Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 16, 1995 TAG: 9502160110
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-5 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
RICHMOND - A state prosecutor did not violate the rights of a defendant by subjecting him to harsher federal prosecution for refusing to cooperate with police, an appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard B. Kellam of Norfolk, who had dismissed an indictment charging Nathaniel Williams with two counts of distributing crack cocaine in Virginia Beach. Williams was indicted by a federal grand jury after refusing a plea-bargain offer by prosecutor Michael Cummings.
The prosecutor demanded that Williams plead guilty to state charges and cooperate with police in an undercover drug operation - or face federal prosecution, which would subject him to a more severe sentence.
Williams turned down the deal, saying he feared for his safety.
``In the pretrial setting ... the Supreme Court has allowed prosecutors to threaten criminal defendants with harsher prosecution during plea negotiations and to carry out those threats if the defendants refuse to accept the prosecution's plea offers,'' Judge Donald S. Russell wrote.
- Associated Press
Research secrecy edicts come to light
RICHMOND - A Medical College of Virginia scientist sought to avoid negative publicity over dog research when he requested a federal stamp of secrecy in the early 1950s for radiation and burn studies, federal records show.
As part of a national inquiry, the federal Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments is looking at the secrecy classification.
The panel on Tuesday released newly unearthed documents, including a letter written in 1951 by Dr. Everett I. Evans, who directed MCV's burn studies, complaining about a Richmond newspaper reporter.
``I really fear that one day this reporter will elbow his way into the animal laboratory and cause us a great deal of harm, not only to the school but to the whole project,'' Evans wrote to an official in the Army's Office of the Surgeon General.
A ``restricted'' classification was approved.
The federal panel, created to study the ethical scope of radiation experiments involving humans in the United States during the Cold War era, has found that insurance and public-relations officials of the Atomic Energy Commission in the late 1940s routinely recommended that records of human experiments be stamped ``top secret'' to protect the government from liability and embarrassment.
- Associated Press
Memo: NOTE: Shorter version ran in Metro edition.