Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 5, 1994 TAG: 9404050172
SECTION: NATIONAL/INT PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Short
WASHINGTON - A federal judge in Brooklyn, N.Y., expressed doubt Monday that the military would be harmed by having homosexuals in its ranks, and temporarily stopped the Clinton administration from discharging six gays now in uniform.
Judge Eugene H. Nickerson became the first federal judge to act on the administration's new policy against gays, which took effect Feb. 28, and on the 1993 law that Congress passed to support that policy.
This marked the sixth time in the past year that a federal court has stopped the military from discharging service members because they are gay. The five previous rulings involved restrictions on gays that have been replaced by the administration.
But Nickerson noted in a 25-page opinion that the policy requires the discharge of those found to have merely ``a propensity'' to engage in homosexual conduct, and does not give such individuals a realistic option to counter that finding.
- The Baltimore Sun
Witness changes King beating story
LOS ANGELES - The policeman whose testimony helped convict two fellow officers in the Rodney King beating changed his story on the witness stand Monday, saying King wasn't struck on the head with batons.
Theodore Briseno, who broke ranks with co-defendants in one criminal trial and whose videotaped testimony was used against them in another, testified in King's lawsuit he now believes those blows hit King's arm.
Briseno said a viewing of an enhanced videotape of the March 3, 1991, beating changed his mind.
- Associated Press
by CNB