WEST

COURT CHANGES OPINION ON CASE CONCERNING JUDICIAL NOMINEES

A federal appeals court panel that heard a challenge to a system President Bush uses to select judicial nominees in California last week abruptly changed the rationale for its decision to dismiss the case.

In March, three judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the lawsuit on the grounds that private individuals have no right to sue under a law that guarantees public access to the meetings of certain advisory panels, the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

Last week, without explanation, the judges withdrew that opinion and replaced it with one that found that the act does not apply to the judicial nomination boards because Mr. Bush played no role in establishing them.

The panels are appointed by Senators Boxer and Feinstein, as well as a close political ally of Mr. Bush, Gerald Parsky. Mr. Parsky told The New York Sun in March that he got involved in the process at Mr. Bush’s request.

In its new ruling, the appeals court also said that allowing public access to the panels could impinge on Mr. Bush’s right as president to seek advice regarding nominations.

The plaintiff in the case, Patrick Manshardt, said he challenged the process because it gives too much power to the two Democratic senators.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

SOUTH

POLICE: MAN CHARGED IN FLORIDA GIRL’S DEATH TRIES TO DIG OUT OF JAIL CELL

TAMPA, Fla. – The convicted sex offender accused of killing a 13-year-old girl, then dumping her body in a pond was caught trying to dig out of his jail cell, officials said. David Onstott, 36, was found scratching on the concrete wall near the floor of his cell early Saturday with a metal towel holder he had apparently pried off a desk, a Hillsborough County sheriff’s spokeswoman, Debbie Carter, said.

He had only scraped about a quarter of an inch into the concrete, she said. He was later moved to another cell in the jail.

Police said Onstott confessed to choking Sarah Lunde after getting into an argument with the girl at her Ruskin home in April. Her partially clothed body was found a week after she disappeared in an abandoned fish pond about a half-mile from her home. Onstott is charged with first-degree murder and attempted sexual battery. He has pleaded not guilty. He served 5 1/2 years in prison for a 1995 rape and was arrested in March on a charge of failing to register as a sex offender.

Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty.

– Associated Press

MIDWEST

FLAWED DATA HINDERS DEATH PENALTY ANALYSIS

COLUMBUS, Ohio – While state law requires the collection of data about Ohio’s capital punishment system, the records are incomplete and often wrong, according to a review. The result is information that makes analysis of that system difficult, countering a goal of lawmakers who hoped to use the data to make the system as fair as possible.

“You can’t mix apples and oranges and expect to get some sort of conclusion,” the state public defender, David Bodiker, said. Ohio Supreme Court files contain documents relating to 2,543 capital indictments submitted by county clerks from 1981 through 2002. But a two-year study by the Associated Press found that more than 600 of those were not for death penalty cases, and that at least 18 capital indictments were not reported to the court.

In the 1,936 capital indictments reviewed, defendants were more than twice as likely to receive a death sentence for killing a white victim than for killing a black victim. The study also found discrepancies in death sentences based on the county where the crime was committed. Nearly half the capital punishment cases ended with a plea bargain. In sending records for non-death penalty cases to the Supreme Court, clerks were likely playing it safe, the director of the Cuyahoga County Clerk’s criminal division, Mark Lime, said.

– Associated Press