Courtroom

A woman opened fire with a pistol in a crowded City Hall courtroom yesterday, grazing her former boyfriend and seriously wounding a court tipstaff, police said. Attorneys, court personnel and spectators dived under tables and chairs in Courtroom 196 when the first of two shots was fired about 10 a.m, witnesses said. The woman - apparently angry over repeated delays in a criminal case she had brought against her former boyfriend for alleged harassment - was disarmed immediately by a deputy sheriff and two police officers.

Steven Zaillian's exceptional courtroom drama A Civil Action begins where most Hollywood movies end - in triumph - and ends where most Hollywood movies begin - in conflict. This inversion of the reliable formula lacks the emotional payoff that the American audience has come to expect. Radically, A Civil Action questions the very concept of payoff, be it the awards juries give to plaintiffs or the rewards directors give to moviegoers. In so doing, this brave and involving film adapted from Jonathan Harr's nonfiction best-seller makes us rethink processes we take for granted.

The trial of seven defendants in the killing of Port Richmond teenager Sean Daily, 17, played on last week like an ever-unfolding piece of theater in the round. Daily's death - he was assaulted May 20, 1989, beaten with baseball bats and then shot - is at the heart of the four-week-old trial. But the drama, and the tedium, spinning out in the elaborate high-ceilinged courtroom in City Hall often seem to have little connection with the youth's slaying. Common Pleas Court Judge Lynne M. Abraham is presiding over the jury trial.

Maybe it's the heat, but some jurors at City Hall have been acting a bit strange this summer. Take for instance the female juror who apparently fell in love with the man on trial for aggravated assault. Because the woman was an alternate juror, Common Pleas Judge John A. Geisz dismissed her from service when deliberations began. The woman immediately walked over to the defendant and told him she thought he was innocent. "Before long, the two walked out arm in arm for lunch," smiled defense attorney Leon Martelli.

The renowned inventor and cardiologist could have accepted his 30-day prison sentence without calling attention to himself. The approximately 30 people in the courtroom - including about 20 visiting criminal-justice students from Conestoga High School - were not aware of Kenneth R. Kensey's impressive background. To them, he was just another drunken-driving defendant. But Kensey, 54, of Honey Brook, elected to change that. After getting permission from Chester County Court Judge William P. Mahon, he turned and addressed the students.

Ronald "Rock" Mason, a reputed Junior Black Mafia associate, was found guilty yesterday by a Municipal Court judge of carrying a loaded gun into a courtroom in June and allegedly frightening a witness into recanting statements to police. Mason, 19, showed up with a loaded 9mm semiautomatic handgun in his waistband at a June court hearing for reputed JBM leaders Aaron Jones and Samuel Brown, who were charged in the Feb. 21 shooting of Richard Isaac. Police linked the shooting to the JBM's alleged attempt to control the cocaine and crack trade in the city.

WITNESS intimidation reared its head in a Philadelphia courtroom once again Tuesday, prompting a judge to smack the intimidator with the long arm of the law. "The message needs to get out - this isn't the street; it's a courtroom. Giving a statement is not a badge of dishonor," Common Pleas Judge Charles Ehrlich said before revoking bail for Gerald Andrews, 35, who is charged with buying a gun for a felon. Just before Ehrlich entered for Andrews' pretrial hearing, the defendant called a case witness in the courtroom a "snitch.

The tall man in the suit was explaining the one thing he knows. For sure. "There is no way that jury can find her guilty. NO WAY. " Of course when the woman with the flowered handbag heard this, she announced: "She's going to burn in hell. " "You don't know what you're saying," snapped the man. "You old fool," snarled the woman. Blame yesterday's unpleasantness outside Courtroom 653, if you must, on Vivian King, the accused homicidal mother who stars in this murder trial- turned soap opera.

Attorneys in the trial of two men accused of murdering a Philadelphia police officer selected juror number one just after 12:30 p.m. today. Not in the courtroom for the selection process was defense attorney William Bowe, who on Wednesday was punched twice in the head by Eric Deshann Floyd, his client. Bowe, who was taken from the Criminal Justice Center by ambulance, though he was not seriously injured, is now serving as a consult to Floyd's other attorney, Earl G. Kauffman.

A teenage mother carries a toddler son on her hip while seeking protection from the child's 18-year-old father. An elderly couple cry for their middle-aged son, who has already taken $10,000 from them and now wants more. A woman dressed in a blue sweat suit, who sat next to her husband in a court waiting room, later pulls at her upper lip to show where he bloodied it with his fist. "I just don't want him putting his hands on me," she tells the judge. And so it goes in Courtroom 3 of Family Court, the one courtroom in the city that handles only domestic abuse cases.