Court Order

Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey has restricted the Web site domelights.com from workplace computers, but an organization of black officers wants the department to go further. The Guardian Civic League yesterday asked for a court order that not only blocks the site from department computers, but that also bans police officers from posting racially offensive material - even on their own time - and forces the site's founder to remove any offensive postings. The civic league last week sued the department, the Web site, and its founder, an active-duty police sergeant, charging that the site contains hostile, racist material.

An appeals court yesterday reinstated the 2006 conviction of a Devon contractor swept up in a Norristown corruption scandal. In 2007, a federal judge had overturned the mail-fraud and conspiracy conviction of Thomas Carbo, declaring that no "rational" jury should have convicted the paving contractor. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit disagreed, ordering the conviction reinstated and telling the judge to sentence Carbo, who faced 24 to 30 months in prison. Carbo, 42, is already serving a 20-month sentence on a subsequent tax-evasion conviction.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Lonegan said yesterday that he would cut court-ordered funding to New Jersey's poorest school districts and equalize state subsidies to all districts. "It is a noble goal to strive to provide a quality education for every student . . .," he said, "but I submit that the current [school funding] formula is a complete failure, a miserable failure not only in that it's failed to provide a quality education, but in the impact it has had on taxpayers.

Angela Jefferys called Philadelphia police for help, but she never took their advice to get a restraining order against her boyfriend. Five days later, the 35-year-old court clerk was dead. Her boyfriend, Aleem Ali, 45, a city social services employee, shot her several times in front of her 11-year-old daughter before he fatally shot himself Tuesday morning, ending an affair that spanned at least six years. Yesterday, police continued looking for answers to questions they say may remain a mystery, partly because Ali was married to another city worker and his affair with Jefferys, a former coworker and mother of three, had been somewhat secretive.

A state judge yesterday ordered a Lancaster County kennel to close for six months and fined its owners $166,000 for repeatedly violating a four-year-old agreement with state authorities. Commonwealth Court Judge Barry F. Feudale called the business practices of Joyce and Raymond Stoltzfus "clearly deceptive" and "underhanded. " But he fell short of permanently shuttering the couple's CC Pets L.L.C. of Peach Bottom, as the state Attorney General's Office had requested at a hearing Monday.

Although an ousted Lower Merion Township deputy constable has been denounced for alleged abuses of power, it's a safe bet no one will accuse him of lacking moxie. Steven D. Sokoloff, 58, of Ardmore, has decided to challenge a judicial order barring him from running for a constable position in Montgomery County. In a court agreement Dec. 21, 2007, Sokoloff promised he would "not be appointed a deputy constable anywhere within the commonwealth," and would not run for election as constable in Montgomery County.

Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge James M. DeLeon could benefit from an extended lesson in humility. DeLeon is facing disciplinary action for an outrageous abuse of his authority. The state Judicial Conduct Board has accused him of misconduct for issuing a bogus "stay-away" order against a man who displeased one of the judge's pals. The episode unfolded like this: DeLeon, a judge since 1988, attended a Center City social event in August 2005 with members of the city's Romanian community.

Dead witnesses. Old evidence. A potential dearth of jurors willing to step into a case that has been an international cauldron - and to deliver a death sentence. Those will be just some of the possible challenges facing prosecutors if the 26-year-old case of Mumia Abu-Jamal proceeds to a new sentencing hearing, with a new jury deciding whether he should get life in prison or death for killing Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. "It would be a most interesting sentencing hearing," predicted Center City lawyer Joseph J. McGill, who prosecuted the case in 1982 when he was an assistant district attorney.

A Philadelphia lawyer pleaded guilty to forging a court document yesterday in New Jersey Superior Court in Camden. Rather than tell a client that a case had been dismissed, Nina E. Perris, 48, gave him a forged court order that said he would receive money for injuries received when a security gate fell on him in Virginia. The client showed the document to another lawyer, who recognized it was not an official court order and took it to the Camden County Prosecutor's Office.

Camden County election officials yesterday conducted a court-ordered count of votes that went missing after poll workers forgot to retrieve electronic cartridges from voting machines on Election Day. The count, which took place in a warehouse where the machines are impounded after the election, didn't change the outcome of any race or public question, said Ken Shuttleworth, spokesman for the county government. The count discovered the votes of 114 people who voted on electronic voting machines in Camden and in Gloucester City, Shuttleworth said.