Testimony

An instructor for the state Human Relations Commission has contradicted testimony given last week during a hearing on a former Cheltenham Township police officer's claim that his dismissal from the force was racially motivated. Newtown, Bucks County, Police Chief Martin Duffy labeled as untrue testimony by a Cheltenham police sergeant that former police officer Rick Booker, who is black, had fallen asleep during a seminar in June on race relations. Booker, 35, is seeking reinstatement to the police force.

The bawdy bomb was dropped during Tom Capano's trial just before noon yesterday. Minutes later, a buzz was already circulating on streets and in offices and restaurants throughout this small city. Wilmingtonians were chattering about a menage a trois, a kinky afternoon interlude among middle-aged friends - only these "friends" were high-powered lawyer Tom Capano, his mistress and the state's chief deputy attorney general. And attorneys walking near the courthouse laughed aloud at the news.

A Delaware County judge has ruled that attorneys for Media Borough solicitor Paul L. Patchel may not present testimony on Patchel's mental state at the time he was involved in a fatal hit-and-run accident. Patchel's trial, which had been scheduled to begin Tuesday, has been rescheduled to Oct. 31. In a brief filed in September, Patchel's attorneys had argued that he was suffering from depression June 11 when his car struck and killed two women on Route 1 in Middletown Township.

Phyllis Mroz said her 84-year-old father got hooked on sweepstakes offers that came in the mail. "He really believed the postcards and letters saying: 'YOU ARE A WINNER, THE GRAND PRIZE OF $58,000 IS YOURS,' " Mroz said yesterday. All he had to do was mail a check for $5 or $15 to claim his prize, the offers said. It started small. But his daily replies generated more letters, until he was receiving as many as 50 offers a day and mailing as many as 70 checks a month. Her father never received any prize money, but he "kept thinking the next contest would make him a winner," Mroz said.

On Capitol Hill, the Iran-contra hearings are producing testimony that raises questions about the President's role in the affair. At the White House, edgy spokesmen respond with daily denials of any wrongdoing. But Ronald Reagan seems unfazed by the political scandal surrounding him - and is shrugging it off with a laugh. Yesterday, the third day of the hearings, the President poked fun at himself before a Rose Garden audience that pokes fun at him for a living - editorial cartoonists.

"I'm a good mother. I'm a good decisionmaker," a weeping Angela Honeycutt said in a cell-phone call secretly recorded by police detectives last spring. "What the [obscenity] happened?" That is the question before a Bucks County Court jury today when it weighs the fate of Honeycutt, accused of sexually assaulting two boys during a teen sleepover April 12. Deliberations are expected to begin in the trial of Honeycutt, 39, a single mother of two who was supposed to be helping to chaperone the party.

The report of John M. Dowd to baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti included instructions on what legal weight to give testimony in his 225-page report, released yesterday afternoon by Hamilton County (Ohio) Common Pleas Court Judge Norbert A. Nadel. Dowd gave Giamatti specific guidelines on how to treat: The credibility of a witness who has a personal outcome in the trial. The testimony of an informant. The testimony of a witness convicted of a crime.

The Inquirer on Friday posted on its website, Philly.com, the full testimony of Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua before the grand jury investigating sexual abuse in the Catholic church. To read it, go to: www.philly.com/testimony There, the cardinal's testimony is contained in 10 separate documents, one for each of his appearances before the panel in 2003 and 2004. The testimony was referred to in the Grand Jury's 2005 report. Bevilacqua has never been charged with a crime.

The Kaboni Savage racketeering and murder trial will resume at 9:30 a.m. Monday at the federal courthouse in Philadelphia. Savage, 38, a convicted drug dealer, is on trial on charges he ordered a deadly firebombing attack to retaliate against a cooperating witness, and plotted to retaliate against other witnesses. He could face the death penalty if convicted. On Thursday, Savage's lawyer, Christian J. Hoey, cross-examined FBI Special Agent Kevin Lewis. The agent admitted he had "no idea who shot Mr. Savage" at a recreation center in March 2001, when Savage was on house arrest.

Municipal Judge Earl J. Simmons didn't seem particularly concerned when MOVE member Gerald Ford Africa refused to swear on the Bible yesterday before testifying during the second day of Charles "Boo" Burrus' preliminary hearing. The judge sat patiently through Africa's testimony. But a few minutes after Africa left the City Hall courtroom, Simmons blew up at Assistant District Attorney Harry Spaeth. "You didn't expect trash like that to come in here and tell the truth, did you!"