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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY FEBRIARY 19 2009
NEWS
5A
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2009
NATIONAL
Man released after wrongful conviction
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Former inmate Joshua Kezer, 34, right, talks with Scott County Rick Walter after being released Wednesday from prison in Jefferson City, Mo. Kezer had been imprisoned in 1992 for the murder of a college student but Tuesday it was determined he had been wrongly convicted.
Associated Press
BY ALAN SCHER ZAGIER
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — A man who spent half of his life in prison for a 1992 slaying was freed Wednesday after a judge ruled that he was wrongly convicted and had to be retried or released.
Joshua Kezer, 34, left the Jefferson City Correctional Center on Wednesday afternoon when Scott County prosecutor Paul Boyd said he would not seek a new trial.
In his ruling, Cole County Circuit Judge Richard Callahan criticized the special prosecutor who helped persuade a jury to convict Kezer of second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the death of Angela Mischelle Lawless, a 19-year-old nursing student at Southeast Missouri State University. Callahan ruled that special state prosecutor Kenny乳卢hofsh improperly withheld several key pieces of evidence from Kezer's defense attorneyse.
Callahan also said Kezer met the legal burden of "demonstrating actual innocence by clear and convincing evidence. ... Confidence in his conviction and sentence are so undermined that they cannot stand and must be set aside."
The state's prosecution was based on the testimony of another suspect in Lawless' death who said he saw Kezer at a nearby convenience store on the night of the killing. But Mark Abbott, who is serving a 20-year drug sentence in federal prison, gave conflicting testimony in police interviews and subsequent statements.
Three Cape Girardeau County jail inmates also claimed that Kezer had confessed to killing Lawless, but they later acknowledged lying in hopes of getting reduced sentences on their own charges.
Hulshol persuaded the trial judge to keep that reversal out of court, arguing that Kezer's defense attorney coerced the statements by threatening the inmates.
Hulshof, a former member of Congress who now works for a Kansas City-based law firm, said in a statement Tuesday that he remained "convinced that Joshua Kezer, a member of the violent Latin Kings gang, is guilty of this crime."
A Hulshof spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment after Kezer's release.
Kezer called on the prosecutor to take responsibility.
"Hulshof has to live with his own actions and take responsibility for his own deeds," Kezer said. "His refusal to take any accountability is a shame."
Scott County Sheriff Rick Walter, who discovered Lawless' body in her idling car in 1992, had assigned a team of investigators to reexamine the case after his election to sheriff in 2004. The probe turned up evidence that contributed to Kezer's release.
EDUCATION
Kezer said he now plans to help other wrongfully convicted inmates.
Merit-based financial aid decreasing around nation
Obama's stimulus package focuses on need-based aig
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Johnny's a middle-class student who worked hard to get good grades and a high SAT score. Jane's record isn't as good, but her family is low-income, and without help she might not be able to go to college at all.
Who should be first in line for help from the government to pay for college?
It's a debate that hits hot-button questions about fairness and opportunity, and lately, many experts think the middle class has been winning.
But the economic meltdown could be shifting the playing field, as the government and colleges themselves are forced to focus on helping the neediest students and try to head off a wave of dropouts.
Some experts think
that could prove one of the few beneficial outcomes of the downturn.
"The most efficient way to spend the money is to focus on the margins, people who wouldn't otherwise go."
WILLIAM DOYLE
Vanderbilt professor
Nevada has already moved money out of a program that gave as much as $10,000 to top high school graduates.
Merit-based aid, meanwhile, has taken a hit in several states. New Jersey recently imposed tough standards and cut back on its Student Tuition Assistance Reward Scholarship. Michigan may have to reduce its Promise scholarship.
While ideally college would be cheaper for everyone, he said, the research is clear that "the most efficient way to spend the money is to focus on the margins, people who wouldn't otherwise go"
lies through college, with the largest increase ever to the Pell Grant program, which mostly supports students from families earning under $30,000 a year.
Over the last decade, nearly every state has started or expanded politically popular "merit aid" programs that reward students with high SAT scores or GPAs, even those whose families could afford college costs.
Colleges have done the same with their own money, dangling financial aid to attract students who will improve the college's ranking and reputation. But sometimes that means well-off students get a free ride.
"For a long time, the discussion was about the middle-income squeeze — wealthy people could pay for (college), poor people were getting grants, people in the middle were having a hard time," said Vanderbilt University education professor William Doyle.
The federal stimulus package President Obama signed into law Tuesday, however, was notably focused on helping the poorest fami-
Cutting merit aid won't necessarily translate into more need-based aid in these tough times. But there are signs it's a higher priority. In Virginia, Gov Tim Kaine's proposed budget would boost need-based aid $26 million even as it imposes big cuts elsewhere to where to take a t.
year, $2.9 billion budget hole.
Some educators criticize merit aid programs for distributing public money where it is not necessarily needed, but they also do a lot of good.
They raise the academic reputations of state universities by keeping bright students from moving elsewhere. And they encourage high school students to work hard, knowing there's a financial reward.
And of course, students from low-income families who get good grades are eligible, too (in some states, merit scholarship programs have need-based components).
But many people are surprised to learn how much financial aid ends up helping families who aren't necessarily the neediest.
Twenty-eight percent of state financial aid was awarded for merit in 2006-2007, up from 15 percent a decade earlier, according to the National Association of State Student Grant & Aid Programs.
The trend is more pronounced when colleges hand out their own money. Families earning more than $100,000 get grants that average $6,200, the most recent federal figures show. That's $1,500 more than colleges' average award to families earning under $20,000.
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ECONOMY
Unemployment rates rising
Job seekers stand in line at the National Career Fair job fair at the Radisson Martinique On Broadway Hotel on Wednesday in New York as hundreds lined up to get an opportunity at finding employment. The Federal Reserve said unemployment rates were now expected to reach nearly 9 percent this year. In November, the Fed projected only 7 percent unemployment.
BY JEANNINE AVERSA AND MARTIN CRUTSINGER Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve warned Wednesday that the nation's crippled economy is even worse than thought and predicted it would deteriorate throughout 2009, with no sign that the housing market will stabilize.
The Fed's bleak estimates indicated that unemployment could climb as high as 8.8 percent this year and that the economy would contract for a full calendar year for the first time since 1991.
The central bank's latest projections came hours after a separate report showed that new home construction and applications for future projects both fell to record
lows last month.
Still, some economists saw a silver lining in the otherwise dismal housing report: Scaled-back building should reduce the number of unsold homes and contribute to an eventual housing recovery.
The reports raise the stakes for the plan President Barack Obama announced Wednesday to curb foreclosures and ease the broader U.S. housing slump that sent the economy into recession.
The Fed's latest forecast says the unemployment rate will climb to between 8.5 and 8.8 percent this year. The old prediction, issued in mid-November, estimated that the jobless rate would rise to between 7.1 and 7.6 percent.
Many private economists believe the current 7.6 percent jobless rate — the highest in more than 16 years — will hit at least 9 percent by
early next year even with the $787 billion stimulus package signed into law Tuesday by Obama.
The Fed also believes the economy will contract this year between 0.5 and 1.3 percent. The old forecast said the economy could shrink by 0.2 percent or expand by 1.1 percent.
The last time the economy registered a contraction for a full year was in 1991, by 0.2 percent. If the Fed's new predictions prove correct, it would mark the weakest showing since a 1.9 percent drop in 1982, when the country had suffered through a severe recession.
The grim outlook represents the growing toll of the worst housing, credit and financial crises since the 1930s. All of those negative forces have plunged the nation into a recession, now in its second year.
"Given the strength of the forces
currently weighing on the economy," Fed officials "generally expected that the recovery would be unusually gradual and prolonged," according to documents on the Fed's updated economic outlook.
In another sign of the troubled economy, production at the nation's factories, mines and utilities fell 1.8 percent last month, more than economists expected. That figure, the third monthly drop in a row, was dragged down by a 23 percent drop in production at auto plants and their suppliers.
Meanwhile, construction of new homes and apartments plummeted 16.8 percent in January from the previous month, the Commerce Department said, falling to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 466,000 units, a record low. Analysts expected a pace of 530,000 housing units.
The University of Kansas Chancellor's Student Awards Committee
is accepting nominations and applications for the following graduating senior awards:
The Agnes Wright Strickland Award
The Class of 1913 Award
*The Rusty Leffel Concerned Student Award
*The Leffel Award is not limited to graduating seniors
The Donald K. Alderson Memorial Award
The Alexis F. Dillard Student Involvement Award
The Caryl K. Smith Student Leader Award
Nomination and application forms are online at: http://www.vpss.ku.edu/awards
Nominations must be received by Friday, February 13, 2009, at 5:00 p.m.
Applications must be received by Friday, February 27, 2009, at 5:00 p.m.