The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • Page A6

Page 6a Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2003 The Sun nc Ridge unveils revamping of security agency Cross-training aims to reinforce sky marshals in case of high threat By R. Alonso-Zaldivar LOS ANGELES TIMES AMY DAVIS SUN STAFF PHOTOS Sidney McGregor finds the start of the first day of pre-kindergarten difficult at Harlem Park Elementary School in West Baltimore, but he became more comfortable and relaxed during the morning in Helen Froneberger's class. City principals urge students to focus enforcement agencies and presumably increase efficiency. No layoffs of current marshals or ICE agents are planned as a result of the transfer.

"There are little or no budgetary implications," Ridge said. Cross-training would open new career paths for officers in both agencies. "We see it as an opportunity for air marshals to become criminal investigators and vice versa," said ICE spokesman Dean Boyd. "It brings together a like-minded pool of special agents." But critical details have yet to be worked out, including the schedule for training and whether the trained immigration and customs agents would receive additional pay and have the right to turn down assignment as air marshals. Marshals are more than undercover officers with guns.

They must learn how to shoot in confined quarters and how to work in teams. Several thousand the exact number is classified are now covering selected domestic and international flights. Nonetheless, with about 35,000 commercial airline flights a day, odds are slim that marshals will be on any given flight. Industry groups were generally receptive to the idea. "It makes a certain amount of sense," said John Mazor, a spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents pilots for 42 U.S.

and Canadian airlines. Ridge's other significant announcement also involved cross-training. By the end of the year, the department expects to put in place a more streamlined system for interviewing passengers arriving from overseas. Currently, travelers answer questions from separate customs and immigration officers and, in some cases, from agricultural inspectors. Under the new program, one officer will handle all three areas.

Passengers suspected of violating customs or immigration statutes, or of having possible terrorist connections, will be referred to other officers for closer questioning. But the vast majority of travelers are expected to clear customs more rapidly. The Los Angeles Times is a Tribune Publishing WASHINGTON Customs and immigration agents will be trained as air marshals to significantly boost the number of federal officers who can protect passenger flights in emergencies, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said yesterday. But government officials said it was unlikely that all 5,500 agents of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement would qualify and be deployed as marshals, partly because it would leave no one to do the agents' work. Instead, the plan is to have more officers with air marshal training available under high-threat conditions or after a terrorist attack.

"This gives us a 'surge Ridge said, "more people being able to do more things when we need it." In a speech keyed to the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Ridge also announced new procedures for questioning passengers arriving at U.S. airports from overseas, initiatives to improve communication between federal and local authorities and a technology program aimed at countering the threat of bioterrorism. He spoke at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative public policy center in Washington. "We've made significant progress," Ridge said.

"And yet clearly our work is not done. In homeland security, we have to be right thousands of times a day. A terrorist only has to be right once." The air marshal announcement was part of a continuing internal realignment of the Homeland Security Department, created at the beginning of the year from 22 disparate government agencies. Ridge directed that the Federal Air Marshal Service be moved from its current bureaucratic home in the Transportation Security Administration to the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. That would combine two of the department's major law Schools chief Bonnie S.

Copeland (second from left) chats in the Southside Academy senior lounge with (from left) Viktoria Waith, Ashley Coleman, Patrick Butler III and Chennelle Clanton. officials said Hopkins Transportation notified them at 6 a.m. that they would not be picking up the students because the company received $5,200 less than expected Friday. After negotiations with the contractor, a school spokeswoman said, the two sides agreed that the company would transport the children starting about 8 a.m. yesterday, and will continue operating the routes while the dispute is discussed.

The first day of school was popular with politicians running for office. They turned up in larger-than-usual numbers this year. A group that included Mayor Martin O'Malley and City Council members, who are running in Tuesday's primary, and Copeland and state schools Superin tendent Nancy S. Grasmick toured five schools yesterday, ending at Dr. Rayner Browne, where Baltimore Ravens star linebacker Ray Lewis handed out backpacks to every child.

The mayor, whose chief challenger in the primary is Wal-brook High Uniform Services Academy Principal Andrey Bun-dley, visited Harlem Park Elementary. The school, in a distressed West Baltimore neighborhood, has shown improvement in test scores. "I'm the mayor," O'Malley said as he introduced himself in teacher Michael Forney's fourth-grade class. "I work with you and your parents. Can I count on you?" The mayor was accompanied by his 5-year-old son, William, who carried his dad's agenda book and announced at one point, "I didn't have to go to school today." Copeland and Grasmick heaped praised on Anna Bailey, the Harlem Park principal, for leading her school through three consecutive years of improvement, enough to earn removal from the state's watch list of poor performers.

"It is exhilarating to see the fresh faces ready to get right to work," Copeland said. She could have been visiting Glenmount ElementaryMiddle School in Northeast Baltimore, where only the large tears rolling down the cheeks of kindergarteners seemed to mar the first day of school. By early morning, students were all in classes and the room set aside for bad behavior was blessedly empty. Federal court action voids more than 100 sentences Schools, from Page 1a going to hold on to them," Lawrence said after a first-day assembly. Lawrence's new neighborhood high school is a small spinoff from Lake CliftonEastern High School, which is just across a park.

At Lake Clifton, 500 students are repeating the ninth grade. City schools are in the second year of a major reform of high schools. Lake Clifton, which had 2,200 students a year ago, has been split into five schools, one of them Fairmount Harford. The system also is trying to improve teaching and is starting at ninth grade. Every ninth-grade English teacher received extra training this summer, said the city's interim schools chief, Bonnie S.

Copeland. Two new high schools New Era and the Baltimore Freedom academies opened as part of an effort to provide a rigorous academic environment for students who want to attend college but might not have met the standards for the selective city-wide high schools. Students at Baltimore Freedom Academy were so excited that the 100 freshmen began filing through the doors of the school's temporary home at Baltimore City Community College 45 minutes early, at 8:15 a.m. "It was better than I could ever have imagined," said Freedom Academy's head of school, Tisha Edwards. "These kids have an unbelievable amount of talent and potential and I think this school is going to tap into that." Copeland said her focus this year will be on the basics of classroom instruction and how to better train teachers.

At the same time, the new school chief executive officer said, she also must ensure that the district's finances are brought under control. Going into this year, the system was burdened with about a $41 million deficit. Baltimore schools were the last public schools to open in the region and for the first time in at least a decade the enrollment was not expected to decline, although official figures will not be available until the end of the month. The school system's lowest enrollment in recent years was just less than 94,000 last year. Across the city, most schools opened yesterday with few glitches, Copeland said.

Seven schools will open late this year, including Dr. Samuel L. Banks High School, Ab-bottston Elementary School, the Stadium School and High-landtown Elementary School No. 237. All four were to use a large facility at 2500 E.

Northern Parkway. Flooding followed by an electrical explosion that blew out the power at the facility required those schools to be moved elsewhere. They will open tomorrow. Copeland said she hopes students will back in their regular classrooms on Northern Parkway within a couple of weeks. In addition, Digital Harbor and Southern high schools, both at 1100 Covington and Lafayette Elementary School, which is to be opened in the Calverton Middle School building, will open late because of delays in renovating the schools.

Another problem was caused by a dispute over pay between the district and a school bus contractor. As a result, about 60 special education students, who ride 12 buses, didn't get to school on time. School system Malvo's guards can testify, judge rules "The Supreme Court altered the fundamental bedrock principles applicable to capital murder trials. Malvojrom Page 1a Sentence, from Page 1a Murray, a federal public defender in Phoenix. Murray and attorneys for Arizona estimated that the decision affects about 100 inmates on that state's death row alone.

Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said his state will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision. Even if the ruling is upheld, he said, Arizona could conduct new "mini-trials" with juries deciding whether to impose life terms or death sentences in individual cases. In Idaho, the ruling is expected to reduce the death sentences of at least 15 condemned inmates, while Montana Attorney General Mike McGrath said the ruling should have no effect on that state's five death-row inmates. McGrath said the specific circumstances of those cases insulate them from the appeals court decision.

But Montana would join any appeal to the Supreme Court, he said. Scott Crichton, executive director for Montana's chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the ruling "takes us a step closer to the day when the United States will join the civilized nations of the world in outlawing the cruel, inhumane and biased application of the death penalty." The case that the appeals court used to decide the issue concerned Arizona inmate Warren Summerlin, who was found guilty of murder in the 1981 slaying of Brenna Bailey, 36. The Tempe finance company administrator's body was found in the trunk of her car a day after she visited Summerlin to defense has sought information and evidence that would show Muhammad held Svengali-like sway over the teen-ager. The defense filed motions Friday to bar the death penalty. Baltimore's Supermax Capt.

Joseph Stracke and Cpl. Wayne Davis said that Malvo told them that fasting gets more oxygen to the brain, that he and Muhammad would take their ransom money by drawing $100,000 to $200,000 at a time from automated teller machines, that some of their shootings were to clean up ghettos and that he believed that white people plotted to kill Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Roush also ruled that Malvo's continued questioning by a Montgomery County detective after the suspect indicated that he did not want to talk could not be used because it violated his right to remain silent. The decision has no practical effect; Horan said in July that he would not use the session because Malvo made only gestures and facial expressions, rendering his communication ambiguous. Stracke and Davis said Malvo began speaking to them Oct.

26, first to ask for some of the fish Davis was eating. Davis gave him a piece. After that, Malvo said he sometimes fasted before "missions" and began discussing the killings, according to testimony. Marvin D. Miller, a former president of the Virginia Association of Criminal Defense Law yers, said predictions about the jailers' testimony are premature "because we don't know how the evidence is going to play the circumstances surrounding the statements as seen by the jury." But the statements indicate malice and premeditation, elevating their importance enough to make them key factors in a verdict and sentencing, said University of Baltimore law professor Jose F.

Anderson, a former supervising attorney for the appellate division of the Maryland Office of the Public Defender who handled death penalty cases. Although Stracke said Malvo volunteered the statements, the officer acknowledged in the July hearing that he asked Malvo why he shot the Bowie student. Defense lawyers said the questioning, even as part of a conversation that Malvo initiated, might be vulnerable on appeal. "I am a little troubled by the fact they asked at least one question about the case with a little boy and they do appear to encourage his general dialog with them about the case," Anderson said. He said it could be argued that the correctional officers helped to keep the chatter going and that such encouragement could be improper coercion, especially in a place such as Supermax.

"All that being said, he did run his mouth way too much," Anderson said. contended that Malvo's comments were not voluntary and that lawyers should have been present. Commonwealth's Attorney Robert F. Horan Jr. said yesterday that he expects to use the correctional officers' testimony in both phases of the trial: determining guilt and, if convicted, deciding Malvo's fate.

"We thought all along that the law was on our side, and we are delighted with the ruling," said Horan, who declined to comment on how significant the testimony might be. "It's going to be like icing on the cake. To have guards testify that he literally confessed you can't get much better than that," said former federal prosecutor Abraham A. Dash, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law. In May, the defense lost a bid to exclude the self-incriminating remarks Malvo is alleged to have made to Fairfax County and FBI investigators after he was transferred to Fairfax on Nov.

7. Craig S. Cooley, one of Malvo's lawyers, said although the defense was disappointed with Roush's decision to allow the officers' testimony, "in the greater scheme of things, it is certainly not the most devastating ruling for us." He said the testimony will show Malvo's state of mind and the "degree of indoctrination at that time." In court papers, the Judge Sidney R. Thomas, writing for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals check on money he owed.

Summerlin was convicted in 1982, and a judge sentenced him to death. Prior to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling last year, a jury determined guilt or innocence, but one or more judges evaluated whether the particulars of the case made it subject to the death penalty in Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Colorado and Nebraska. The Death Penalty Information Center, which compiles statistics on capital punishment, calculated that since 1976, those five states have executed 29 people under laws allowing nonjury sentencing. In July, meanwhile, the 11th U.S.

Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a Florida case that the Supreme Court decision should not be applied retroactively in some death penalty cases. In Florida, Alabama, Indiana and Delaware, juries recommend a life term or death sentence, but judges are allowed to impose the death penalty against the jury's wishes. Justice Department officials in Washington declined to comment on the appeals court.