Virginia

Grand jury questioned Falwell about donation

A federal grand jury investigating the mayor of Lynchburg has questioned the Rev. Jerry Falwell about $32,500 that his ministry gave to the mayor’s church.

Falwell said Wednesday that he, his son, Jerry Jr., who is the general counsel for Falwell Ministries, and an accountant appeared voluntarily before the grand jury in February to answer questions about the gift made last year to Trinity New Life Community Development Corp.

The corporation is an arm of Trinity United Methodist Church that Mayor Carl B. Hutcherson, the minister of the church, used to solicit thousands of dollars in donations for the rebuilding of the deteriorating church.

Falwell said he has been assured by federal prosecutors that neither he nor anyone in his organization is a target of the probe.

Los Angeles

Students claim school censored newspaper

Student journalists sued their Bakersfield high school district Thursday in an effort to keep the school’s principal from censoring student newspaper articles on homosexuality.

The suit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, requests an emergency order to allow the paper to publish the stories in The Kernal’s year-end May 27 issue.

“The Kernal staff, along with the gay students we interviewed, we have lost our voices,” said the paper’s editor in chief, Joel Paramo, a plaintiff in the case filed in Kern County court.

East Bakersfield High School Principal John Gibson said he blocked publication because he was worried about violence on campus.

“It’s not about gay and lesbians. It’s about student safety,” he said.

California’s education code allows schools to censor student publications if articles are obscene, libelous or slanderous, or incite students “as to create a clear and present danger.”

Texas

Second killer executed in as many days

In the state’s second execution in as many days, a former mechanic was put to death Thursday for robbing and fatally shooting a man.

Richard Cartwright, 31, thanked friends and family for their support before he was given a lethal injection.

“I want to apologize to the victim’s family for any pain and suffering I caused them,” he said.

After sputtering and gasping a couple of times, he was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m.

Cartwright and two other men duped the victim, Nick Moraida, 37, into thinking they were homosexuals offering to share beer with him at a park along Corpus Christi Bay in 1996. Instead, Moraida was stabbed then shot to death while being robbed of his watch and wallet.

Cartwright was the eighth Texas prisoner put to death this year. On Wednesday, Bryan Wolfe, 44, was executed for the 1992 robbery-slaying of an 84-year-old woman.

Arkansas

Long-running fight over education back in court

Arkansas thought it settled a long-running fight over school funding last year, but nearly a quarter of the state’s school districts were back in court Thursday accusing the Legislature of neglecting education.

Lawyers for 47 districts – from rich northwestern Arkansas and the poorer Delta – told the Arkansas Supreme Court it was obligated to reopen a lawsuit that led to changes in the way the state funds its public school system.

A lawyer for the Legislature and Gov. Mike Huckabee said, however, if districts were unhappy with their appropriations, they should file a new lawsuit.

In a 2002 ruling, justices said Arkansas’ state government had a constitutional duty to provide a properly funded school system, with money shared equally among districts and their students.

Forty-seven districts sued Arkansas at the end of this year’s legislative session, arguing that an education budget keeping funding at $5,400 a student ignored a 2004 legislative promise that funding public schools would be the state’s No. 1 priority.

Seventeen other districts complained in a separate case.

The districts want the previous lawsuit reopened, but the attorney general’s office argued Thursday this year’s funding plan is presumed to be proper and that an entirely new legal challenge must be started.