Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 6

REPUBLIC CliY Lower-court judges incapable, prof claims 1 1 The i By RICHARD MORIN Going to court? Here's what you likely will find: dishonest attorneys practicing before incompetent judges. That grim evaluation of state trial courts was made Monday in a speech by Professor Irving Younger of the Cornell University School of Law. "The competency of judges in state trial courts is, ladies and gentlemen, non-existent," Younger told 1,300 members of the American College of Trial Lawyers meeting at the Hyatt Regency. Many of those lower-court judges, particularly in urban areas, are "barely literate." Their knowledge of the law is "zero, absolutely zero," said Younger, himself a former lower-court judge in New York. His evaluation of most senior lawyers practicing in those courts was equally disquieting.

"They have no technical competence whatsoever. They have no ethical standards whatsoever. If it suits their purpose, they will lie. If it suits their purpose, they will cheat. If it suits their purpose, they will present false evidence," said Younger.

Younger based his conclusions on conversations with his former students, many of whom begin their careers practicing in state courts before moving up to federal court, where he said lawyers and judges demonstrate greater levels of competency. "These students ask me, what sort of profession have we entered?" Younger said. "I'm not at all certain what answer to give them." He did say that some state court judges "would grace any bench in the land," but suggested putting more emphasis on teaching advocacy skills in law school and in continuing education programs to reduce the number of incompetent trial William Spann an Atlanta attorney and president of the American Bar Association, also spoke at the meeting. Spann said in an interview Monday that a recent ABA survey disclosed that just more than 20 percent of all practicing lawyers "were not fully qualified and somewhat inadequate." Chief Justice Warren Burger of the U.S. Supreme Court has estimated pub licly that as many as half of all attorneys are incompetent.

Spann said the ABA and "a vast majority of states" have instituted various continuing education programs for lawyers. He noted that some incompetent lawyers leave practice, while others attain acceptable degrees of compe-' tency with experience. The ABA president also praised the National College of the Judiciary in Reno, which offers training to newly appointed judges. The meeting concludes Wednesday. Arizona Republic 0 SECTION Page I Tuesday, March 7, 1978 k.

v. Rains delay work Wetness casts a dry spell over Valley building firms By CHARLES KELLY The Valley's unseasonably bad weather this year temporarily dampened the construction business for some builders, several contractors said Monday. "I'm sitting here in my office looking out at a mucky sea of water where utility trenches should have been, closed in January," said Fred Godwin, Phoenix division manager for Knoell Homes. Godwin said the rain-mud-flood' cycle has put his workers about 60 days behind schedule this year, and a Knoell subdivision scheduled to be completed no later than mid-January still is not finished. Lost work time this year already amounts to more than that for the last three years combined, he said.

Sour spots in the Valley's sunny weather normally cause no more than two weeks of lost construction-work time a year, Godwin estimated. Some other builders figured the normal annual work loss at.much less. "We really don't figure'on any '(lost work time)," said Guy Jehnis with a chuckle. He is project manager for Wahlers and Sons Construction 1138 W. Watkins.

"It usually rains on weekends." Loehnis said his company has lost a month each en two jobs construction at the Central High School gym and an addition to Mountain Bell facilities in Fountain Hills. Republic photo by o. E. Hansm tlnue through Friday from 9 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., weather permitting, on the lawn between Hayden Library and the Memorial Union building.

Reprints include Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec and Dall works. Art break Students at Arizona State University are getting their share of art this week during the exhibition and sale of Fine Art sponsored by the ASU Cultural Affairs Board. The sale will con- Non-nuclear weapons involved VS. will direct arms tests in Mohave Another job that reportedly will be hampered by the rain is expansion of Sun Devil Stadium from 57,000 to 70.000 seats before the football season opens in September. Progress on the expansion, being done by Mardian Construction has been delayed five or six days and com- pietion "win be very close to the, season start, said ASU Athletic Direc- tor Fred Miller.

Builders said, the severity of delays causedr by weather depend on what stage of construction a project is in. The. most extended delays occur when a project is caught in the off-site improvement stage, when such items as water lines, sewers and paving are being installed, Godwin said. Loehnis also noted that the flooding of sand and gravel pits along the Salt River present a particular problem to builders who are laying concrete. He estimated that the Wahlers jobs might Continued on Page B-i PEANUTS By ROGER JOHNSON PARKER DAM A series of high explosive, non-nuclear weapons tests will be conducted near here this sum- I mec, by, U.S.

and, European military' planners and technicians. The tests will be parf-of a study for the proposed U.S. 1 Air Force intercontinental ballistic missile technol ogy now in the early development stage, Air Force spokesmen said. It. Cmdr.

James Strode of the U.S7 Defense Nuclear Agency, who will direct the project, said the tests "will pose no danger to persons or property in relatively nearby areas such as Parker, Lake Havasu City or Park Dam." The experiments will test the vulnerability of various shelters and com- munications equipment. vibrations at Parker Dam would be no more than a car or truck (would cause) passing over it." Air Force spokesmen said the MX ICBM program is. designed, to develop technology tor Can advanced ICBM and to study ways' of protecting the new ICBM from enemy attack. The missile system is -planned for deployment in ''underground; trenches or a series of shelters that would require an enemy to use multiple-aim-targeting. About 400 planners and' technicians from the United States and Europe will move into the Miner's Bluff area for the experiments, a spokesman said.

West Germany will test impact on buried concrete shelters; Sweden will experiment with effects on personal Continued on Page B-7 I'VE BEEN TONKINS MMBSSQU FALL SOME OF 15 THINK (iI ABOUT YOUR PROBLEMS ASLEEP IN CLASS 5EE ME UfAflNS 6LA55E5. LOOK KIND Of GTE y- rr BECAUSE OF UNC0RRKTEP UJ0UI'TVXMARCl? WITH OUR 6LA55E5. -ASTisMAn 1 Paul Dean pro9 pupil good tvith strings Rick Hlava isn't totally unaware of the names and faces, dates and happenings and the times and tempo around him. But for more than 40 years, his world has been confined to the 78-foot by 39-foot rec-' tangles of tournament tennis courts and, as the root-wristed pro at Marriott's Camel-back Inn, Rick is kept preoccupied by daily lessons and more than 60 hotel tournaments a year. Celebrities no longer impress him because they all look alike in tennis shorts and Rick's racquet is a great equalizer when rallying with vacationing guests like Lloyd Bridges, Anthony Quinn and Don Rickles.

Then there's Rick's accent. It is Czechoslovakian and not much lighter than when he escaped the Communist takeover of Prague in 1947. He still thinks in his native tongue, misses a little in the translation to and from English, and conversational details have a habit of getting inverted in this mental muffler. That's why Rick didn't catch the name of the guest in room 109 who called the court recently and! asked for a lesson reservation. "Mebbe you could be here das tree o'clock, today afternoon, yes?" sug-.

gested Rick. "I'll be there at 3 p.m.," agreed the guest. Midaftemoon arrived but the student didn't. He eventually well-styled aboard a self-driven Cadillac, at 3:25 p.m. "I got held up," he explained.

"Could we play for five minutes?" "Is no time, no goot," said Rick. "Another man coom at tree thirty so mebbe you'ave to coom back." A new time was arranged and the student was prompt for this second date with Rick. He didn't look much like a tennis player. He was stubby, a little overweight, late fifties and somehow managed the look of George Gobel impersonating Art Buchwald. Yet he played like a top senior.

Tne ground strokes were grooved, the touch was deft and his timing was constant "Good plying, enthused Rick during a towel and water "Mebbe tennis is part of your business, yes?" "No, it's net," smiled the' guest. "I'm a musician," "Aha," said Rick: "Many people plying music today and mebbe you better off at tennis." "Oh, I get by" "You here in dis Valley to play your music?" "Yes, I am." "Goot," said Rick. "Many1 good res- taurants and the nightclubs here so you have no problem finding work." "So J've heard," said the That's when Rick unloaded a Czechoslovakian funny "Yoil very goot with strings in tennis racquet," he grinned. "Mebbe you be jost as good to ply musical instrument with strings." "I'll give it some thought," said world violin virtuoso Isaac Stern. Invention led to troubles, son recalls By GRANT E.

SMITH John Moray recalls that in the mid-1930s his father, T. Henry Moray, began carrying a gun and installed bulletproof glass in the family car. The glass came in handy. Once, while John Moray and his mother were going somewhere, someone shot at the car. The bullet lodged in the windshield.

The elder Moray had built a "radiant energy" device in 1926 and held numerous demonstrations of its abilities to supply -energy for electrical appliances. By the early 1930s, Moray was involved in efforts to market the device, and that seems to be when the trouble started. There were numerous unhappy investors, some of whom apparently felt Moray had cheated Third in series them, but no one can be certain if they were at the roots of Moray's troubles. However, there was abundant evidence of the troubles. John Moray was born in 1928, and he recalls many events of the mid-1930s well, as an impressionable child might.

There was the warning from an ex-convict to his father that a contract had been put out on his life. The ex-convict said the con-. tract was widely discussed in a Utah prison, but he didn't know who was behind it. Almost every time the family left their Salt Lake City home, it was into. One night, the; family dog was shot, apparently by brother, Richard, remem-" bers mat one day a man came to" the school and said he had been sent by the family to take Richard John Moray said.

"Our house was right next door to the school, so the people were quite suspicious. The man ran off Continued on Page B-2 new attitudes Wants to put his heart into The testing area has been dubbed "Miner's Bluff" by the Defense Nuclear Agency and the Air Force Weapons Laboratory. It is on the Mohave County side of Bill Williams River and surrounded by the Buckskin Mountains. i Strode said no nuclear detonations will be involved. The testing, 'which will occur from June through will include two experiments: detonation of a single charge of 120 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, and near-simultaneous detonation of six 120-ton charges of ammonium nitrate.

"To people in those areas (Parker, Lake Havasu City and Parker Dam) the explosions will sound like distant thunder, and to persons closer, it would appear to be no more than a sonic boom," Strode said. "We case own defense "Welt have to be as careful as possible to make sure we don't make it appear to the jury mat we're taking advantage of this man," he said. The victim of the murder was Douglas A. Hall, 45, whose badly beaten body was found In his apartment two days after Christmas. Police said he had been struck on the head at least four times with a large iron skillet His wife, Peggy, 53, also was found dead in the apartment', but no chafes were filed In her death.

Police said he Continued on Page B-7 Jay, .40, talked to newsmen in the governor's main conference room after a brief meeting with Gov. Bruce Bab bitt. Jay. said Britain's economic decline resulted from poor money manage- ment, bad work practices, weak indus trial relations and low productivity. He said the country was forced to look at its mistakes because of trauma caused by the rapid inflation in 1974 and 1975, arid this has resulted in new, more realistic attitudes.

Britain's balance of payments has Killing suspect handling ments he made to police after his arrest. Attorney John Rood, a deputy public defender named by Judge Sandra O'Connor to act as Manentl's sory counsel, said he disagrees with the defendant's decision io represent himself. "He's wrong, but he has the right to do it," Rood said. Deputy County Attorney Cleve Lynch said special care will have to be taken in prosecuting the case. Farmers hoping INogales; protest Hill snarl traffic Southern Arizona Bureau WILLCOX Leaders of the American Agriculture movement are planning a demonstration to block traffic this week at the international border crossing In Nogales.

Farmers here said they are awaiting the arrival of additional protesters who staged similar blockades last week in McAllen and Hidalgo, Texas, where 200 were arrested. The farmers are protesting the importation of beef and ptfcer agricul- (n.nl nMfllle UaviflK A spokesman for the" group said, "This will be a peaceful demonstration, and we will apply for whatever permits are necessary. It will be done in a way that traffic will probably be blocked for awhile at the border crossing." The farmers will drive to the border in pickup trucks, not tractors, he said. They are seeking to call attention to tSJt makes 11 earn enough income from one harvest to cover the cost of producing it. improved, and its monetary reserves are "almost embarrassingly strong" at the-present, according to Jay, who had previous careers in economics, journalism and broadcasting.

He said oil discovered by Britain in "trie North Sea is a "very important windfall" for the country. By 1980, Britain will be producing more oil than jt ii.cafl.use and it begin exporting oil, he added, noting that revenue from this resource will be reinvested in industrial plants and equipment. Jay, who visited Phoenix with his wife, Margaret Caliaghan Jay, the By FRANK TURCO A former waiter and busboy is learning the ways of criminal eourt procedures the hard way-defending himself against first-degree murder charges. Paul J. Manenti, 23, said he wants to call his own shots during the jury trial that opened Monday in Maricopa County Superior Court because he thinks he can do a better job than a court-appointed attorney.

I "No one is going to give this case as much heart as I am because I'm fighting for my life," he said during a break the triaL Manenti, who is accused of beating a Phoenix man to death in December 1976, said he thinks the county public defender's office is too overworked and not enthusiastic enough to do a good enough job in the courtroom for him. Although it is not uncommon for people to handle their own criminal cases, only a handful have tried it for murder A Tucson man did it in Pima County in 197G and was acquitted, and a Phoenix map tried it here last year and was convicted, Manenti, who has spent much of his jail time reading lawbooks and drafting defense plans, already has conducted two pretrial hearings, which he lost. One was a request to be freed on bond and the other was to surpress state British economic rally attributed to oil, By JERRY HICKEY With a new oil windfall and a change of attitudes, Great Britain is "climbing back out of the pit" of economic decline, British Ambassador Peter Jay said in Phoenix Monday. Jay, woo has been ambassador to the United States' since- last July, told a r-press conference that as the result of "a dramatic turnaround," Britain now has an attractive investment climate. He noted that in 1974 the country had an inflation rate of 30 percent, but during thepast year the rate was only 9.8 percent.

daughter of the British prime minister, said he intends to spend a week to 10 days each month away from his Washington office to spread the word about his country's economic comeback. He said he hoped to promote American investments in Britain, which he claimed now has "the most attractive investment climate in the Common Market and the Western world." During a talk entitled "Britain Means Business" at the American Graduate School of International Management later Monday, Jay emphasized that the Continued on Page B-7 i 4.