return to the father or another man who was abusive, in the hope that he can provide financially for the kids.”

As Congress turns its attention to the temporary assistance program, Republicans suspect that Democrats want to dismantle parts of the 1996 law and expand welfare once again. Democrats say they want to preserve the emphasis on work, but reward states for lifting families out of poverty, not just reducing the welfare rolls.

The 1996 law changed the culture of cash assistance. The number of people on welfare fell more than expected, the employment of single mothers increased and child poverty declined.

But those trends have not been sustained. Child poverty has increased. Since 1996, the proportion of poor children receiving assistance has declined by more than half. Fewer than half of eligible families participate in the program.

Rhode Island officials said the state had been less than aggressive in carrying out the 1996 welfare law. They allowed welfare recipients to attend education and training programs for years while other states emphasized work above all other activities.

When Rhode Island began to overhaul its welfare program in 2008, the state unemployment rate was about 7 percent and state officials believed that jobs would be readily available to welfare recipients even if the rate climbed to 9 percent. They never expected the rate to soar to its current level of 12.7 percent.

Given the high jobless rate, Donalda M. Carlson, associate director of the Rhode Island Department of Human Services, said: “I thought the applications for temporary assistance and the rolls would grow. To our surprise, it has not happened.”

Ms. Kaplan was granted a three-month extension of cash benefits late last year so she could care for her son. But the Department of Human Services said she did not use the time for the designated purpose, “to transition off cash assistance” and become self-sufficient.

She says that if she goes back to work, her son will lose home-based therapeutic services that help him develop social skills and deal with his anger.

A similar deadline is looming for Amanda R. Choiniere, 22, and her 17-month-old daughter. Ms. Choiniere said she had graduated from high school with a certificate as a nursing assistant and had training as a pharmacy technician but could not find a job.

She is learning to be a bookkeeping and accounting clerk in a vocational education program at Rhode Island College. She has no idea how she and her daughter will get by when their cash assistance runs out in June.

“I'll be stuck,” Ms. Choiniere said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/us/11welfare.html?ref=us&src=me&pagewanted=print

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From MSNBC

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Blast rattles U.K. spy headquarters in N. Ireland

DUBLIN - Irish Republican Army dissidents detonated a bomb Monday outside the British spy headquarters in Northern Ireland, police said, just hours before rival Catholic and Protestant leaders were to elect a new justice minister in a long-sought step in peacemaking.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland said IRA dissidents held a Belfast taxi driver at gunpoint in his home and used his cab to carry the bomb to the security walls of Palace Barracks, a former British Army base that houses the Northern Ireland branch office of domestic spy agency MI5.

Police said the blast at 12:24 a.m. (2324 GMT) caused no serious injuries and little damage to nearby homes in Holywood, a Belfast suburb.

Local politicians said about 50 local residents had been evacuated to a community hall after authorities received telephone warnings of the bomb. A Protestant politician, Basil McCrea, said one man was hospitalized suffering from suspected shock after he "was blown off his feet" by the blast's shockwave.

Timed attack
Politicians agreed the attack appeared timed to undermine Britain's transfer of government powers Monday to a new Justice Department in Northern Ireland's unwieldy coalition of British Protestants and Irish Catholics.

British powers for running the justice system were transferred officially at midnight just 24 minutes before the bomb detonated. However, Britain is retaining control over key law-enforcement powers, in particular by giving MI5 agents the lead role in gathering anti-terrorist intelligence in Northern Ireland.

Later on Monday, Northern Ireland lawmakers are scheduled to appoint Alliance Party leader David Ford as the new justice minister of their nearly 3-year-old coalition. Such cross-community cooperation was the cornerstone of the U.S.-brokered Good Friday peace accord of 1998.

Ford's party, unusually for Northern Ireland, seeks support equally from both the Protestant majority and Catholic minority. Until now Alliance has been excluded from power-sharing posts because of its weak electoral support.

But the two hard-line opposites leading the coalition — the Protestants of the Democratic Unionists and the Catholics of the IRA-linked Sinn Fein — have backed Ford as a compromise candidate because neither party wants the other side to control the politically sensitive justice portfolio.

Belfast Mayor Naomi Long said IRA dissidents were trying to deter politicians from forging "stable political structures and a peaceful society."

Long, who also is deputy leader of the Alliance Party, said she was "sure that the vast majority of people from across our community are sickened by the actions of people who seem intent on dragging Northern Ireland back into the past."

The IRA killed nearly 1,800 people in a failed 1970-1997 campaign to force Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom. The outlawed group renounced violence and disarmed in 2005 in support of Sinn Fein's efforts to forge a coalition with their former Democratic Unionist enemies.

But several small splinter IRA groups continue to plot sporadic gun and bomb attacks in Northern Ireland. The dissidents in March 2009 shot to death a policeman and two British soldiers, their most recent killings. On Feb. 22 they successfully detonated their first car bomb in nearly a decade, causing minor damage to properties beside the heavily fortified courthouse in the border town of Newry.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36405901/ns/world_news-europe/print/1/displaymode/1098/

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No body? Usually no problem convicting

NEWARK, N.J. - Police in New Jersey believe they have solved one of the coldest cases in the state's history: the disappearance of five Newark teenagers in 1978.

After tracking leads for 32 years, two men were arrested March 22 and charged with herding the teens at gunpoint into an abandoned rowhouse, tying them up and torching the building, setting a blaze so fierce police say the bodies were incinerated, destroying any evidence.

Now, prosecutors have a difficult task: Prove the teens were murdered when their bodies were never found.

Murders without bodies were long considered one of the most complex challenges in the legal profession, but advances in technology have made the once-unthinkable prospect more common.

The absence of the key piece of evidence — the corpse — poses unique problems for both prosecutors and defense attorneys, according to Thomas "Tad" DiBiase, a Washington D.C.-based lawyer who runs a Web site chronicling "no body" murders. He said the majority of such cases end in convictions or guilty pleas.

"The body can tell you how the murder occurred," he said. "It can tell you when the murder occurred, it can tell you where the murder occurred, so by taking away the body you take away all those elements from a case — that makes it enormously difficult."

The New Jersey case was initially treated as a missing persons case and no connection was made between the fire and the teens' disappearance, reported two days later. In the decades since, any clues have been all but obliterated: The site of the fire is now a housing complex and additional case files were reportedly lost in a courthouse flood.

Prosecutors have charged Lee Evans, 56, and 53-year-old Philander Hampton, 53, with murder and arson. Prosecutors say Hampton sometimes hired the teens for odd jobs and killed them over some missing marijuana. Both have pleaded not guilty.

The near-total absence of forensic evidence in the case doesn't necessarily help the defense, according to Michael Robbins, the lawyer representing Evans.

"In the absence of evidence and proof, there's a real risk that outrage, that anger and emotion, will be substitutes in the courtroom for competent evidence, testimony and proof," Robbins said. "Without a body, how can you corroborate what anyone says? Without a crime scene, how can you even begin to attempt to corroborate the version of events that the witness here is putting forth?"

Two of the nation's most high-profile murder cases without bodies — the killing of a wealthy Manhattan socialite by a mother and son team, and a doctor who killed his wife and tossed her body from an airplane over the Atlantic Ocean— were prosecuted by former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.

"These cases are important because it shows you can't just get rid of the body and get rid of the case," Morgenthau said. He recalled how skeptics questioned his decision to pursue New York's first such murder prosecution based entirely on circumstantial evidence: the death of Irene Silverman, a wealthy Manhattan socialite and former Radio City Music Hall Rockette.

"But we were convinced that they had murdered this woman, and we thought it was a very bad precedent to not prosecute people because there is no body — it encourages people to do away with the body," Morgenthau said.

Morgenthau's team successfully convinced a jury that a mother-son con team killed Silverman and forged documents to try to steal her $8 million townhouse. Sante and Kenneth Kimes were convicted in 2000; Sante was sentenced to 120 years in prison, her son, 125. Prosecutors called more than 100 witnesses and introduced evidence they said was in the Kimes' possession, including Silverman's personal documents, loaded pistols, two fright masks, plastic handcuffs, syringes and a pink liquid similar to a known "date rape" drug. They also found a forged deed that transferred her town house to the Kimeses for a fraction of its nearly $10 million value.

Circumstantial evidence also convicted Dr. Robert Bierenbaum, a Manhattan plastic surgeon who got 20 years to life in prison for killing Gail Katz-Bierenbaum. Prosecutors showed that Bierenbaum spent nearly two hours flying the afternoon after his wife was last seen, convincing a jury that he had dismembered her, squeezed the body into a duffel bag and dumped it from a small airplane over the ocean.

Prosecutions for murders without bodies were once extremely rare, according to DiBiase, who traces the earliest documented case in the U.S. to 1819, when brothers Jesse and Stephen Boorn were convicted of murdering their brother-in-law, Richard Colvin, in Manchester, VT.

More than 300 hundred such cases that have gone to trial in the U.S. since, more than 90 percent of them resulting in a conviction, DiBiase said.

Although defense attorneys often try to convince jurors that no body means no proof a person is dead, DiBiase has found only one case, around 1886, in which a victim turned up alive after his supposed killer — tried twice on charges he killed his lover's husband — had been convicted and executed.

In the past decade, DiBiase said a surge in such murder prosecutions is largely thanks to advances in DNA technology, computer records and cell phone logs, and improvements in forensics.

Juries have also become more sophisticated with the popularity of crime, law and forensic television shows, according to Donna Pendergast, assistant attorney general for the Michigan Department of Attorney General's office, who has successfully prosecuted several of these cases.

Pendergast says the enormous public appetite for forensics has led to jury pools full of people who "want to see every little fingerprint."

She has convinced juries that a person was really dead even though no body was ever found, because the victim didn't access bank accounts or credit cards after they disappeared.

"Traditionally, a prosecutor would say: 'No body, we don't have a case,'" Pendergast said. "But now that people are seeing these cases can be won ... it's not 'the perfect crime' anymore."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36393312/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/print/1/displaymode/1098/

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