Testimony

University of Florida basketball coach Norm Sloan, assistant Monte Towe and university boosters gave thousands of dollars to athletes, including former basketball star Vernon Maxwell, who used the money to buy cocaine, according to grand jury testimony disclosed in newspaper reports yesterday in Gainesville. The testimony was included in a motion filed on behalf of four Florida sports agents charged with defrauding the university, the IRS and the U.S. Department of Education by making secret payments to athletes during their college careers, according to a report by The Gainesville Sun and a copyright story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Trial testimony and documents yesterday drew Mayor Street ever closer to the events under scrutiny in the City Hall corruption investigation. In a federal courtroom, former city Finance Director Janice Davis testified that Street chastised her for ignoring a request for inside information on city financing - a request from lawyer, power-broker and Street friend Ronald A. White. Street "was a little disturbed that I had kind of blown Ron off," Davis testified. "I understood then that Ron was a friend of the mayor's and I should take his request seriously.

Actor Jackie Cooper has apologized and retracted his testimony in the six- month Twilight Zone manslaughter trial in Los Angeles, according to a statement issued yesterday by defense attorney Arnold Klein, who represents special-effects coordinator Paul Stewart. Klein circulated a one-page statement signed by Cooper apologizing for his testimony questioning the qualifications of the movie's special-effects crew. "Upon reflection, I realize that those statements were ambiguous," said Cooper, chairman of the safety committee of the Directors Guild of America.

SAN FRANCISCO - The Barry Bonds jury renewed its deliberations Monday, with the eight-woman, four-man panel listening to a clerk read back the testimony of Bonds' former personal shopper, Kathy Hoskins. Hoskins testified that she witnessed the home run king's personal trainer, Greg Anderson, inject the player in the navel at Bond's house before a road trip during the 2002 season. She is the only person with eyewitness testimony to an injection. One of the four perjury-related counts Bonds is charged with alleges he lied to a federal grand jury when he said no one but his doctor ever injected him with anything.

In February, William G. Stinson told a state grand jury that he opened sealed absentee ballots as votes were being counted on election night last November. Now he wants the judge in his forthcoming criminal trial to protect him from that same testimony. In a motion filed last week, Stinson's attorney also argued that the court should stop the Attorney General's Office from using testimony Stinson gave in an ongoing federal civil suit, in which Stinson acknowledged that he performed election duties reserved for poll officials.

District Attorney Ronald D. Castille yesterday announced his "full support" for a new state law that permits judges to allow child-abuse victims to give videotaped testimony, sparing them the trauma of facing their alleged attackers in court. Castille said the law, which takes effect today, represented "another victory for the rights of victims" while "bringing the court system into the electronic age. " The law includes child victims who have been sexually and physically abused.

A COMMON PLEAS Court judge yesterday ordered the jury in the prosecution of three men in the 2009 double murder at the Piazza at Schmidts to ignore the testimony of a key prosecution witness - "as if it never happened," the judge said - after the witness refused to answer questions from a defense attorney. Called to the stand for more than two hours on Friday, admitted shooter Donnell Murchison immediately stated, "I do not wish to testify," then gave one-word answers to some details of the crime under questioning by the prosecution.

University of Florida basketball coach Norm Sloan, his assistant Monte Towe and university boosters gave thousands of dollars to athletes, including former basketball star Vernon Maxwell, who used the money to buy cocaine, according to grand jury testimony revealed in several newspaper reports today. The damaging testimony was included in a motion filed yesterday on behalf of four Florida sports agents charged with defrauding the university, the IRS and the U.S. Department of Education by making secret payments to athletes during their college careers, according to a report by The Gainesville Sun and a copyright story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The Lower Moreland Zoning Hearing Board has heard final testimony from the applicant on a proposed condominium development at 2760 Pine Rd., but residents and others opposed to the development will have to wait to express their views. More than 30 residents attended Tuesday night's meeting. They did not have a chance to testify, however, because testimony from an architect, an engineer and a real estate broker, all speaking on behalf of the applicant, took three hours. The hearing was a continuation from last month on the application by Holly Tree Associates to build a 20-unit condominium complex on the 2.3-acre Weidemann tract near the Philmont commuter rail station.

The murder trial of a Bordentown Township woman has been postponed until Tuesday, pending an appeal of a judge's decision to allow testimony about battered-woman syndrome without the defendant taking the stand. Burlington County Superior Court Judge Cornelius P. Sullivan ruled yesterday that defense attorney John Wherry could introduce psychiatric testimony that Margaret Ann Myers, 23, was suffering from battered-woman syndrome when she killed her husband, James Myers, 21, on Nov. 24, 1984.