Courtroom

A dream had carried the boys so far from home, some 5,000 miles across the ocean to a cramped and dingy apartment in Philadelphia: a hope that ice hockey could change their lives. Ivan Pravilov could fulfill that dream, they were told. He could take them from the daily grind of post-communist Ukraine to the gleaming ice of the NHL. He'd done it before. He'd done if for Andrei Zyuzin, who went on to play for six NHL teams. He'd done it for Konstantin Kalmikov, a third-round draft pick of the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1996.

An investment broker who was head of his own brokerage firm was sentenced yesterday by a federal judge to seven years in prison for defrauding financial institutions, labor union funds and more than 50 individual clients of $5.5 million. Michael W. Lloyd, who had been a partner in Lloyd Securities Inc. in Elkins Park, received the sentence from U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle 3d, who concluded that Lloyd had been "hard-hearted" and "all-consumed with greed. " "I must confess I was sickened by what you have done to dozens of good, hard-working people," Bartle told Lloyd just before announcing the sentence.

Sheriff Ralph Passio has said in the past that lack of manpower and equipment has forced his office to use a "rubber band approach" when it comes to security in City Hall courtrooms. Today, the band snapped. Two persons, including a court crier, were shot by a woman who apparently carried a gun concealed in her purse into a courtroom that had neither a metal detector nor anyone at the door searching spectators. Following the shooting, judges and prosecutors echoed Passio's concern for better courtroom security.

A Philadelphia lawyer yesterday was charged with assaulting a narcotics police officer after he threw punches at him in a City Hall courtroom and had to be subdued by other officers, police said. The lawyer, Darryl Irwin, 39, was representing a man charged with drug violations and was awaiting a court hearing shortly before noon when the incident occurred. Police said the officer, Jorge Cruz, was standing in a hallway outside the second-floor courtroom, reviewing his file on Irwin's client when the lawyer told him, "There's no need to read that stuff.

Reputed Junior Black Mafia member Ronald "Rock" Mason yesterday was convicted of two weapons offenses for bringing a loaded semi-automatic handgun into a police station during a hearing for two alleged JBM members. Municipal Judge Louis G. F. Retacco deferred sentence until Dec. 18 and set bail at $15,000. Mason already is in jail under $1 million bail awaiting trial on drug charges. Mason, 19, of Divinity Place near Greenway Avenue, was arrested June 20 in a courtroom at the police station at 17th Street and Montgomery Avenue during a recess in a preliminary hearing for reputed high-ranking JBM members Aaron Jones, 27, and Samuel "Black Sam" Brown, 26. At the hearing, convicted drug dealer Richard Isaac refused to testify against Jones and Brown, who, he told police, were two of the three men who repeatedly shot him on a North Philadelphia street on Feb. 21. Mason, who is Brown's nephew, was sitting in the second row of the courtroom with his hand on the gun, police said.

Municipal Court President Judge Alan K. Silberstein brandishes a knife and a hook that were among some 200 weapons confiscated from individuals during the first month of the court's new metal detector program. Court aides collected hammers, knives, scissors, screwdrivers, spikes, razors and a 7-inch hat pin. Silberstein said he was surprised at the number of weapons taken in non-criminal courtrooms. "I guess you could say our worst fears were realized," the jurist said.

A Montgomery County judge yesterday conducted a trial in the prisoner- holding area of the Norristown courthouse and convicted a Graterford Prison inmate who had refused to enter a courtroom to face charges of striking a corrections officer. Common Pleas Court Judge Joseph A. Smyth Jr. left his courtroom and sat behind a desk in the locked security room to hear three prosecution witnesses and then declare Michael Vance, 34, of the Tioga section of Philadelphia, guilty of harassment.

A Municipal judge ruled today that Diani Brown must stand trial on charges of shooting her former boyfriend and a court employee in a City Hall courtroom last month. Brown, 43, of 57th Street near Kingsessing Avenue, is accused of opening fire before a courtroom filled with startled spectators after a harassment case against her ex-boyfriend was continued for the seventh time since September 1985. Wounded in the shooting were Ricky Stephenson, 30, of Yeadon Avenue in Yeadon, Delaware County, and Ramona S. Beverly, 38, of Lindbergh Boulevard near 68th Street, a court employee for more than five years.

He walked into the courtroom pushing the wheelchair of a political ally. He held his weeping 19-year-old daughter after she begged the judge not to send him away for too long. And he left, eight hours later, as a man headed for prison, though not for nearly as long as many had expected. The sentencing of former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo turned into courtroom drama yesterday, a teary production sustained by hope, exasperation, anxiety, and disappointment. "I've made mistakes in my life," Fumo told the judge, his voice small and broken.

Common Pleas Judge I. Raymond Kremer has had the rug pulled out from under him by a fellow jurist and is not sitting still over this moving experience. The outspoken Kremer sent a memo to all Common Pleas judges on Tuesday, citing his ouster from Courtroom 1115 at One East Penn Square, across from City Hall, to make room for Common Pleas Judge Richard B. Klein, who has chambers in that building. The change was approved by Administrative Judge Edward J. Blake. "The act of bumping a fellow judge out of a courtroom he had been sitting in for years, for some period of time, is divisive and is not calculated to encourage good relations or cooperation," said Kremer.

Moments after a jury convicted 20-year-old Donte Johnson on all charges in the rape and murder of Sabina Rose O'Donnell, a judge sentenced him to life in prison plus 40 to 80 years, ensuring that Johnson will live out the rest of his life behind bars. "Frankly, based on these facts, it's better than you deserve," Common Pleas Court Judge Glenn Bronson said Wednesday. In a scathing rebuke to Johnson's attorneys, who had asked that Johnson be given some hope of release in the distant future, Bronson told Johnson he was an extreme danger to the public because he lacked human decency and empathy.

JESSICA KISBY was the star witness in the Taj Mahal kidnapping-murder case that concluded Thursday, but she clearly was not a favorite of even the prosecution. In closing arguments before an Atlantic County jury, First Assistant County Prosecutor James McClain described Kisby, 26, as a "cold-blooded murderer. " In a dramatic summation that capped the 10-day trial, McClain told the jury, "At the time she testified, she was one of two coldhearted, cold-blooded murderers in the courtroom . . . . The other was . . . Craig Arno.

Stalking. Groping. Gay bondage porn. A sexually graphic love letter to a grade-school boy. The topics discussed in a third-floor Philadelphia courtroom last week might unnerve most observers. That they emerged in testimony about priests - and at times, from priests - only amplified the uneasiness. After all, a prosecutor told jurors at the start of this landmark clergy sex-abuse trial in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, priests are viewed as God's agents on Earth. Though much of the evidence introduced against Msgr.

The University of Pennsylvania law school on Monday officially dedicated a new courtroom at Golkin Hall that was funded by Philadelphia plaintiffs lawyers Thomas Kline and Shanin Specter, on behalf of their law firm, Kline & Specter P.C. The courtroom will be used for student education and includes the latest in courtroom technology, the law firm said. Golkin Hall, a newly constructed 40,000 square foot addition to the law school campus, itself will be officially dedicated April 5 at an event to be attended by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Even before the Philadelphia jury returned to the courtroom, Sheila Tepper seemed to know the news would be bad. "Oh, please, oh, please, oh, please," she said in a mantra punctuated by hyperventilated breaths while her husband, former Police Officer Frank Tepper, sat at the defense table a few feet away waiting for the verdict. Sheila Tepper's premonition was not wrong, and the courtroom erupted Thursday as she learned that her 45-year-old husband would spend the rest of his life in prison - the mandatory sentence after the jury found him guilty of first-degree murder for shooting a young Port Richmond neighbor after a 2009 melee outside the Teppers' house.

YOU MAY NEVER have heard of a lawyer named John Henry Leddy. He handled the kinds of cases that don't make headlines or the TV news. But his impact on labor relations during a 40-year legal career was considerable. He impressed judges and fellow lawyers. When he entered a courtroom, he created a stir. "At 6-foot-3-inches and with wavy gray hair and a commanding voice, he created a presence in the courtroom," said Jake Hart, a former law associate and now a senior magistrate judge in the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia.

HARRISBURG - Former State Rep. Brett Feese was convicted by a Dauphin County Court jury Tuesday on all charges for participating in a conspiracy to use public dollars to buy sophisticated computer programs that were used on political campaigns. The jury of six men and six women also convicted codefendant Jill Seaman, Feese's onetime administrative assistant, on all counts. The Election Day verdict in the so-called "Computergate" case was announced after nearly six full days of deliberations, and more than six weeks after the trial started.

HARRISBURG - Former Republican state Rep. Brett Feese was convicted by a Dauphin County jury Tuesday on all charges for participating in a conspiracy to use public dollars to buy sophisticated computer programs that were used on political campaigns. The jury of six men and six women also convicted codefendant Jill Seaman, Feese's onetime administrative assistant, on all counts. The Election Day verdict in the so-called "Computergate" case was announced after nearly six full days of deliberations, and more than six weeks after the trial started.

Every day, Kevin Harden Jr. is reminded of what might have been. Like most freshman city prosecutors, Harden is a "room D.A.," assigned to a Municipal Court courtroom, what some in the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office call "boot camp. " With a stack of case folders, he appears in a packed courtroom and, working with defense lawyers, shepherds scores of relatively minor cases - misdemeanors, drug possession, drunken driving - through a factory-floor process. Most will be resolved in guilty pleas, probation, or community service.