Supreme Court

HARRISBURG - The marquee case Thursday before the state Supreme Court may be the state's new voter-ID law, but the justices will also hear arguments on another high-profile voting matter: what Pennsylvania's legislative districts will look like for much of the next decade. The high court is to consider challenges on Thursday to proposed new maps for Pennsylvania's 203 House and 50 Senate districts. The maps were drawn in April by a bipartisan panel, consisting mostly of legislators, that is charged with recasting legislative boundaries every 10 years based on census changes.

The state Supreme Court canceled the execution date of Roderick H. Frey yesterday, only five days before the convicted wife murderer was scheduled to be put to death in the state's electric chair. The court, in a 6-1 decision, granted a stay of Frey's execution and set Sept. 26 to hear further arguments in the case against the Lancaster truck driver convicted in the 1979 contract killing of his wife. The decision invalidates the death warrant signed by Gov. Casey in March.

Ralph Spritzer, 93, emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a leading appellate lawyer who argued more than 60 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, died of leukemia Sunday, Jan. 16, at his home in Tempe, Ariz. After a distinguished career in government service, Mr. Spritzer joined the Penn faculty in 1968. He taught courses in civil procedure and antitrust law, served as adviser to the Moot Court Competition, oversaw applications for judicial clerkships, and directed students in the Indigent Prisoner Litigation Program.

The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to rule on the constitutionality of police using dogs to sniff for illegal drugs in vehicles stopped for routine traffic violations. The state of Illinois argued that sniff searches are not covered by the Constitution, so police are allowed to make them without having grounds for suspecting a vehicle may be carrying drugs. The Illinois Supreme Court, however, ruled that a canine search can be done only at a traffic stop if the officers have specific reasons to think there are drugs in a vehicle, not just a "a vague hunch.

In a move that has elated Delaware County officials, the state Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments on a lower-court ruling last summer that the county had illegally subcontracted operation of its prison to a private company. The decision by the high court promises to prolong a legal battle between the Wackenhut Corrections Corp., a Florida-based firm that took over management of the county prison in April 1996, and the guards' union. The unions' 170 correctional officers have been waging a seesaw battle to prevent the county from subcontracting security jobs to a private firm.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Friday to consider whether human genes can be patented, taking up an issue that has split the medical community and that will shape the future of personalized health care. The justices said they would hear a challenge to Salt Lake City company Myriad Genetics Inc.'s patents on genetic material used in tests for breast and ovarian cancer. University of Pennsylvania geneticists Arupa Ganguly and Haig Kazazian are among the doctors, researchers, and patients who oppose the patents, arguing that Myriad's monopoly over the genes blocks clinical testing and research.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court yesterday upheld a contempt citation issued against two journalists who had refused to provide information during a 2000 murder trial in Philadelphia. In its 5-2 decision, the court approved the contempt citation given to former Inquirer reporter Mark Bowden and Linn Washington Jr. of the Philadelphia Tribune by Common Pleas Court Judge Jane Cutler Greenspan in December 2000. The court also ruled that Greenspan had abused her judicial discretion in imposing fines of $40,000 on each reporter, and ordered her to review the matter.

Now that Pennsylvania's judicial disciplinary board has voted to recommend a two-month suspension of state Supreme Court Justice Rolf R. Larsen for misconduct, there's a chance that his colleagues on the high court will get to decide his fate. If the matter of his suspension does come before the whole court, the justices should take the next logical step: They should strip Justice Larsen of his judicial robes - for good. Don't bet on them doing it, however. Even though it would be well within their power.

Former City Councilman Harry P. Jannotti, convicted in the Abscam scandal, has been stricken from today's primary ballot by the state Supreme Court. However, election officials say the decision came too late to prevent voters from casting ballots for Jannotti in some polling places. Following the high court's ruling late yesterday afternoon, election supervisors tried to figure out how to reach the 385 voting machines in the 7th District to lock Jannotti's lever. Voting machine supervisor V. Thomas Mattia said he did not expect to reach all the machines until sometime today.

Without a public explanation or recorded dissent, the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday permitted a 15-year-old unmarried Florida girl to obtain an abortion without the consent of an adult. The decision, issued after a closed conference of the nine high court members, erased Tuesday's order by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy that had temporarily blocked the abortion of the girl, identified in court records only as T.W. Kennedy had acted at the request of a lawyer appointed to represent the fetus being carried by T.W., who is in her 13th week of pregnancy.