6A
NEWS / WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2010 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
THE Phelps FAMILY AND FREE Speech
This fall, the Supreme Court will hear the controversial free speech v. privacy case involving the Phelps family. Come hear experts from both sides discuss this case Audience members are welcome to participate in the Q&A session that will follow the forum
Monday September
27
2010
7:30 PM
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Salary scandal hits L.A. suburb
LOS ANGELES — Both the mayor and the ex-city manager of the Los Angeles suburb of Bell were among eight city officials arrested Tuesday in a corruption scandal that authorities said cost the blue-collar city more than $5.5 million in excessive salaries and illegal personal loans.
The district attorney's office said several former and current City Council members were taken into custody along with ex-city manager Robert Rizzo and Mayor Oscar Hernandez.
"This, needless to say, is corruption on steroids," District Attorney Steve Cooley said at a news conference, standing next to pictures of the suspects.
Rizzo, who was making nearly $800.000 a year, was booked on 53 counts of misappropriation of public funds and conflict of interest.
ROBERT J. DOLE
INSTITUTE OF POLITICS
The University of Kansas
NEXT TO THE LED CENTER
FREE PARKING.
MONEY
Others taken into custody
Dalton Gomez/KANSAN
were former assistant city manager Angela Spaccia, Vice Mayor Teresa Jacobo, council members George Mirabal and Luis Artiga, and former council members George Cole and Victor Bello.
Former Police Chief Randy Adams, who was also scrutinized in the salary scandal, was not arrested.
"Being paid excessive salaries is not a crime." Cooley said. "Illegally obtaining those salaries is a crime."
Prosecutors allege the suspects misappropriated more than $5.5 million.
Adams was paid $457,000 a year but there was no evidence he obtained that salary illegally.
Cooley said his office had been investigating the officials since March — four months before the public learned they were paying themselves huge salaries to run the city of 40,000 people.
take place every other week.
Justin Lee, a sophomore from Wichita, scatters rye seed at the Native Medicinal Plant Research Garden Tuesday evening. The research garden is located within the University of Kansas Field Station 4, which is about a ten-minute drive from downtown Lawrence.
FARM (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
"You can be from all different backgrounds and majors to do this," Scherman said. "You don't have to know about gardening, you just have to be interested and we are here to teach you."
such may not be the same standards consumers have.
"I take local food to the Enviros meeting every week," Scherman said. "When you compare the ingredients and see all of the fillers that non-local food contains — people just don't want to know."
the process of sowing and growing.
"It should be fun to grow your own food, but there really should be a purpose." Scherman said. "We want to show people what might be going on in the food industry that really isn't too comforting"
Scherman said that is why the student farm is about more than
Many plots for the student farm are still available and meetings
CRIME
Suspect's guilty plea is another step to closure
Edited by Emily McCoy
NEWARK, N.J. — A suspect in the execution-style killings of three college students in a New Jersey schoolyard in 2007 pleaded guilty Tuesday, days before his trial was set to begin.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Melvin Jovel, 21, pleaded guilty to three counts of murder, one count of attempted murder and weapons charges in the Newark attacks.
Prosecutors said Jovel and five other young men lined up lolemi Hightower and Dashon Harvey, both 20, and 18-year-old Terrance Aeriel, against a schoolyard wall
and shot each of them in the back of the head.
A fourth victim, who survived, testified at the first trial in the case that she was sexually assaulted, slashed with a machete and shot in the head. She is not being identified by The Associated Press because of the sexual assault charge.
"With this guilty plea today, the victim and the surviving family members are spared one trial and Mr. Jovel will spend the rest of his life behind bars," said Essex County Assistant Prosecutor Thomas McTigue. "We can now move on with the prosecution of the remaining cases."
The other four defendants are in jail awaiting trial.
Jovel faces up to life in prison when he is sentenced on Nov. 4. His lawyer, Joseph Krakora of the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender, declined to comment on the plea.
Prosecutors have portrayed the killings as an initiation ritual for members of the Central American gang MS-13. They say Jovel and at least two of the other suspects had lived in an apartment complex in Newark's Ivy Hill section across the street from the scene of the murders.
Prosecutors say the four victims,
who attended or planned to attend Delaware State University, were hanging out listening to music in
the schoolyard behind the Mount Vernon school on the night of Aug. 4, 2007, when they were approached by the suspects, who robbed them and forced them to lie on the ground.
and shot. The survivor said she saw lovel's picture on TV while she was recovering in the hospital and
"We can now move on with the prosecution of the remaining cases."
THOMAS McTIGUE
Essex County assistant prosecutor
Soon after, according to testimony of the survivor, three of them were led down a set of stairs
remembered him as the person who shot her as he ran away from the scene.
The publicity surrounding the killings focused national
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attention on violent crime in New Jersey's largest city and jump- started anti-crime initiatives.
The killings also prompted state officials to give police the authority to refer violent crime suspects' names to immigration authorities if they are suspected of being in the country illegally, a response to the fact that one of the suspects was free on bail for other crimes despite being an illegal immigrant.
Several of the suspects are Latin American immigrants of differing immigration status. Prosecutors said Tuesday that it wasn't clear whether Jovel, who was from Honduras, is in the United States legally or illegally.
Earlier this year, a jury convicted Rodolfo Godinez, a legal immigrant from Nicaragua, and sentenced him to three consecutive life sentences for the killings.
Godinez was not tied to the gun or machete used in the attacks but was convicted under New Jersey's accomplice liability law. His lawyer plans to appeal.