NATION/WORLD
Tuesday, November 21, 1995
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
5A
Three charged with murders, kidnapping
Plan involved killing pregnant mother and removing fetus
The Associated Press
WHEATON, III. — A troubled woman's desire for a baby led her and two male companions to murder a pregnant woman and two of her children and cut open the woman's uterus to steal her unborn child, prosecutors said yesterday.
A judge ordered the three held without bond on charges of murder and aggravated kidnapping and appointed public defenders
to represent them in what could be a deathpenalty case.
"I'd just like to know why I'm being charged," a disheveled Jaceline Annette Williams, 28, of Schaumburg, said as she appeared in court. Her boyfriend, Fedell Caffey, 22, and Levern Ward, 24, of Wheaton, also were held in the DuPage County Jail.
They are accused of fatally stabbing Deborah Evans, 28, killing her 10-year-old daughter, Samantha, cutting open Evans' uterus and kidnapping the woman's 8 1/2-month-old fetus.
Evans' live-in boyfriend, James Edwards,
found the two bodies when he returned
home from work on the night shift, police said.
The newborn boy was injured in the delivery but was recovering at a hospital, authorities said.
The three left Evans' apartment with her son, 8-year-old Joshua, and the newborn child, authorities said. Another of Evans' children, 17-monthold Jordan, was left behind unarmed.
"I'd just like to know why I'm being charged."
Authorities said Ward was Jordan's father. Joshua later was found stabbed to death in an alley in Maywood, about 10 miles to the east.
Prosecutors said they were able to piece together some of what happened from
Jacqueline Williams Arrested in murder case
statements by Williams and an unidentified witness they said spoke with Joshua while he was held in Williams' apartment. Prosecutors broke off an impromptu briefing for reporters without giving details about that witness account. They did say the reason for the attack evidently was Joshua's failure to stand up.
baby of her own
They said that when the three went to Evans' apartment, they apparently were invited in and then went on a murderous rampage.
Friends said Evans had moved to Addison
last year after drug dealers overran her old neighborhood in another Chicago suburb, Hanover Park.
The newborn boy, whom relatives called Ellijah, was recovered from one of the suspects Friday night and was in good condition Sunday at an undisclosed Chicago-area hospital.
Evans' cousin, Fred Moody, told Chicago television stations Sunday that Ward had beaten Evans in the past and that she had filed for a court order of protection from him.
Williams was arrested on kidnapping charges Friday night when she returned home with Elijah, said Assistant DuPage County State's Attorney Joe Birkett. Police, acting on a tip, had staked out her home, Birkett said.
Communists make gains in east Europe elections
The Associated Press
WARSAW, Poland — Unseated as president by a media-savvy former Communist, Lech Walesa is the best-known casualty of a backlash against free-market reforms sweeping ex-Communists back to power in eastern Europe.
His defeat Sunday by Aleksander Kwasniewski, who tanned a nerve with promises to
Lech Walesa
ease the shock of transition, was the biggest blow yet to the pro-democracy forces that brought down corrupt regimes in 1989.
"For the Communists of central Europe, regardless of where else they have returned to power, this is the ultimate symbolic victory because the Poles have dumped the hero of Solidarity," columnist Konstanty Gebert said in an interview.
Within six years of their overthrow, Communists regrouping under the Social Democrat banner with some fresh, young faces have won back power at ballot boxes across the former East bloc.
Appealing to voters yearning for a return of the cradle-to-grave social welfare net and tired of bickering political neophytes, ex-Communists have won parliamentary majorities in Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria since 1993.
They also hold major political offices in Slovakia, Lithuania and Romania.
In outpollting Wales with 52 percent of the vote Sunday, Kwasniewski did best in the countryside and small towns, where most people earn barely enough to feed their families and pay bills.
It hardly mattered to such people that the 41-year-old Kwasniewski was writing editorials backing the 1981 martial law crackdown as Walesa and thousands of other Solidarity activists sat in Communist detention.
"This shows that there are still people who prefer
the old way," said John Micgiel, chairman of East European studies at Columbia University in New York. In Poland, young people frustrated by a shortage of good jobs joined nostalgic older voters in propelling Kwasniewski to victory.
Analysts say such voters, a silent majority of sorts in most young central European democracies, are only fooling themselves if they expect former Communists to bring back the welfare state or create millions of new jobs.
Indeed, Kwasniewski promised during the campaign that there would be no turning back from the reform path charted in the early 1990s by Solidarity-rooted governments. His parliamentary coalition even supported legislation this year putting caps on pension increases affecting 9 million Poles.
It's a trend repeated in many post-Communist countries: Those winning elections now tend to be people who didn't govern in the initial states of transition, said Leszek Balcerowicz, architect of the economic "shock treatment" that conquered Poland's triple-digit inflation in 1991.
While his political foes wrestled with the bumpy transition from a centrally planned economy, Kwasniewski was sitting on the sidelines studying U.S.-style campaigning.
Kwasniewsk's image-makers tailored a candidate in sharp contrast to the bull-headed Wales, who alienated Poles by firing three prime ministers, refusing to listen to potential allies and feuding constantly with parliament.
When re-election time came, Wales, who ran an independent campaign,"said of the voters,"They will not reject me because they will not reject Poland. I am Poland."Gebert said.
As in other former Soviet satellites — the Czech Republic being the main exception — centrist intellectuals who led the bloodless 1989 revolution largely proved themselves inept afterward in the delicate art of compromise.
As a result, Poland's main Solidarity-rooted party, Freedom Union, is hopelessly splintered.
New AIDS drug gains approval
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The drug 3TC won approval Sunday from the Food and Drug Administration for use in combination with AZT in treating AIDS and HIV infection.
When paired with AZT, 3TC — which has the trade name Epivir — appears to boost patients' immune systems and lower the amount of HIV virus in their blood for at least six months, says Glaxo Wellcome Co., which manufacturers both drugs.
The 3TC combination is patients' first new choice for initial treatment since AZT hit the market in 1987. All other AIDS
drugs sold to date are supposed to be used only after AZT fails.
3TC becomes the fifth member of a family of AIDS drugs that fight the disease by incapacitating a protein important to the virus' reproduction. Epivir also is known as lamivudine.
The 3TC-AZT approval was the latest example of the FDA's accelerated review of drugs for HIV infection, said Commissioner David A. Kessler.
"We remain committed to accelerated approval as seen by the review of 3TC," Kessler said in a statement. "At the same time, we have much to learn about the most effective combination therapies, and we are equally committed to getting the answers through the required postmarketing studies."
The FDA also approved use of the drug doxorubicin to treat Kaposi's sarcoma, a type of cancer that affects people with AIDS. A version of the drug already was on the market for treating tumors, said FDA representative Arthur Whitmore. The formulation approved today, sold under the name Doxil by Sequus Pharmaceuticals Inc., encapsulates the drug in a fatty compound known as a lipid and appears to reduce the symptoms of Kaposi's sarcoma, Whitmore said.
Crack laws discriminate,judge says
But higher court blocks use of shorter sentences
The Associated Press
As he sentenced two men, U.S. District Judge Lyle Strom told them that he would continue working to change the guidelines to allow more lenient terms.
OMAHA, Neb. — A judge who has bucked federal sentencing guidelines in crack cocaine cases, arguing they discriminate against Blacks, reluctantly obeyed a higher court's instructions yesterday.
Appeals sent the case back to him, ruling he could not give sentences more lenient than the guidelines.
Strom sentenced brothers Delano Maxwell, 36, and Hassan Majed, 29, to at least 30 years in prison each for crack cocaine distribution.
He initially had sentenced them to 20 years each, but after an appeal the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of
Strom has criticized the federal sentencing guidelines because they call for longer sentences for convictions involving crack cocaine than those required for offenses involving regular or powder cocaine.
Strom contends the guidelines are discriminatory because more crack defendants are Black. Statistics show that nine of 10 crack defendants in Nebraska are Black.
Strom had delayed resentencing the men in hopes that Congress would adopt recommended new sentencing guidelines, but Congress rejected the recommendations.
"I don't believe I have the authority to depart downward because Congress rejected the rational and reasonable request of the Sentencing Commission," Strom said in
ing "I thought I had the authority
to depart from these sentencing
guidelines, I would."
Maxwell urged Strom to continue his fight against the guidelines.
"You can't downward depart? You don't understand that. I really don't." Maxwell said. "For more than 200 years, a judge has been able to use his discretion in sentencing. How can you justify not giving me a chance? You've got a lot of people who agree with your view of justice."
Strom commended Maxwell for his argument and said he would continue his efforts to change the guidelines.
Maxwell and Majied were charged with Martin Lewis, 27, and Chester Davis, 27, in an April 1991 indictment. Lewis and Davis were considered lesser players and were given 120-month sentences.
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