Testimony

The Philadelphia judge who is hearing condemned killer Terrance Williams' bid to stay his Oct. 3 execution has ordered lawyers to argue their positions Tuesday. The decision by Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina followed four hours of testimony Monday by Marc Draper, Williams' admitted accomplice in the 1984 murder of Amos Norwood. Draper, who is serving a life term after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and testifying against Williams at trial in 1986, told Sarmina that police pressured him to say Norwood's killing happened during a robbery and not because Williams' rage at Norwood for sexual abuse since he was 13. In another development Monday, the state Board of Pardons announced it would vote Thursday on whether to reconsider Williams' plea to commute his death sentence to life without parole.

The Philadelphia judge who is hearing condemned killer Terrance Williams' bid to stay his Oct. 3 execution has ordered lawyers to argue their positions Tuesday. The decision by Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina followed four hours of testimony Monday by Marc Draper, Williams' admitted accomplice in the 1984 murder of Amos Norwood. Draper, who is serving a life term after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and testifying against Williams at trial in 1986, told Sarmina that police pressured him to say Norwood's killing happened during a robbery and not because Williams' rage at Norwood for sexual abuse since he was 13. In another development Monday, the state Board of Pardons announced it would vote Thursday on whether to reconsider Williams' plea to commute his death sentence to life without parole.

Kristen Snow remembered how the dew from the grass felt on her skin, how the intense pain in her body forced her into a fetal position, and how the man standing above her pointing a gun at her head wore bifocals. "It felt like forever," the 24-year-old Ridley Township woman told a Delaware County Court jury as she dabbed at her eyes with tissues. James Dellavecchia, 73, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of his neighbor Scott Robins, 42, who was shot six times as he left for work on an October morning last year.

MARC DRAPER, who has spent that past 28 years in prison for helping to beat a man to death, told a Philadelphia judge Thursday that he lied under duress from authorities when he testified against his accomplice and is now ready to tell the truth to save his friend's life. "Being a man of faith, a man of God, I wouldn't want to see anybody die in that manner," a weeping Draper said of his childhood friend, Terrance Williams, 46, who is to be executed Oct. 3 for the 1984 murder of Amos Norwood, 56. Draper, 46, the son of a retired city cop, is serving a life without parole sentence for his role in the murder.

  The Philadelphia School District is trying to compel a former administrator from the Truebright Science Academy Charter School to testify during a hearing on whether the school should remain open. The district filed documents last week in Common Pleas Court seeking a subpoena to force Susan Farley-Ellison, who had been a high-ranking administrator, to testify about the school's operations at a charter-renewal hearing. The North Philadelphia charter school, which is linked to a controversial Turkish imam, is fighting to remain open.

The Philadelphia School District is trying to compel a former administrator from the Truebright Science Academy Charter School to testify during a hearing on whether the school should remain open. The district filed documents last week in Common Pleas Court seeking a subpoena to force Susan Farley-Ellison, who had been a high-ranking administrator, to testify about the school's operations at a charter-renewal hearing. The North Philadelphia charter school, which is linked to a controversial Turkish imam, is fighting to remain open.

A PHILADELPHIA jury on Monday began hearing testimony in the trial of Donald Guy, the man accused of fatally shooting a husband and wife in their heads during a robbery in the African immigrant couple's clothing store in Feltonville. "The evidence in this case will come together like a puzzle," Assistant District Attorney Bill Davis told the jury, noting that the defendant's DNA and fingerprints link him to the slayings. Davis, as early as Tuesday, will also attempt to convict Guy with the testimony of Thomas Foggy, Guy's alleged accomplice, who pleaded guilty to two counts of third-degree murder last week in exchange for his testimony and a prison sentence of 27 1/2 to 65 years.

Jose Alicea is now 26 and has been in prison since age 19 when he confessed to the Oct. 30, 2005, shooting death of 21-year-old Esroy George Rowe during a melee at their neighborhood cafe in Olney. Alicea's attorneys say he confessed not because he was guilty but because his low IQ and lack of experience with police made him especially vulnerable to questioning by authority figures. On Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court took up the pretrial appeal that has delayed Alicea's trial: whether his lawyers may call as a witness a nationally known expert on false confessions.

Police in Lower Merion have arrested a second suspect in connection with an armed holdup last month that terrorized 19 people at a popular Main Line deli. The suspect was identified by police as John Leroy Moore, Jr., 34, of the 5600 block of Nelson Street, in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. He joins Michael S. Schaefer, 40, also of Philadelphia, as part of a four-man team that police believe burst into Hymie's Restaurant in Merion at 9:03 p.m. on July 14 and forced patron and employees to lie on the floor where they were robbed at gunpoint.

WILMINGTON - He's an octogenarian trial lawyer with a fierce reputation, but on matters of finance, Richard A. Sprague calls himself "an ignoramus. " "I wouldn't know budgeted development costs from a hole in the wall," Sprague testified at a trial in Wilmington over the expansion of the SugarHouse Casino in Philadelphia. Sprague said he needed a financial partner when he was putting together a 2005 bid for one of Philadelphia's two casino licenses. He approached Las Vegas casino operator Steve Wynn, but those talks went nowhere.