Prosecutor

The people responsible for providing security at the Limerick nuclear power plant in 1984 lied to convince the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the Philadelphia Electric Co. plant was adequately guarded and then tried to hide their lies from the government, a federal prosecutor said yesterday. The trial of Gerald O. Williams, the former project manager at Limerick for Yoh Security Inc., and Frank J. Lepore, a Norristown Borough police sergeant who subcontracted to provide Limerick guards with firearms training, began yesterday in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia.

Robert E. Goldman, Bucks County's chief deputy district attorney, says he has refused a request that he resign when his political rival, First Assistant District Attorney Alan M. Rubenstein, takes office next week as district attorney. Goldman, 33, vied against Rubenstein last spring for the Republican Party nomination for district attorney, but he later endorsed him. Goldman is considered a highly respected, flamboyant prosecutor who has amassed a lengthy record of convictions in his eight years in the office.

While Star Jones is plotting her next career move, one of her biggest fans wants the deposed TV diva to return to her first professional love: the law. Veronica Morangello remembers Jones not as a controversial TV personality but as a fearless and compassionate Brooklyn prosecutor who got justice in the 1990 murder of her teenage son. "She was there for me on the worst day of my life. My child had just been killed, and I felt like I was walking through a fog," Morangello said of her son, Dion, who was slain in a Fort Greene playground.

Talk to Stephen G. Raymond about his job as Burlington County prosecutor and you'll hear the same phrases cross his lips again and again. He likes people. He likes working with people. He wants to contribute. If the answers seem safe or vague, they also sound sincere. Sincerity is one of the words that lawyers who work with Raymond use to describe him. They also call him cautious, friendly, personable, ambitious. They are descriptions that have combined to show the kind of prosecutor's office that Raymond has put together in Burlington County.

Karl K. Lunkenheimer, 51, a career prosecutor who served as an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia and for the last 13 years with the U.S. Attorney's Office, died early yesterday. The office of U.S. Attorney Michael R. Stiles said Mr. Lunkenheimer apparently suffered a massive heart attack about 5:30 a.m. yesterday at his Boothwyn home. He was pronounced dead at Riddle Memorial Hospital in Media. "We are in shock," Stiles said. "We have lost an extraordinary person.

The trial of a Coatesville man accused of attempted murder took a bizarre twist yesterday when a defense witness accused the prosecutor of offering him a break on drug charges he faces if he did not testify. Francis Firlein testified that Assistant District Attorney Amy L. Lord, who took the stand to deny his account, had visited him in jail and asked him what he would say as a witness in the case against James Nathaniel Wright, also known as "OJ. " According to the defense, Firlein was called to testify that he had heard the victim, Howard Hemsley, say that he knew that Wright did not shoot him, but that he would make Wright pay anyway.

Lee A. Solomon was confirmed yesterday as permanent Camden County prosecutor, ending a year-long wait as a result of political wrangling. Solomon was confirmed by the state Senate after his name was recommended by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The approval means that Solomon will serve a set term of five years, and will no longer serve merely at the discretion of the governor as he has for the last year. The confirmation entrenches Republican Solomon as head of the top law enforcement agency in a county dominated by one of the most powerful Democratic political organizations in New Jersey - the Camden County Democratic Party.

A federal prosecutor yesterday told an all-white jury that four white Elmwood residents set fire to a black family's house last year to prevent blacks from living in the neighborhood. Two of the four have pleaded guilty and will testify against co-defendant George Stewart, 23, who went on trial yesterday in U.S. District Court for a civil rights violation and another charge related to the arson. A guilty plea was entered yesterday by Thomas R. O'Donnell, 22. The other guilty plea was entered earlier this month by Vincent Callahan, 20. Both men will be sentenced later by U.S. District Judge Clarence Newcomer.

This city is a mean and perilous place when you view it from the district attorney's office. It's a place where career criminals perpetrate unspeakable crimes against unsuspecting victims. It's a place where lenient judges with no regard for these victims routinely return repeat offenders to their old hunting grounds, unrepentant and unpunished. And, from a prosecutor's perspective, the only thing that makes it barely habitable is the prosecutor's heroic efforts. Problem is, a prosecutor who gets caught up in that kind of bunker mentality can end up running roughshod over people's rights.

The trial of Wilfredo Santiago, charged with the killing last year of Philadelphia police Officer Thomas J. Trench, was interrupted yesterday as the defense was about to begin its case because the prosecutor was ill. Assistant District Attorney Barbara Christie, who rested the prosecution's case Tuesday, informed Common Pleas Court Judge Charles L. Durham yesterday morning that she was too ill to appear for trial. When the jury of eight women and four men was summoned to the courtroom, Durham did not disclose that Christie was ill and instead said that "pressing court business" was the reason trial proceedings were canceled yesterday.