Courts

It took one road trip for Demola Onifade to astound his new basketball teammates and coaches. But it was nothing that the 16-year-old from Lagos, Nigeria, did on the court. "We're together as a team, back at the hotel," said Rob DePersia, a local attorney who is the coach of Team Speed, an AAU squad that features top teenage players from South Jersey. "Demola said, 'I have to go and study.' He went and did his homework twice. "He has that inner drive. That's why he's going to be great.

It's hard to say whether Warren Bloom would be a bad traffic judge. That's because the job, for which Bloom is seeking the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, has virtually no prerequisites beyond possessing a pulse, living in Philadelphia, and winning a pale imitation of an election. It's somewhat easier to determine whether Bloom has, at least at times, been a bad taxpayer, a bad uncle, and a very bad rapper. That's because he owes more than $20,000 in taxes (which might be helped by a traffic judge's $91,000 salary)

Democrat Michelle L. Winters can keep her seat on the Gloucester Township Council, a judge in Camden County ruled this week, rejecting an argument by the township Republican committee that her appointment was improper. Winters, a registered nurse from Blenheim, was appointed by the all-Democratic council on Feb. 11 to replace Michelle Gentek, who left the council in January after being elected a freeholder. On March 13, the GOP committee and its chairman, Ray Polidoro, filed a complaint in Superior Court saying the township Democratic committee and the council had not met the deadline for filling the vacancy and must therefore leave the seat vacant until it could be filled in the November election.

After admitting that she embezzled $509,000 from a South Philadelphia bank, Katherine Harrell got a huge break last year. Swayed by accounts of her cooperation with the FBI and Harrell's claim that her son and bedridden brother would be institutionalized without her being free to care for them, a judge sentenced the Lansdowne woman to just a day in prison. Problem is, Harrell was lying. Her brother was never in a car crash, as she had claimed. Her parents were ready to care for her boy. On Thursday, Harrell's fate swung to the other end of the punishment spectrum.

LEROY FISHER recalled the good ol' days for Hunting Park yesterday. "When I was a child, it was a wonderful place," said Fisher, 42, president of Hunting Park United. "It had the carousel, the playground and the pool. It was a nice place to go. " But then, the bad ol' days of crime hit hard starting in the mid-1980s. "The park was not an attractive place," said Fisher, a school-bus driver. "There was a lot of drug use and prostitution. It wasn't a safe park. They didn't have good lighting.

LAS VEGAS - O.J. Simpson won a small victory on Tuesday when he returned to court for Day 2 of his attempt to win a new trial in his robbery case: A judge said he could have one hand unshackled to drink water and take notes. Simpson managed a smile and a waist-high wave with his shackled hand as he entered the courtroom and found friends and family members in the audience. Simpson's attorneys then persuaded Clark County District Court Judge Linda Marie Bell to let the former football star and TV pitchman have his right hand free.

PHILADELPHIA Traffic Court is closer to extinction after just one Democrat voted yesterday to save the controversial agency. The state House's Judiciary Committee voted to approve two pieces of legislation designed to abolish the court. The full House will now consider the two bills, passed unanimously by the state Senate in February, just days after nine current or former Traffic Court judges were charged in a huge scheme to fix tickets as political favors. One of the bills, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, a Delaware County Republican, eliminates three vacant Traffic Court seats for which candidates are competing in Tuesday's primary election.

Perennial candidate Warren Bloom pulled the top ballot position for Philadelphia Traffic Court in Tuesday's primary. Which is troubling because, six years ago, Willie Singletary was first on the ballot and, despite being spectacularly unsuited, won the job. Bloom is the poster candidate for why voters are wretchedly served by this multicar crack-up of an institution. Nine former "judges" on this "court," including Singletary, were charged last fall with conspiracy and fraud for fixing tickets.

TRENTON - In a case with wide implications for Shore restoration following Hurricane Sandy, the state Supreme Court heard an appeal Monday of a $375,000 jury award to a Long Beach Island couple who said construction of a barrier dune in 2010 deprived them of their ocean view. The Army Corps of Engineers built a 22-foot-high dune for storm protection in front of Phyllis and Harvey Karan's house after Harvey Cedars condemned a portion of their beach five years ago. A Superior Court jury awarded the couple damages in 2011, finding that the dune construction, while benefiting many of the surrounding homeowners, had substantially diminished the value of the Karans' $1.9 million home.

LAS VEGAS - The shackles and blue prison garb seemed to weigh down O.J. Simpson as he returned to a Las Vegas courtroom on Monday to ask for a new trial in the armed robbery-kidnapping case that sent him to prison in 2008. Looking grayer and heavier, the 65-year-old former football star and TV pitchman was flanked by guards as he nodded and raised his eyebrows to acknowledge people he recognized in the audience. A marshal had warned onlookers not to try to communicate with Simpson, and no words were exchanged.