Ohio

Judge to appear in court for drunken driving

A state Supreme Court justice pulled over for drunken driving urged a police officer not to arrest her and cited her rulings in drunken-driving cases, according to police videotapes.

Justice Alice Robie Resnick, 65, of Toledo, is scheduled to appear court today, a week after police pulled her over in northern Ohio. Her attorney filed a request last week indicating she wants to change her innocent plea, but he did not say what the new plea would be.

In the video, a police sergeant questions Resnick in the front seat.

Resnick assures the officer that she can drive safely, but he asks her to take a portable breath-analysis test.

Resnick repeatedly asks to be let go, saying, “My God, you know I decide all these cases in your favor. And my golly, look what you’re doing to me.”

Resnick’s blood-alcohol content registered 0.22 percent, more than twice the legal limit in Ohio of 0.08 percent. However, the portable test cannot be used as evidence in court.

Resnick later apologized in a statement.

Washington, D.C.

‘Victims’ Day’ seeks to derail lawsuit limits

The Center for Justice & Democracy, a group seeking to derail President Bush’s call for limits on medical malpractice lawsuits, is bringing about 50 victims and their relatives, including the daughter of a woman who was poisoned by an overdose of chemotherapy, the mother of a child who suffered brain damage during birth and the mother of a man who died from brain surgery, to Capitol Hill for “Victims’ Day.”

The center, which enjoys the support of trial lawyers but maintains that it is not tied to trial lawyer groups, also has requested a meeting with Bush to counter all of those presidential sessions with doctors being driven out of business by malpractice insurance costs.

But that’s not likely: Bush, who likes to say that “nobody has been healed by a frivolous lawsuit,” renewed his call for malpractice restrictions in Thursday’s State of the Union address.

New York

Robbery suspect’s mom drove getaway car

The drug-addicted ex-convict who allegedly shot and killed a Glen Head jeweler during a two-month robbery spree had an unusual accomplice , Nassau police said Sunday: his mother.

Police said Christopher DiMeo’s mother, Maryann Taylor-Casey, went into J&J Jewels in Glen Head before the Dec. 21 robbery and scoped out merchandise her son could steal. Then she allegedly drove his getaway car after the robbery, which became a murder when jeweler Thomas Renison was fatally shot.

Taylor-Casey, 40, of Hicksville, was arraigned in First District Court in Hempstead on Sunday and ordered held without bail after pleading not guilty to second-degree murder and first-degree robbery.