The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • Page A1

EH! THE SUN 50 cents Tuesday, October 14, 2003 Baltimore, Maryland A year after Wiling sniper suspect's trial to start today in Va. 1 US. sets deadline for Iraq council More inside Prosecution of Muhammad relies on indirect evidence Trial: Ambiguity in its death Faces 2 Capital murder COUntS penalty statute has Maryland on the sidelines. Page 1b By Stephen Kiehl SUN STAFF Resolution would require election plan by Dec. 15 U.N.

security panel pleased Wider world support goal of big concession VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. A year after a team of serial snipers went on a cross-country rampage that left 14 dead in seven states, the trial of John Allen Muhammad will begin today as prosecutors armed with mostly circumstantial evidence try to paint the ex-soldier as the controlling mastermind behind the attacks. Investigators have assembled a trove of evidence which will be laid out in court here over the By Maggie Farley AND SONNI EFRON LOS ANGELES TIMES DOUG KAPUSTIN SUN STAFF Power lines near a substation in southeastern Howard County belong to Baltimore Gas and Electric. BGE and Pepco, which serves other areas in Maryland, are part of the regional PJM Interconnection. Sparks fly over future of nation's electricity next several weeks that in eludes a loaded rifle found in Muhammad's car, a hole cut into the trunk to serve as a gun port and an accomplice who has admitted his role in the killings.

But the case is not a slam-dunk. There is no direct evidence tying Muhammad, 42, to the crimes. He has not admitted to any of the shootings, and there are no eyewitnesses who saw him in the act of killing anyone. "There is not as much direct evidence of guilt as the prosecutor would like," said Doug Colbert, a criminal and constitutional law professor at the University of Maryland. "But the real issue is whether the jury's going to be listening to potential weaknesses in the prosecution.

Many people will use the evidence they read in the newspaper as proof of his guilt." Muhammad is charged with two counts of capital murder in the killing of Dean H. Meyers one of 10 random slayings in Maryland, Virginia and Washington over three weeks last October. Muhammad's trial could last as long as six weeks and include evidence from up to 15 shootings across the country. The trial begins today with jury selection. Virginia Beach has sent summonses to 140 potential jurors, and lawyers hope to whittle that figure down to 12 jurors and three alternates over the next few days.

Opening statements could come at the end of this week or early next week. The lack of direct evidence may not be such a problem for a jury when it is See Trial, 7a Gunman takes thousands from church in Baltimore UNITED NATIONS In a major concession to win international support in Iraq, the United States plans to introduce a new Security Council resolution today that gives Iraq's Governing Council until Dec. 15 to set a timetable for holding elections and writing a new constitution. U.S. officials had vigorously resisted including deadlines in previous resolutions but apparently bowed to demands from France, Germany and U.N.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan that the U.S. -led administration quickly transfer power to Iraqis to end growing violence against the occupation and to create a leading role for the United Nations to guide the political transition. Under the latest draft resolution that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell sent to most of the council's foreign ministers over the weekend, the United States would have to report to the Security Council every six months. The council would review it after a year with the option to withdraw its endorsement of a multinational force if it is unhappy with progress toward handing See Iraq, 12a Congress: As lawmakers iron out an energy bill, factions in the industry clash over how much say government should have in the market.

Robber holds a pistol to woman's head as priest hunts combination to safe By Julie Hirschfeld Davis SUN NATIONAL STAFF By Del Quentin Wilber SUN STAFF of their markets. On the other are Midwestern and Northeastern states, where electricity is supplied by a competitive patchwork of companies that want the federal government to help stabilize the nation's electricity system. Caught in the middle, with potentially the most to gain or lose, are consumers, most of whom thought little about what powered their lamps, refrigerators, air conditioners or factories before Aug. 14. Now, with Americans still wondering when the power might fail again, electricity rules in the new energy bill have taken on new urgency.

A House-Senate committee is set as early as this week to resolve the remaining differences in the measure including the electricity rules and prepare it for congressional approval before the bill goes to President Bush for his signature. Most analysts predict that in the end, the Southern and Western bloc, See Power, 10a glassed-in operations center in the belly of an office tower, their grid displays showed electricity frequency spiking. But the blackout touched none of Southern's customers, who, like those in the rest of the South and the Northwest, enjoy some of the nation's cheapest and most reliable electricity. And people such as Dwight H. Evans, executive vice president of Southern, want to keep it that way.

"We made the right choices in the South," Evans says, sitting in his top-floor office overlooking the Atlanta skyline. "Let the smaller states with the problems solve their own problems." With Congress on the verge of finalizing a broad energy bill, Southern is at the center of a feud over how to ensure a low-cost, dependable flow of power into homes and businesses. On one side are Southern and Western states, dominated by a few giant utility companies that want the government to stay out ATLANTA When the lights went out in the Midwest and Northeast on Aug. 14, engineers here at the headquarters of the energy giant Southern Co. could tell something was wrong.

In a More inside South Africa struggles to build AIDS program Baghdad: U.S. detains several people after Sunday's deadly explosion. Page 12a With a robber holding a pistol to a church secretary's head, a Northeast Baltimore priest was forced to open a rectory safe yesterday and hand over thousands of dollars from Sunday collection baskets, the pastor said. "This is the first time anything close to this has ever happened here," said the Rev. Michael J.

Orchik of the Shrine of the Little Flower Roman Catholic Church, in the 2800 block of Brendan Ave. "It was rather brazen, but could have been worse." No one was hurt in the robbery, which began about 8:45 a.m. when a man knocked on the rectory door and asked for information about Little Flower's school and how to donate clothes, Orchik and police said. When the secretary returned with a brochure describing a clothing drive, the man pulled a gun, police said. Orchik said he rushed to the front hallway when he heard the secretary scream.

The robber, described as a heavy-set black male, wearing a black sweat shirt, black pants and glasses, pointed the gun at the secretary, Orchik and See Robbery, 5a Uphill fight against scope, poverty, cultural factors By John Murphy SUN FOREIGN STAFF GUGULETU, South Africa AIDS has claimed the lives of Phumela Tsodo's 9-month-old daughter and a teen-age cousin, and earlier this year it nearly brought an early end to her own life, shriveling her to 55 pounds from 124 and leaving her hospitalized for months. But on a recent morning in 4 INSIDE it U. Business AMY DAVIS SUN STAFF the dimly lighted hallway of Gu-guletu Township's Community Health Center, Tsodo sat on a long wooden bench waiting to see a doctor, beaming as if she were holding a winning lottery ticket. Which in a way, she is. The soft-spoken 24-year-old is one of a handful of AIDS patients in South Africa who are receiving lifesaving AIDS drugs without charge.

Without them, Tsodo, who is too poor to pay for the treatment, has no doubt that she would join the ranks of the estimated 600 South Africans a day who die from AIDS-related complications "I am lucky," says Tsodo, one of 150 patients receiving treatment from a charity-funded AIDS program in this bleak township outside Cape Town. "There are a lot of people who want to be on anti-retrovirals, but the drugs are few." Soon, however, it might no longer require a stroke of good fortune for AIDS patients to stay alive in South Africa. It might require only a need for treatment. That's the hope of AIDS patients in South Africa when the government is expected to approve a national anti-retroviral treatment program this year. With an estimated 5.3 million people infected with the AIDS virus, more than in any other country, South Africa is faced with creating the largest treatment program in the world.

Unlike the West, where AIDS treatment is widely available, in Africa most people cannot afford the drugs and their governments are too poor, and in some cases unwilling, to create programs. There are exceptions, including Botswana, See AIDS, 13a Tisha Edwards, the Baltimore Freedom Academy's head of school, says she relishes the challenges that starting the independent public high school present. A bold experiment in education Magellan Health Services tells its 700 employees that it will move its corporate headquarters from Columbia to Connecticut. Fewer than 200 jobs are expected to be affected. Page Id Sports Red Sox beat the Yankees, 3-2, to even ALCS series.

Page 1c Weather School: Day after day, idealism collides with reality at the new Baltimore Freedom Academy, but, for now, confidence reigns. America is tops in the secret 'leak' Since the days of Paul Revere, through Daniel Ellsberg (above) to the recent CIA "leak," the unauthorized release of government secrets has been an American phenomenon. Page 1e Scattered showers. High, 67; low, 52. Yesterday's city high, 73; low, 56.

Page 12b school, gushes to a parent volunteer in the cramped office of the academy, which for now is meeting at Baltimore City Community College downtown. For the next four years, DARING Edwards, a woman with no TO DREAM background in education, will be momma to those ba-Baltimore hies. Freedom But she'll also be the con-Academy ductor of an exciting experiment. She'll work alongside 10 teachers, five faculty members and a team of local educators and idealists all of whom have dared to dream of a better education for the city's children. The academy is one of two independent public high schools approved by the city school system last See Academy, 6a First in a series of occasional articles By Tanika White SUN STAFF Bridge 4e Editorials 14a Classified 8b Horoscope 4e Comics 6e Lottery 2b Crosswords 6-7e Movies 3e Deaths 6b Television 4e It's 8 a.m.

on the first day of the new Baltimore Freedom Academy. The school's 105 pioneering ninth-graders will be arriving in minutes. The atmosphere is frenetic. "We're having a baby today! One hundred of them!" Tisha Edwards, the head of SunSpot The Sun on the Internet: http:www.sunspot.net The Sun's 166th Year: No. 287 08345N0 0002' 1 2 3.