Crime

DEFENSE attorneys for two men charged with murdering four people with a car speeding away from an armed robbery persuaded a judge Thursday to bar the most graphic death-scene photos from the trial. The photos of the severed limbs and crushed bones of the three children and young mother killed on the sidewalk at 3rd and Annsbury streets on June 10, 2009, would serve no purpose other than to inflame jurors' passions, said attorneys for Ivan Rodriguez, 23, and Donta Craddock, 21, who are charged with four counts of second-degree murder.

ATLANTIC CITY — The stabbing deaths of two Canadian tourists outside a casino hotel left tourism officials stunned and dismayed Monday, casting a shadow over the formal opening on Memorial Day weekend of the newest gambling palace and tripping up a $30 million-a-year campaign to rebrand and revive the sagging resort town. The two victims, women ages 80 and 47, were stabbed and killed during a robbery Monday morning outside Bally's Atlantic City casino hotel, just steps from where a police officer was sitting in a patrol car. Police declined to provide the names of the victims, or precisely where they were from, pending notification of family.

It was 50 years ago this month that Corrine Sykes walked the proverbial "last mile" to the electric chair in Rockview Prison and became the last woman executed in Pennsylvania. The slow-witted 20-year-old black maid was convicted of killing her white employer in Oak Lane during a robbery. Her name may dredge up memories and emotions for some in Philadelphia's African-American community. The Sykes case can be compared to the O.J. Simpson case in the way it divided whites and blacks.

NEVER AGAIN, said the feds, and they meant it. Never again will owner Rosalind Lavin nor the managers of her four personal-care centers in Philadelphia and Media allow more than 210 residents to live in what U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan called "appalling" conditions. Never again will Lavin or her managers allow residents to lie in vomit or feces for days, unattended. Never again will Lavin or her managers serve insufficient food to residents, like a slice of bologna and a piece of cheese between bread, and call it nutritious.

AW, SHUCKS! Child rape is not a capital crime. No state may execute for it. In a perfect world, all murderers, rapists, heroin-heads, etc., would be exterminated. Can you imagine? Lawful jurisprudence protecting the innocent instead of protecting the guilty and damning the innocent? Whew! Makes your head spin. M. Anthony Vare, Philadelphia

Re "If guns are the problem, why aren't Hispanic, Asian and white males killing each other?": First, the press reports more black-on-black crimes. Second, whites are so busy leaving the border open, killing people in schools, molesting in churches, kiddie porn, meth labs, political crimes. Maybe whites are killing whites in the suburbs. There is crime everywhere. Not just blacks - whites, Asians, Hispanics. And whites who run the White House are getting whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics killed every day in a war that isn't necessary.

The next time John Street, Ron White or any other African-American cries race when investigated by the FBI or any other agency I would ask them to read page 47 of the Daily News on Tuesday, June 22. Maryland's former police superintendent Edward Norris, a white man, was sentenced to six months in prison for misusing thousands of dollars in police funds while he was Baltimore's Police Commissioner. Please spare everyone the race card when the indictments are served and remember crime and graft knows no color.

I AND A lot of others blame the system for these continous crimes. A suggestion: When criminals commit these horrible crimes with little or no fault of the victim, it really should be a stiff sentence. Jury duty never calls on me because I'll send the criminals to hell. Cissy Benjamin, Philadelphia

In taking a fresh look at the allegations of womanizing and sexual misconduct by former Warminster Police Chief Elmer P. Clawges, Bucks County District Attorney Alan M. Rubenstein has added fuel to the notion that this case is too hot to handle. A few weeks back, the D.A. said the former police chief's alleged conduct in one instance was "not only criminal, it is reprehensible and it's wrong. " The case involved a former township police clerk, Julie Beekman, who said the chief had sex with her regularly, beginning when she was 16. While he said he wanted to prosecute, Mr. Rubenstein said he was "absolutely barred by the statute of limitations.

This whole incident is madness. The school officials should have just told the boys not to bring the gun to school. The toy pellet gun hitting the girl occurred off school property. The girl was uninjured, and is not complaining. "Corpus delicti" (plural: corpora delicti; Latin: "body of crime") is a term from Western jurisprudence that refers to the principle that it must be proved that a crime has occurred before a person can be convicted of committing the crime. For example, a person cannot be tried for larceny unless it can be proven that property has been stolen.

Philadelphia criminal crews who have robbed Asian business owners include: Nuri Murray, Cheron Humphrey, Shawn Davis and Rickey Phillips, of Southwest Philly. Murray pleaded guilty in federal court to committing four robberies, the last on Nov. 22, 2008, in which he and another person followed the owners of a Southwest Philly nail salon to their home and robbed them of $900. Humphrey and Davis pleaded guilty to two robberies, and Phillips to one. On Nov. 29, 2008, Humphrey and Davis tailed the owners of a South Philly beer distributor to their Media home.

So the people got sick of it, all those criminals being coddled by liberal judges, with all their softheaded concern for rights and rehabilitation. And a wave swept this country in the Reagan years, a wave ridden by pundits and politicians seeking power. From now on, judges would be severely limited in the sentences they could hand down, required to impose certain punishments whether or not they thought they fit the circumstances at hand. From now on, there would be a new mantra in American justice.

Even the 30-day prison sentence given to a former Rutgers University student who used a webcam to secretly record his roommate having a romantic encounter with another man may have been too much. Many legal experts agree that Dharun Ravi, 20, probably wouldn't have been charged with any crime had not his victim, Tyler Clementi, committed suicide two days after the September 2010 incident. Even so, there was no evidence that Ravi's despicable act directly triggered Clementi's death.

Looks like the era of good feelings in Los Angeles had a short shelf life. Less than a month after new ownership seemed to sweep away the gloom generated by the seedy Frank McCourt era and last season's hideous mugging of a fan on opening day, criminals struck again. A fender bender in a stadium parking lot led to the beating of a driver and the arrest of four people, police said Monday. The latest attack occurred Sunday when a man in his 20s had a collision with another driver and three men pinned him down, police said.

THREE TRACE-evidence technicians have flunked a routine test administered to uphold the Philadelphia Police Department crime lab's accreditation, police brass announced Tuesday. Each technician tests hundreds of pieces of evidence a year for traces of blood and semen, so if investigators determine that the methods are problematic, it could throw countless court cases into question, authorities acknowledged. City officials learned of the test failures "within the last 24 hours" and decided to announce them to assure the public that they are moving swiftly to address them, even though they're fuzzy on many details, said Mike Garvey, director of the crime lab. The lab has 12 trace examiners; they're tested by an outside agency twice a year, six at a time, to ensure their competency.

Minutes after the school day began at Germantown High School, police said, a 15-year-old male student who was supposed to be in class slipped down a stairwell into the basement - an area off limits to students. He beckoned a female, also a freshman, to follow. She did, and it was there, the girl told police, that the boy violently raped her. Police have not disclosed how long the May 4 attack went on, but one local television station reported that the girl told police she screamed for help and no one heard her. While details of this case appear especially severe, crime in stairwells and other little-used areas of the sprawling school building has been a significant problem in recent years.

I'm told that a long time ago, on a street in Baltimore, a black man killed my grandmother. My father watched her die. Against the usual stereotypes, my dad's mother was struck down not by a robber but by a drunken driver. The really remarkable thing about the tragedy that scarred my father to the bone is that it had absolutely no impact on me. My father almost never spoke of the accident that took place a good two decades before my birth, and certainly never mentioned the color of the driver.

LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands - Former Liberian President Charles Taylor became the first head of state since World War II to be convicted by an international war-crimes court, a historic verdict that sends a message that tyrants worldwide will be tracked down and brought to justice. The warlord-turned-president was found guilty Thursday of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for arming Sierra Leone rebels in exchange for "blood diamonds" mined by slave laborers and smuggled across the border.

CHICAGO - The trial of the man charged with murdering three of Jennifer Hudson's family members resumed Tuesday with the Oscar-winner shutting her eyes as a police officer described finding her dead family members. Hudson sat next to her fiance as prosecutors shifted their focus to presenting crime scene evidence in the case against her former brother-in-law, William Balfour. Hudson hung her head and shut her eyes as Chicago Police Sgt. David Dowling described finding her mother's body sprawled in the living room with gunshot wounds through her back.