The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page A10

A10 www.philly.com THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER Friday, December 19, 2008 Death sentence is N.H.'s first since 1959 Michael Addison killed Officer Michael Briggs two years ago while trying to avoid arrest. shot in the head, and noted that Addison had said he would "pop a cop" if necessary. Addison, 28, had no reaction as the Hillsborough County Superior Court jury announced its verdict after 13 hours of deliberation over four days. The state Supreme Court will automatically review the conviction and sentence. The defense said it will appeal.

New Hampshire hasn't executed anyone since 1939. The last time a New Hampshire court imposed the death penalty was in 1959, but the lives of the two convicted men were spared when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down capital punishment for a time in the 1970s. Briggs' wife, two young sons and parents attended Addison's sentencing. His father, Leland Briggs, said he hopes the verdict will help protect other police officers.

"This is what we wanted. This is what we got," said Briggs, himself a former police officer. In June, Judge Kathleen McGuire rejected claims that racial prejudice would prevent Addison, a black man, from getting a fair trial in predominantly white New Hampshire. She said there was no evidence race influenced the state to seek the death penalty. When Briggs, 35, and his bicycle partner came across Addison and friend Antoine Bell-Rogers in an alley early on Oct.

16, 2006, they recognized the men as suspects in a recent shooting and two armed robberies and ordered them to stop. Addison turned and shot Briggs in the head at close range, testimony showed. The defense admitted on the first day of the trial that Addison killed Briggs, but defense attorney David Roth-stein said the act was "totally unplanned" and "reckless." Prosecutors called the shooting premeditated. By Beth Lamontagne Hall ASSOCIATED PRESS MANCHESTER, N.H. A jury issued New Hampshire's first death sentence in a half century yesterday to a man who fatally shot a Manchester police officer to avoid arrest two years ago.

Lawyers for Michael Addison had sought a life sen tence, arguing that he acted recklessly, not intentionally, and suffered from an abusive childhood and possible brain damage from his mother's heavy drinking while she was pregnant with him. Prosecutors stressed Addison's record of violence, including a crime spree a week before Officer Michael Briggs was City neighborhood is hot location FmW: EC1 IflHIR i jiii Sf 1 linf BONNIE WELLER Staff Photographer Homes at 21st and Carpenter Streets. From rowhouse renovations to Toll Naval Square project, a building boom has boosted occupancy and affluence in Southwest Center City. Home Sales SW Center City (For June to December 2008) Month Listings Av. List Price Sales Av.

Sale Price June 152 $277,977 75 $313,200 July 154 $296,146 60 $255,831 Aug. 126 $255,759 50 $232,700 Sept. 153 $244,097 47 $266,410 Oct. 106 $274,421 38 $217,666 Nov. 98 $227,569 34 $191,202 Dec 4 $188,725 1 $259,000 Totals 793 $264,283 305 $255,828 NEIGHBORHOOD from Al developer Joe Williams had built on Bainbridge Street near 15th.

"I walked the streets and noticed just how much development was going on," Turner said. "Every fifth or sixth house seemed to be undergoing some sort of renovation, and the area seemed to be changing very quickly." Transferred about 16 months ago by JP Morgan from London to Wilmington, which he said he found "too quiet," Turner quickly began "to fall for the charms of Phil-ly, and I knew this was a place I wanted to stay." After months of house-hunting and ensuring that, as a Briton, he would be able to get a mortgage with his employer's help, Turner looked at Southwest Center City, also known as South of South. Even though his new address had only bare stud walls when Turner first saw it, "I fell in love within about 30 seconds. I knew I had found my house." The neighborhood's turnaround has been "dramatic," says John Kromer, senior consultant at the University of Pennsylvania's Fels Institute of Government. As head of the city's Department of Housing and Community Development during the 1990s, Kromer oversaw the inventorying of vacant properties in about a half-dozen neighborhoods in partnership with Penn's Cartographic Modeling Lab.

In 1998, Southwest Center City defined as the area bounded by South Street and Washington Avenue, Broad Street and the Schuylkill had 553 vacant houses. A decade later, according to a study completed in the summer by the Fels Institute's Hallie Mittle-man and Catherine Lamb, only 49 houses were vacant. Just as the 1990s count was concluding, the city's real estate market began heating up, spurred by 10-year tax-abatement programs for renovations and construction. That's when things began to change around what is also known as the Graduate Hospital area. Since 1997, the median price of a single-family house has almost tripled, from $86,000 to $232,145, says Kevin Gillen, a vice president of Econsult Corp.

in Philadelphia who tracks city sales. (A median is the middle value half the houses sold for more, half for less.) The median price topped out at $275,000 in the second quarter of 2007, Gillen's data show, just as the region's housing boom was peaking. More than half the houses that were vacant in 1998 have been rehabbed, await renovation, have been razed and replaced by infill housing, or converted to other uses, the Fels study says. Toll massive Naval Square project along 24th and As of Dec. 2 SOURCE: Trend Multiple Listing Service.

I MILES I i cm CM CM PJ 0 18 176 LOMBARD ST. SOUTH ST. Naval Square Southwest Center City Senate race likely to enter new year ST. PAUL, Minn. Republican Sen.

Norm Coleman's lead over Democratic challenger Al Franken in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race dwindled to just two votes yesterday. And a key ruling put hundreds of improperly rejected absentee ballots in play, promising that the state's recount would drag into 2009. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that those absentee ballots be included in the recount. It ordered the candidates to work with election officials to set up a process to identify ballots that were rejected in error.

Counties must make a report by Dec. 31. The ruling came as the state Canvassing Board nearly erased what had been a 360-vote lead for Coleman before it began its third day yesterday of reviewing disputed ballots. Hundreds of challenges have yet to be decided, thousands of withdrawn challenges have yet to be tallied, and the improperly rejected absentee ballots are estimated at 1,600. AP Las Vegas begins to shake off snow LAS VEGAS Flights resumed in and out of Las Vegas, but schools and highways were closed yesterday after a record-setting snowfall coated marquees on the Strip, weighed down palm trees, and blanketed surrounding mountain areas.

The city awoke to clear weather after a storm that left 3.6 inches at McCarran International Airport. It was the biggest December snowfall on record there, and the worst for any month since a 712-inch accumulation in January 1979, forecasters said. The storm also dumped snow or rain and snarled travel in other parts of Nevada, much of southern California and parts of northern Arizona. In Washington state, Seattle got a rare 4-inch accumulation; in Spokane, the 17 inches that piled up by 4 a.m. yesterday broke a 24-hour record total of 13 inches set in 1984.

AP Sen. Brownback won't run again KANSAS CITY, Mo. Kansas Republican Sam Brown-back announced yesterday that he would not seek a third term in the U.S. Senate. Brownback said he owed it to Kansans to keep his word and retire more than keeping seniority in the Senate.

Brownback, 52, was elected in 1996 to finish the term of Sen. Bob Dole, who resigned to be the GOP nominee for president. Brownback then won full, six-year terms in 1998 and 2004, and for a time was a candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. Brownback declined to say what he would do after his term ends, though it is widely expected he will run for Kansas governor in 2010. McClatchy Newspapers Elsewhere: Gov.

Arnold Schwarzenegger swiftly rejected an $18 billion package of cuts and tax increases pushed through the California Legislature by Democrats yesterday, saying the plan to reduce the state's burgeoning deficit would do nothing but "punish the people of California." The Rev. Al Sharpton took Caroline Kennedy to lunch yesterday at Sylvia's, a famed Harlem soul-food restaurant, as she continued her quest to win appointment to Hillary Rodham Clinton's U.S. Senate seat from New York. New violence erupts in Greece ATHENS, Greece Masked youths set up burning barricades and threw fire bombs and chunks of marble at riot police yesterday after a protest march erupted into new fighting that sent Christmas shoppers and panicked parents fleeing. Mothers snatched children from a carousel in the main square.

Waiters stumbled from cafes choking on tear gas fired by police at rioters trying to burn the capital's Christmas tree. After two weeks of unrelenting rioting set off by the fatal police shooting of a teenager, a slogan spray-painted outside the Bank of Greece summed up the mood: "Merry crisis and a happy new fear." Later, Greek Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis announced measures to shield the country's tourism industry from the financial crisis and continued unrest. He said he would increase spending on tourism marketing by 50 percent, suspend loan repayments for tourist enterprises, and provide tax breaks. -AP NATO, Russia to resume ties BRUSSELS, Belgium NATO and Russia will resume diplomatic contacts for the first time since the war in Georgia, the alliance's spokesman said yesterday. James Appathurai said NATO's secretary-general and Russia's ambassador to the Western alliance would meet informally today.

It will be the first such meeting since NATO froze diplomatic contacts in the wake of Moscow's invasion of Georgia in August. Russian Ambassador Dmitry Rogozin has said in the past that he would welcome resumption of ties. But the Russian mission played down expectations. "We don't expect anything specific from tomorrow's meeting, but it is a step in unfreezing our relations," said Igor Semenenko, a senior Russian diplomat. -AP New accusations from N.

Korea SEOUL, South Korea North Korea yesterday accused South Korea of hiring an agent to track Kim Jong II and suggested that the man had planned an assassination attempt before his arrest. The sensational allegation comes amid a serious worsening of relations between the divided Koreas as well as intense speculation about Kim's health since he reportedly suffered a stroke and had brain surgery in August. The North's Ministry of State Security identified the arrested man's family name as Ri. The statement said the "terrorist mission" was ordered by a South Korean intelligence organization "to do harm to the top leader." South Korean officials said they were checking the claim. -AP Elsewhere: Crews using jackhammers and blowtorches took down one of Spain's last statues of the late Gen.

Francisco Franco, eliminating a symbol of decades of right-wing dictatorship. Several hundred people watched from behind barricades. Franco ruled from 1939 until his death in 1975. Venezuela's National Assembly began considering a proposed referendum to abolish term limits, which could let President Hugo Chavez run for reelection indefinitely. WALNUT ST.

LOCUST ST. SPRUCE ST. PINE ST. Rittenhouse Square Penn Medicine at Rittenhouse (formerly Graduate Hospital) BAINBRIDGE ST. FITZWATER ST.

CATHARINE ST. CHRISTIAN ST. C3 CO The Philadelphia Inquirer ko said of the house he bought on Carpenter Street in April 2007. "There are a lot of doctors working at Penn who are looking to rent here." The neighborhood's old anchor, Graduate Hospital, closed last year. But after $70 million in renovations, the facility reopened in July as Penn Medicine at Rittenhouse and will eventually employ 400 people.

"There has been an absolute market shift since the fall's economic debacle," said Realtor Jeff Block of Prudential Fox Roach, who handles properties in Southwest Center City. Prices are relatively stable there, and "I think the Graduate neighborhood in particular contin- ues to have strong fundamentals for continued growth in the real estate market." Nancy and Zebulon Ken-drick bought near 15th and Fitzwater Streets for $817,000. They looked elsewhere in the city, she said, and "found here a combination of house, price and convenience." "The neighborhood will certainly continue to morph into its next incarnation," Nancy Kendrick said. "We bought this house hoping that we would be able to live here for at least 10 years, and I look forward to all the changes that are bound to occur." The Carpenter Street house that Grenko, who commutes to his job with a Fort Washington investment firm, bought for $297,800 in April 2007 was vacant in 1998, then extensively rehabbed. Living near Rittenhouse Square and South Street means "I can drive home Friday night, park the car and not have to use it until Monday morning," he said.

Cafes, restaurants and specialty stores continue to spring up. Grenko said he and his girlfriend have been trying to visit all the BYOBs, but he wishes there were a convenience store where he could pick up milk. (At 16th and South, homeowner Mark Scott said, there is a "a new high-end delicorner store, and a new organic Crime was a concern for Turner: "I have a 16-year-old daughter in the U.K., and when she comes out to stay with me, how safe will it be?" And there's no question that the neighborhood once had a rough-and-tumble reputation. But resident Jill Anastasi said that has changed, and that police spend more time patrolling now than chasing down criminals. As a sign of the new times, Scott, who is Anastasi's husband, was part of a South of South Neighborhood Association effort that purchased a bicycle for police to use on patrol.

In November 2005, Anastasi and Scott moved to a block of Christian Street populated by "a couple of people who had been here 50 years, and some who arrived in the first wave in the late 1980s and early 1990s," she said. The block had been especially blighted, with a lot of vacant houses, Anastasi said. Their house, for which they paid $365,000, had been renovated five years before. They had looked in other city neighborhoods, she said, but found building quality better here. "When my parents were first married, they rented on Fitler Square.

When we told them where we were moving, the color drained from their faces," Anastasi said. "But after seeing it, they changed their mind, saying how quiet and civil the neighborhood had become." Contact real estate writer Alan J. Heavens at 21 5-854-2472 or aheavensphillynews.com. CARPENTER ST. WASHINGTON AVE.

ELLSWORTH AVE. Bainbridge Streets helped prompt other developers and homeowners to build and rehab townhouses by boosting confidence in long-term neighborhood investment. Among sales recorded by the city the week of Nov. 17, units in Naval Square had three of the top 10 prices, selling for more than $498,000 each. Today, about half of Southwest Center City's homeowners are between 25 and 35 years old, the Fels study says; most had been renters previously, and 66 percent are in one- or two-member households.

Nearly all are professionals, and most say they plan to stay in their houses for five years. "If I moved, I'd keep it," first-time buyer Patrick Gren- Divan Turkish Kitchen Bar is among the cafes, restaurants and stores springing up in Southwest Center City. Some residents decry the lack of a convenience store, however..