The Daily Spectrum from Saint George, Utah • 5

Wednesday, February 18, 2004 The Spectrum A5 WEST Rival factions compete to control Sierra Club Judge allows electronic tracking evidence in Scott Peterson case By TERENCE CHEA Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO A fierce battle is brewing over the future of the Sierra Club, and an unlikely issue is at the center of the debate: immigration. A growing faction in the nation's most influential environmental group has urged a stronger stance against immigration, calling the growing U.S. population and its consumption of natural resources the biggest threat to the environment Past and present Sierra Club leaders say the anti-immigrant faction has teamed up with animal-rights activists in an attempt to hijack the 112-year-old organization and its $100 million annual budget. "At stake is really the heart and soul of the organization," said Adam Werbaeh, the club's president from 1996-98. 'It's a sad attempt by a very small special-interest group to take over the entire Sierra Club organization." Some of the old guard has organized a movement called Groundswell Sierra to oppose what they say is an attempted takeover by outside groups.

Their opponents responded by filing a lawsuit claiming the leaders are unfairly trying to influence an upcoming board election. Between March 1 and April 15, members will cast mail-in ballots to fill five open seats on the club's 15-member governing board. The club's anti-immigration faction says it needs only three more seats to control policy. "It's a democratic process. To accuse these candidates of taking over the Sierra Club is like accusing the Democrats of taking over the White House," said board member Paul Watson, who co-founded Greenpeace and now heads the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Groundswell Sierra was formed after club leaders learned that Watson, who won a seal as a petition candidate last year, spoke openly about a takeover attempt during a speech at a conference on animal rights. Animal rights activists have agitated for the club to denounce hunting, fishing and meat consumption. Club leaders say the anti-immigration debate has drawn in outsiders who want to promote their-agenda. The Southern Poverty Law Hugh Roddis, president of the company that sold Modesto police the three devices, said that covertly placed global positioning devices are a "good investigative tool" and bristled at Geragos' suggestion Tuesday that police bought cheap devices. "I think this unit is one of the better ones on the market," said Roddis.

founder of Orion Tech-nologies who was testifying on behalf of prosecutors. The satellite-based radio navigation system can pinpoint locations within feet and is in common use. including in commercial aircraft. Geragos seized on tracking errors in several of the devices Modesto police used, including one that he said didn't work for nearly three weeks. Roddis blamed the errors on inaccurate maps, a faulty ireless antenna and a bad microprocessor connection.

If convicted of the murders of his wife and unborn son. Peterson could face the death penalty. Lawrence Downing, current spokesman for the Groundswell Sierra group and former president of the Sierra Club, poses for a picture in Rochester, on Wednesday. A fierce battle is brewing over the future of the Sierra Club as rival factions fight to gain control of the nation's most influential environmental group in its upcoming board election. Center, a Montgomery, Sierra Club and vote in the election, civil liberties group, has reported In January, center co-founder that extremist racist and anti-immi- Morris Dees said he would run for a gration groups are encouraging their board seat to draw attention to the members to pay $25 to join the anti-immigration movement Phoenix bishop convicted in hit-and-run trial By MICHELLE RUSHLO Associated Press PHOENIX Bishop Thomas O'Brien was convicted of hit-and-run Tuesday for leaving the scene after killing a jaywalking pedestrian with his car, a crash that ended his career as head of the Roman Catholic diocese.

O'Brien is believed to be the first Roman Catholic bishop in U.S. history to be convicted of a felony. The 68-year-old bishop, who said he thought he hit a dog or was struck by a rock, could be sentenced to anywhere from probation to 3'i years in prison on the charge of leaving the scene of a fatal accident O'Brien, who appeared in court each day wearing a black shirt, Roman collar and a cross around his neck, showed no emotion after the verdict was read. He and his attorney left the courtroom without comment "It's a sad day," said Monsignor Dale Fushek, the diocese's co-vicar general and a friend of O'Brien. "It's the kind of situation where nobody wins.

We respect the work the jury did, and now we just pray everyone heals." Some members of the victim's family cried after the verdict and members of the bishop's family declined to comment. O'Brien led the Phoenix diocese's nearly 480,000 Catholics for 21 years, but stepped down in June after he was charged in the crash. "I'm saddened by the tragedy that this is and I feel a great deal of empathy with Bishop O'Brien," said Bishop Thomas Olmsted O'Brien's successor. The resignation came after two weeks of turmoil following an announcement by prosecutors that they had reached an immunity deal with O'Brien that would spare him indictment on obstruction charges for protecting priests accused of have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do." He expressed love to someone named Gabby, and then addressed his former wife, Stacy Kuykendall, who watched through a window eight feet away. Using obscenity-laced language, Willingham said repeatedly he hoped she would "rot in hell" and attempted to maneuver his hand, strapped at the wrist, into an obscene gesture.

i By KIM CURTIS Associated Press REDWOOD CITY, Calif. Evidence police gathered using electronic devices that tracked Scott Peterson's movements in the weeks after his pregnant wife disappeared will be allowed in his murder trial, a judge ruled Tuesday. The global positioning technology "is generally accepted and fundamentally valid," Judge Alfred A. Delucchi said. Because the technology has yet to be tested in California's criminal courts, prosecutors had to establish both its reliability and demonstrate that the technology was used correctly.

Delucchi decided Tuesday they had met those legal tests. Peterson's lawyer, Mark Gera-gos, tried to convince the judge that temporary glitches rendered unreliable the devices that Modesto police secretly attached to vehicles Peterson drove before his April 2003 arrest Got a news tip? Give The Spectrum a call at: (435) 674-6270 in St. George; (435) 586-7646 in Cedar City. How To The Spectrum encourages readers to offer comments and news tips. TIP HOTLINE 674-6270 THE SPECTRUM 275 E.

St George Blvd. St. George. UT 84770 PH: (435) 674-6200 FAX: (435I 674-6265 DAILY NEWS 2071 N. Main St.

No. 2 Cedar City. UT 84720 PH: 14351 586-7646 FAX: (4351 586-7471 PRESIDENT AND PUBLISHER Brent Low 674-6222 brentlowsthespectrum.com MANAGING EDITOR Todd Seifert 674-6235 tserfert sthespectrum.com Delivery Services If you haven't received your newspaper by 7 a.m. call the number for your area before 10 a.m. and a copy will be sent.

THE SPECTRUM 674212 DAILY NEWS 43574212 I Tiim Mi i Texas man executed for setting fire that killed his Christina Paoiucci AP Christine Keith AP Bishop Thomas O'Brien listens to testimony during his hit and run trial in Phoenix on Feb. 11. O'Brien was convicted of hit-and-run Tuesday for leaving the scene after killing a jaywalking pedestrian with his car. 3 young children old twins Karmon and Kameron while their mother was away. When firefighters arrived at the burning house in Corsicana.

Willingham was outside. At his trial, neighbors said he was outdoors even before flames engulfed the building and that he was concerned about his car getting scorched. He was the seventh convicted killer executed in Texas this year and the third in seven days. vV. ".1 '4 iC7 i ar jt ui IIIM'K-' 0 jjf In mm i mmm -mm Residential and New Construction AJ'HN'S PLUMBING HEATING 4 AIR CONOrTIONINS General Contracting 30 Yrs.

Experience 674-7000 Reach Us The Spectrum Daiiy News Puoiished at: 275 E. St. George St. George. Utah 84770 Volume 37, No.

287 NEWSPAPER DELIVERY The Spec'runi is an indecenctent dany news-paoer publishes mornings, hoi'-days Ail second class is paio at 275 St. Gecge St. Geo'ce UT 54773. Postmaster: Sena cnarge of aacress correspondence ana POD Fo-ms 357S to' 275 St. George Bvd St.

George. UT 8770 US 307290 SUBSCRIPTION RATES By carrier $8.50 per montn: ov mar, S15 oer montn (Ulan or S.i. Suncavonly suoscno-tions are available onty bv maii, S10 per month lUtan or S.i WWW.THESPECTRUM.COW Stay up-to-aate online at The Spectrum Wed site. The Spectrum is audited by tne Audit Bureau of Circulations. Birthday Club members who purchase a minimum of 6 sheets Get 2 FREE Portraits instead of one! Membership is free open to children aged 0-5.

PI www.kiddiekandids.com Feb 29. 2(XH child molestation. The chief facts surrounding the accident that killed pedestrian Jim Reed, 43, were not in dispute. Reed was drunk and jaywalking on the night of June 14 when O'Brien hit him on his way home from celebrating Mass, leaving a giant spider-web crack in the windshield and Reed lying in the street O'Brien then drove the two miles back to his house and parked the Buick in his garage. The bishop, who testified for most of two days in the trial, said he heard a loud crash but never saw anyone in the road, and the defense contended that dim lighting, headlight glare and the victim's dark clothes made him hard to see.

Had he seen the pedestrian, O'Brien testified, "I would have stopped because that's the human thing to do. I couldn't imagine not stopping." Kuvkendall showed no reaction. She declined to speak to reporters. Willingham, 36, was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m., seven minutes after the lethal dose began flowing through his veins. Willingham.

a former auto mechanic and high school dropout. previously acknowledged he wasn't a good husband, but insisted he asn't responsible for the blaze that killed 2-year-old Amber and 1-year- 'HivA SJ, A ill 'it-it f. V1 'r 5 fsm I I I iriiilrJtiNri ft i I': Associated Press HUNTSVILLE, Texas Spewing profanities at his ex-wife standing a few feet away, a man was executed Tuesday for the deaths of his three young daughters in a fire two days before Christmas 1991. "The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man convicted of a crime I did not commit," Cameron Willingham said. "I Last of original transplanted wolves killed by officials Associated Press YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo.

The last of the transplanted Canadian gray wolves brought nearly a decade ago to repopulate the species here has been shot by federal officials after repeatedly killing young cattle. The female wolf, known as No. 41, was shot less than two weeks after her sister, wolf No. 42, was killed in a battle with other wolves. Authorities said wolf No.

41 had to be killed because she had been preying on calves in the Sunlight Basin area north of Cody. "After that last (calf was killed) we decided, you know, that's it" said Ed Bangs, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's wolf recovery coordinator. Wolf No. 41, her two sisters and their mother, were among the approximately 30 gray wolves that were captured in Canada and transplanted in 1995 and 1996 to the Yellowstone ecosystem, part of the federal government's controversial effort to reintroduce the predator.

The four females joined a male and formed the Druid Peak pack in the Lamar Valley. The pack soon became the most observed group of wolves in the park. Conflicts within the pack, particularly with 4I's often-violent sister. No. 40, eventually prompted No.

41 to leave the Druid pack behind. She scrambled east over the Absaroka Mountains, hooked up with a male from the Rose Creek pack, and formed a new pack in the Sunlight Basin in 1998. No. 41 became the alpha female of the pack, hich ranged in size from about eight to 12 wolves. The pack began to run into trouble last year.

A severe outbreak of mange left several wolves with thinning coats, which can cause serious problems in the cold of winter pyGf ''''t Wl FREE 8x10 Portrait! No sitting fee. One free portrait per child aged 0-5 per year. without additional package purchaM. Cannot be combined ith other coupons or discounts. "See $tudic tor detajk.

SC BCF8 Otter expire 793 S. Bluff St. 43574-5009 Located Next to Kmart AibertsonV America's Favorite Children's Portrait Studio.