Asheville Citizen-Times from Asheville, North Carolina • Page A8

NEWS A8 WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 2012 ASHEVILLE CITIZEN-TIMES HEALTH: Law is debated SLAYINGS: Hilton guilty of murders in Ga. Keep your Out of my LZl "If the government can do this, what else can it not do?" Justice Antonin Scalia asked. He and Justice Samuel Alito appeared likely to join with Justice Clarence Thomas, the only justice to ask no questions, to vote to strike down the key provision of the overhaul. The four Democratic appointees seemed ready to vote to uphold it. Kennedy at one point said that allowing the government mandate would "change the relationship" between the government and U.S.

citizens. "Do you not have a heavy burden of justification to show authorization under the Constitution" for the individual mandate? asked Kennedy. At another point, however, he also acknowledged the complexity of resolving the issue of paying for health care needs. "I think it is true that if Amy Brighton from Medina, Ohio, who opposes health care reform, rallies in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, Tuesday, as the court continues arguments on the health care law signed by President Obama. ap most questions in life are matters of degree the young person who is uninsured is uniquely proximately very close to affecting the rates of insurance and the costs of providing medical care in a way that is not true in other industries.

That's my concern in the case," Kennedy said. Roberts also spoke about the uniqueness of health care, which almost everyone uses at some point. "Everybody is in this market, so that makes it very different than the market for cars or the other hypotheticals that you came up with, and all they're regulating is how you pay for it," Roberts said, paraphrasing the government's argument. Financing Available! Continued from Page A1 what our cases allow," in the words of Justice Anthony Kennedy. But Kennedy, who is often the swing vote on cases that divide the justices along ideological lines, also said he recognized the magnitude of the nation's health care problems and seemed to suggest they would require a comprehensive solution.

He and Chief Justice John Roberts emerged as the apparent pivotal votes in the court's decision. The ruling is due in June amid a presidential election campaign that has focused in part on the new law. Wednesday's final arguments the third day in the unusually long series of hearings will focus on whether the rest of the law can remain even if the insurance mandate is struck down and, separately, on the constitutionality of another provision expanding the federal-state Medicaid program. The insurance requirement is intended to complement two unchallenged provisions of the law that require insurers to cover people regardless of existing medical conditions and limit how much they can charge in premiums based on a person's age or health. The law envisions that insurers will be able to accommodate older and sicker people without facing financial ruin because the insurance requirement will provide insurance companies with more premiums from healthy people to cover the increased costs of care.

The biggest issue, to which the justices returned repeatedly during two hours of arguments in a packed courtroom, was whether the government can force people to buy insurance. "Purchase insurance in this case, something else in the next case," Roberts said. "He (Gary Hilton) should have been put to death a long time ago." ROBERT BRYANT victims' son has been sentenced to death in Florida for the murder of a nurse out for a hike in that state, and he was sentenced to life in prison for the slaying of a hiker in Georgia. Authorities said those cases have similarities to the killings of the Bryants. After Tuesday's hearing, son Terry Bryant said he was happy Hilton had been handed at least one death sentence.

"I'm glad he's getting the death penalty in Florida," he said. "There are multiple victims of this man." Daughter Holly Bryant said she hopes people in the Asheville area will remember her parents as something more than victims. They retired to Henderson County from upstate New York, and they loved the Western North Carolina mountains, she said. "I'd like for my parents to be remembered not as victims of a murderer but as outstanding people who lived their lives fully," she said. "They traveled extensively, and they decided to retire in this area because they found it so beautiful." Hilton still faces a detention hearing in the Bryant case, at which the life sentence agreed upon in the plea deal is expected to be made official.

The detention hearing likely is several months off, court officials said. Hilton was represented Tuesday by defense attorneys Joe Von Kallist, of Charlotte, and Kimberly Stephens, of Clemmons. Continued from Page A1 they planned to seek the death penalty. Wearing a gray and white striped prison jumpsuit, Hilton responded to Magistrate Judge Dennis Howell's questions in a strong, clear voice. When Howell asked him if he was in fact guilty of murdering the Bryants and taking their ATM card, Hilton answered, "Yes, your honor." The hearing Tuesday morning lasted a little more than an hour, with three of the Bryants' four children in attendance.

Robert Bryant, his brother, Terry Bryant, of Law-ton, and sister, Holly Bryant, of Melbourne, sat together listening intently to the proceedings. Hilton admitted accosting the Bryants as they were hiking in the Pink Beds area of Pisgah National Forest in Transylvania County on Oct. 21, 2007. He killed Irene Bryant, 84, there. Her body was found near a trail off Yellow Gap Road in the national forest north of Brevard.

She died of multiple blows to the head and her right forearm was severed, according to an autopsy. Hilton admitted taking John Bryant, 80, with him to Nantahala National Forest in Macon County, forcing Bryant to give him the personal identification number for the couple's ATM card. He shot Bryant in the head with a .2 2-caliber Magnum firearm and dumped his body down a bank of a U.S. Forest Service road near Franklin. His skeletal remains were found later by a hunter.

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