Motions

Pretrial motions are expected to begin tomorrow in the case of an Upper Dublin teenager charged with shooting his father three times with a .357 Magnum. Justin Betz, 17, is charged with first-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person, criminal conspiracy and possession of an instrument of crime. Betz could be sentenced to life imprisonment if he is convicted of first- degree murder. Barry Miller, an attorney hired by Betz's maternal grandmother, Jane Milford of Oreland, said he would try to prove that the teenager was "justified in shooting his father.

A Bucks County judge has denied two motions each for two men who were convicted of first-degree murder in connection with the stabbing death of a man they suspected was a homosexual. Judge Edward G. Biester Jr., last Thursday denied motions in arrest of judgment and motions for a new trial for Frank Chester and Richard Laird, who were convicted in the Dec. 15, 1987, beating death of Anthony Milano of Levittown, Bristol Township. They were tried together. Milano's car had been set afire, and police found his body during a search of a wooded area near Ashby Avenue, Bristol Township.

Amid a flurry of motions, cross-motions and counter-motions, the Upper Providence Township Council acted on several issues in the course of a raucous five-hour meeting that began Thursday night and ended early Friday morning. By a vote of 3-2, the council approved a $22,000 expenditure for the expansion of administrative offices in the township hall on Providence Road after a surprise motion from Councilman Hugh Thomson late Thursday night. The motion came one hour after the council voted, 5-0, to approve the formation of a special committee to investigate the feasibility of the township taking over the historic Rose Tree Tavern from the county for use as a municipal hall.

The head of the Gloucester County public defender's office yesterday filed motions to dismiss 67 grand jury indictments because of technical flaws discovered in the county's jury-selection system. Jeffrey Wintner said the motions were being filed under a state statute that gives a defendant 30 days after entering a plea to file a motion challenging the jury-selection system. A hearing on the motion has been scheduled for Friday before Assignment Judge Samuel G. DeSimone. "We're hoping this might cause the prosecutor's office to reconsider some of the indictments and maybe not reindict some of the shakier cases," Wintner said.

Superior Court Judge Manuel H. Greenberg denied a series of defense motions yesterday that had sought a new trial or a judgment of acquittal for convicted murderer Robert O. Marshall. Greenberg, after a brief hearing, said there was nothing to substantiate the defense argument that the verdict in the Marshall case was contrary to the evidence and should therefore be overturned. Greenberg also denied the motions for a new trial, saying he had ruled against similar motions during the trial.

Philadelphia Traffic Court - one foot out the door of its old building but blocked from moving into new offices - is struggling to continue business as usual. If you want to fork over money for traffic citations, Traffic Court employees are there at the old building on 800 N. Broad St., ready and waiting. If you want to contest a ticket, you can still get some action. But if you don't have the money to post the collateral required for a hearing, or if you can't afford to pay your fine, the Traffic Court is definitely and completely closed.

Defense attorneys yesterday described the indictment against State Sen. Wayne Bryant (D., Camden) and his codefendant, R. Michael Gallagher, as "an overreaching effort" to criminalize conduct "within the bounds of state law. " In voluminous motions filed in federal court in Trenton, attorneys for both men said all the charges should be dropped. The government has several weeks to respond to the motions, and oral arguments have been scheduled for Dec. 7. Bryant's attorneys also said the charges against him were vague and "missing essential allegations," and they said prosecutors may have intimidated witnesses from talking to the defense.

A Darby Borough councilman with a felony conviction will not be forced from office - at least not yet. In a surprising move yesterday, Darby Borough officials agreed in Delaware County Court not to immediately remove Councilman Bruce Rogers from office, as was the council's rumored plan for its meeting tonight. Louis Stesis, a Delaware County assistant district attorney, told Judge Edward J. Zetusky Jr. that the borough would not vacate or fill Rogers' Third Ward seat until the posttrial motions are settled.

The high-tech game of cat-and-mouse that has pitted the federal government against Nicodemo S. Scarfo appears to be heading for a showdown before U.S. District Court Judge Nicholas Politan in Newark. Lawyers for Scarfo, the son of jailed mob boss Nicodemo D. "Little Nicky" Scarfo, filed a new set of motions last week asking that evidence in a bookmaking case be thrown out. They contend federal authorities violated Scarfo's privacy rights while obtaining the records that are at the heart of the case.

Arthur Bomar is still scheduled to go to court Sept. 14, despite efforts by his lawyers to delay the trial. The lawyers said they need "money and time to retain personnel and experts to do a complete review and statistical analysis of the death penalty as applied in Delaware County. " But the motion was denied Wednesday by Delaware County Judge Frank T. Hazel. Bomar, 39, is accused of the June 1996 rape-murder of 22-year-old Aimee Willard. He allegedly followed Willard from a bar and forced her car off the Blue Route, where she was beaten, abducted and raped.

BALTIMORE - A year ago, Graham Motion was one of the most popular figures at Pimlico Race Course. As the trainer of Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom, Motion had the lone horse in the Preakness field with a shot at winning the Triple Crown. "The pressure is on you," the Englishman recalled Thursday. "The two weeks between the Derby and the Preakness, I felt like I was holding my breath. You're kind of walking on egg shells, hoping everything is going great with the horse.

WASHINGTON - The public should be allowed to hear the five alleged 9/11 conspirators describe what the CIA did to them in secret overseas prisons, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a motion filed at the Guantanamo war court late Wednesday. "The eyes of the world are on this military commission," the civil liberties group wrote in its motion. It was posted on the court website uncensored and included graphic references to water torture from a leaked International Red Cross report.

BELLEFONTE - Former Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky's lawyer said after a short pretrial hearing Thursday that he expected the presiding judge to soon dismiss defense motions to have the child sexual abuse charges thrown out, but he hoped he would allow them to be refiled after more evidence is disclosed by prosecutors. During a 20-minute hearing attended by the retired defensive coordinator and his wife, Sandusky defense attorney Joe Amendola withdrew his attempt to prevent the Attorney General's Office from using at trial secretly recorded conversations between Sandusky and two of the 10 boys he is accused of sexually abusing.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said, "Philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry. " I am never happier than when I can read choreography as poetry, as I - and, I think, the audience - did over the weekend with choreographer John Jasperse's Fort Blossom Revisited 2000/2012 . This fuller version of the original 2000 work premiered Friday at the Hepburn Teaching Theater, Bryn Mawr College's black-box theater. The college was the leading funder of the reconstructed and expanded 60-minute work.

The discovery of Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua's 1994 order to shred a memo about 35 Archdiocese of Philadelphia priests suspected of molesting children is no reason to dismiss the case against one of his key aides, a judge ruled Monday. Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina denied a bid by defense attorneys to drop the charges after prosecutors argued that the shredding directive and other recently unearthed files were the equivalent of "a smoking gun" that bolstered, not weakened, their case against Msgr.

BELLEFONTE – Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky lashed out Friday at former friends and neighbors whose complaints prompted prosecutors this week to seek his confinement inside his State College house. Sandusky's remarks to reporters came moments after a court heard testimony that several people had expressed concern over his frequent presence on his back deck, yards from a neighboring elementary school. "All of a sudden these people turn on me when they've been in my home with their kids, they've attended birthday parties here for my grandchildren, they've been on that deck and in that yard," he said.

The speedy lizard was streaking across the tabletop when suddenly one foot hit a slippery spot. The reptile skidded but never broke stride, making a split-second adjustment as it darted onward. Not that you could tell just by looking. The true essence of the animal's grace became apparent only afterward, when its movements, recorded with Hollywood-style motion-capture technology, were played back in slow motion. This is the lab of Tonia Hsieh, a Temple University biologist who studies life on the move.

In the late 1990s, when Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center was seeking an architect to design its new, high-visibility museum, it considered a proposal from Zaha Hadid, the Baghdad-born, London-based architect who is being honored Saturday night with the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Collab Design Excellence Award. Hadid had completed only a few commissions at the time and her potent, generative architecture, which appears at once prehistoric and space age, was relatively unknown in the United States.

The first thing that is readily apparent when watching Union forward Sebastien Le Toux flowing freely down the field is his motor. The native of France never stops moving, maneuvering, or, in his two seasons with the Union, scoring. He is a player in perpetual motion and one of the leading reasons this second-year franchise will be playing in its first Major League Soccer postseason series beginning Sunday with the first of a two-game, aggregate-goal series with the Houston Dynamo.

Prosecutors preparing to try a high-ranking Philadelphia prelate who allegedly enabled two priests to molest a boy say they should be allowed to tell jurors how he and church leaders handled similar accusations against dozens of other priests. A motion filed Friday by the District Attorney's Office says Msgr. William J. Lynn acted under "a well-established, deliberate, orchestrated plan" by Archdiocese of Philadelphia officials to protect abusive priests. "What might look like an innocuous transfer, an accidental omission, or a mistake in judgment in a single case can only be understood as intentional when it is repeated over and over in the handling of other abusers," says the filing by Assistant District Attorney Mariana Sorensen.