The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • Page 1

SCOREDOAHD 1 CALENDAR 7i STYLE Sunday brunch Hoiv o7d Ms mea become a tradition? Lonesome Dove Greg Dawson on TV's epic Western FSU 66 Cincinnati 65 Georgia State ..75 ....69 81 N.C. 74 63 73 Oklahoma 77 Oklahoma 73 Mississippi State 96 LSU 79 I A I 1 1 i Weather: An award-winner after the fog. High 82, low 59. Details, page A-2. Sunday, Februarys, 1989 51 Sentinel Communtcationt Company 77ie best newspaper in Florida $1.25 dZZ State Bar exam trips blacks; Failure rate of law school grads raises troubling questions Houston cleans up drug area Former city 'hot spot' today's Death Valley By Jeff Kunerth SENTINEL ATLANTA BUREAU pr Tjr i 1 i By Ramsey Campbell OF THE SENTINEL STAFF Eight of 10 law school graduates breeze through The Florida Bar examination on their first try, making the test one of the easiest in the country to pass at least for white graduates.

But for many blacks the state's Bar exam is an impenetrable barrier to the legal profession. An informal survey by The Orlando Sentinel focusing on 225 black graduates of the University of Florida and Florida State University law schools most since 1980 shows that seven of 10 were not admitted to the Bar within a year of graduation. About one-third of the black law school graduates never have been allowed to practice law in Florida. Bar officials do not keep statistics on minority performance and refused to release information on individuals who pass. The survey consisted of comparing the names of black law graduates to the roster of new lawyers published each fall by the Bar.

Law school officials say the vast majority of graduates take the Bar exam immediately. Florida Bar officials defend the exam as necessary to make sure that lawyers have a minimum understanding of the law, but the disproportionate failure rate of black law school graduates in state Bar exams throughout the country has raised troubling ques-, tions the legal profession is debat--ing: Are Bar exams necessary? Do state Bar associations and law schools have any obligation to find ways to improve the rate of blacks passing the exams without changing Bar admission stan dards? Most importantly: Are law schools graduating blacks who are not competent to be lawyers, or are black law school graduates being discriminated against by the legal establishment? Officials from law schools and The Florida Bar say that they are Please see LAW, A-13 GARY BOGDONSENTINEL Action at the arena Florida'3 Livingston Chatman takes a shot against Stanford on Saturday in the Orlando Arena's first basketball game. The Gators fell flat, 84-69, but the arena starred in its hoops debut. Story, C-1. boss'tietSi 4 t' to dirygs 1 ASSOCIATED PRESS HOUSTON They called it Death Valley.

Today it's a ghost town. Not long ago, 5,000 people lived in the once-fashionable city district near the Astrodome. Dozens of fine apartment buildings were clustered along lank Valley Drive buildings with colonial-style pillars, brick facades, wrought-iron balconies, hardwood floors and dining-room chandeliers. Surrounding neighborhoods still offer middle-class homes that sell for $75,000 to $250,000 each. "This used to be one of the hot spots in Houston," said police Officer Jim Woods, who grew up a few blocks away.

"These apartments were the nicest places to be 15 years ago." That was before a nice neighborhood was transformed into Houston's most notorious drug-distribution center, a piece of '60s suburbia gone sour. Six people were killed in Death Valley last year. By then the whole neighborhood had disintegrated into a haven for stop 'n' shop drug dealing. Pushers stood on street corners like parking lot attendants, directing the drive-through drug traffic with flashlights. Houston police made 200 drug-related arrests last year in Death Valley's vacant and vandalized apartment buildings.

But nothing changed until nine days ago. On Jan. 27 Houston police cordoned off the entire 27-acre neighborhood an area the size of Eola Park in downtown Orlando with roadblocks and checkpoints. A squad of 100 officers conducted a sweep of the apartment buildings to rid them of the vandals, vagrants, addicts and pushers. The next day 400 residents from the nearby neighborhoods cut down the waist-high weeds and collected enough trash to fill eight large dumpsters.

City health officials collected 150 discarded hypodermic needles used to inject drugs. Scores of empty cellophane packages that once held crack cocaine were found in the apartments. When the barricades went up and the police moved in, the clock started ticking on a 30-day plan to rid Link Valley of its crime and Please see HOUSTON, A-8 ASUNCION, Paraguay Forces loyal to Gen. Andres Rodriguez rounded up backers of the pre-! vious government Saturday to consolidate his power after a violent coup. Reports linked the nation's new leader to drug trafficking.

Ousted President Alfredo Stroessner, who held, power for 34 years, was under house arrest awaiting exile two days after the overthrow Jhat reportedly left up to 300 dead. r- 1 1 Onlookers cheered as portraits. 1 i tt of Stroessner were taken down from President Stroessner International Airport and from the headquarters of the ruling Colorado Party. A high-level foreign diplomat described the 76-year-old dictator as "a sick and depressed old man." ANGELA PETERSONSENTINEL Donna Armstrong finds comfort in a friend's arms. 'She can go on with her life her mother said.

Peace at last family puts Regina to rest By Nancy Imperiale OF THE SENTINEL STAFF Maria Argana said that Stroessner "Oariguez is "in perfect health" and living at the home of a colonel at Campo Grande, a base located outside the capital. "I don't know where he'll go," Argana told reporters. Visas are being prepared for "various countries," he said, declining to say which. I The new government intends to call elections; Argana added. He did not say when.

Rodriguez, who had been Stroessner's second-in-command, vowed to restore democracy and respect human rights. say that is the dress." Regina was kidnapped from an east Orlando apartment complex in June 1985, prompting a nationwide search and the largest manhunt in the city's history. In September 1987, police found a child's skull and dress at a construction site near Oviedo in southeast Seminole County. The dress hung in an evidence locker for 10 months before Oviedo police told Orlando detectives about their Please see FUNERAL, A-8 Dasher told the three dozen mourners gathered under clear, sunny skies. "Give us grace to entrust Regina to your never-ending truth and love." Donna Armstrong wept quietly during the 10-minute Episcopalian ceremony.

Bob Armstrong stared ahead at a small pink-and-white casket covered with carnations and baby's breath. The casket contained the skull of a 6-year-old girl. Armstrong said Friday he is convinced that it is his daughter's. "I have no doubt in my mind that's Regina," he said. "The biggest reason I The Armstrongs said goodbye to their little girl for the last time Saturday.

More than three years after Regina Mae Armstrong was kidnapped and killed, family and close friends put her remains to rest at a burial service at Woodlawn Memorial Park in west Orlando. "Whether we live or die, we are the Lord's possessions," Father Arthur Please see PARAGUAY, A-15 St. Louis clinic at center of escalating battle over abortion' By J. Craig Crawford OF THE SENTINEL STAFF hi" ft Books F-6 Local state B-1 Business D-1 Obituaries B-6 Classified E-1 Real Estate J-1 Comics 1-1 Sports C-1 Greg Dawson F-1 Style F-1 Insight G7 Travel H-1 court could free the states to outlaw abortions. In April the justices will hear arguments.

By June they will decide. In the fifth such battle to arise from this intensely conservative state, the Missouri case could produce the most significant abortion ruling since Roe vs. Wade. In that decision the court first legalized abortions in 1973, the year Karen was born. Saturday doctors will inject Karen with a numbing compound.

They will gently insert a plastic tube into her uterus and remove the fetal tissue through a pneumatic hose. It will take about five minutes. After hearing last week how the procedure would be done, Karen asked, "Will I miss any school?" She was assured that the recovery time lasts but a few hours, although no sex or swimming will be allowed for 10 days. There are nearly 10,000 people every year at Reproductive Health Services women and girls getting abortions, some like Ka- 1 4 Is It time to lift the ban on marijuana? Page G-1 How Rupert Murdoch has changed the 'TV Page D-1 ST. LOUIS Karen is 16 and pregnant.

She wants an abortion. "Sometimes I think about having a baby, but I wouldn't be able to do nothing," the high school sophomore said. The U.S. Supreme Court says Karen and millions like her have a constitutional right to their choice for now. Soon the justices may change their minds.

But Karen won't be waiting to find out. She is set for an abortion Saturday at Reproductive Health Services, a non-profit St. Louis clinic now before the U.S. Supreme Court in a crucial test of abortion rights. The clinic sued the state of Missouri over a law that would restrict access to abortions.

Meanwhile, activists on both sides of the abortion issue throughout the nation have mobilized as never before. They sense the urgency: That aryncreasingly conservative IN A WORD preclude, pri-KLOOD: verb. From the Latin word meaning to shut off. To make impossible, especially in advance; shut out; prevent. ASSOCIATED PRESS A St.

Louis man is arrested by police during an abortion protest at a Plise see ABORTION, A-14 clinic, Saturday. More than 2 dozen dertpnstrators were arrestej..