Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • 9

El TAX RELIEF Amnesty plan offered, pace 6b CITY LOSING SERVICES Highland Park closes library, rec center to save money, pace 4b TUESDAY March 12 2002 kocai loaay DESIREE COOPER COOPER'S TOWN Roadwork Your Community 2 Obituaries ON THE WEB www.freep.com phone 313-222-6000 Section two -B ft i 3 -9 Hp wl if I could mt death i mi in fc Defendant decks lawyer at hearing By SHAWN WINDSOR FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER restrained Gabrion and carried him out, Bell called a 90-minute recess. Michigan's constitutional ban on the death penalty dates to 1846. The ban was the first by any government in the English-speaking world. But the death penalty is allowed under some circumstances in federal cases. The last person put to death for a what he was hearing.

Exasperated U.S. District Judge Robert Holmes Bell warned him many times to control himself. Then, as the first witness testified, Gabrion poked his attorney, David Stebbins, several times before punching him in the face and screaming that the witness was lying. i Stebbins fell to the floor. The courtroom gasped.

After federal marshals Marvin Gabrion displayed bizarre behaviors at his hearing in federal court. room behavior by punching his attorney. Marvin Gabrion, found guilty last Week in a federal court in Grand Rap- ids, spent the first morning of the death-penalty hearing unleashing' booming sighs, ill-timed chuckles and bursts of profanity when he didn't like GRAND RAPIDS With his life on the line, a convicted murderer on the verge of being the first person sentenced to death in Michigan in 44 years, culminated a morning of bad court Please see KILLER, Page 4B MOTOR CITY JOURNAL By BILL McGRAW Resign, city police monitors are told Upset chief could be behind mayor's request "7 A iif'- "1 (I I Aw" -V ii''" '7. DETROIT By BEN SCHMITT FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER Blessings in the midst of a power outage At last, I was home alone on a Saturday afternoon. Luxuriously, I carried a mug of green tea to my computer to begin writing a speech I had to give Sunday morning.

Two hours later, the wind began to howl. The cover to our industrial-size barbecue pit blew into the neighbor's yard. Any moment, I expected to see Auntie Em and Toto whiz by. Instinctively, I pressed the "print" button before I kept on working. Three minutes later, the lights were out.

When my windswept family returned home, I was still trembling from the near disaster of losing a speech the eve before I was to give it. It took the kids to turn the near-calamity into an adventure. We built a fire and sprawled in front of it in sleeping bags. We snacked on peanut butter and green apples. We read and waited with high hopes that the lights would be on the next day.

At 5:30 Sunday morning, the dog pranced to be let outside. The temperature had fallen 40 degrees in 12 hours. The house was an igloo. I scampered upstairs and hogged what was left of the hot water for a shower to get ready to deliver my speech. My husband and the kids went off to my son's hockey game.

By that afternoon, my speech was over, the sun was shining and my spirits were up. I got home, slipped into fleece and dove deep into a sleeping bag. A decadent nap on a Sunday afternoon. The wages of sin An hour later, the family was back with casualties. Our son, Jay, evidently had taken to flight witty his sister on his back.

The result was a badly sprained ankle. It was decided that the boys would tough out the emergency room (where both heat and television awaited them). The girls stayed home, on the assumption that the power would be on any minute. Rae and I made the best of our situation with a goddess dance around the foyer and roasted weenies over the fire. Hours later, we read a book out loud until she fell asleep.

I looked out of the window with envy as our neighbors with power dimmed their lights and snuggled in their warm beds. By Monday morning, the knobs of my hips were bruised from two nights on the floor. Our breaths floated on the air in the living room. I smelled like a slab of bacon. Rae went to school after a breakfast of oatmeal warmed with water roasted in an aluminum measuring cup.

Jay couldn't go to school, so I packed him up and drove him to the nearest hotel where he was ensconced in unfinished homework and Mountain Dew. I arrived at work dis- combobulated, muttering that familiar mantra, "Why me?" Except this time, it wasn't just me 19,000 households were without power this weekend. I felt small when the hotel clerk said she'd had to climb 12 flights of stairs to get to her apartment. On the radio were stories of seniors unable to keep warm or call for medical attention. We'd stayed warm in our sleeping bags, unlike our soldiers in Afghanistan who, over the weekend, had to track an invisible enemy in bitter snow.

The wind destroyed the 127-year-old steeple of Detroit's Sacred Heart Catholic Church, but all we lost was a barbecue pit cover. Fate, it seems, is as indiscriminate as the wind. If the power is out for a few more days yet, it'll be expensive and inconvenient to have to stay in a hotel. But at least our pockets are still being warmed by a paycheck and for that and so many other things, we can still count our blessings. Contact DESIREE COOPER at 313-222-6625.

fcHIO btALSDetrgil Free Press Dave Moore of Detroit is driven down Miller Road in front of the Ford Rouge Plant. Moore and thousands of others inarched down this street 70 years ago in the Ford Hunger March. Five unarmed marchers were shot to death by Dearborn police and Ford security. Remeie the March Barely four months after voters amended the city charter to protect Detroit police commissioners from undue influence from City Hall, Mayor Kwame Kil-patrick has asked three commissioners to resign. One of them, Chairman Nathaniel Head, is refusing to quit Kilpatrick made the requests last week, less than a week after the 5-member commission sent a letter to new Police Chief Jerry Oliver, asking for documents Oli- ver's predecessors had failed to provide.

Oliver said the tone of the letter offended him. Head said he got the mayor's letter Thursday, shortly before the board was to meet. Of the mayor's resignation request, Head said: "I suspect it was because of that letter. I'm sure his subsequent conversations with the mayor caused this to happen." He added, "How the chief and mayor can be so thin-skinned is beyond me. We tried to welcome the chief with open arms because he was the mayor's choice." Commissioner Eva Garza Dewaelsche, executive director of Latin Americans for Social and Economic Development, also was asked to resign.

She was appointed to finish out a term that expired in July 2000 and said Monday that she stayed on until receiving Kilpatrick's letter. She said she saw nothing controversial about her departure. W. Anthony Jenkins, a Detroit attorney, received a similar letter and resigned Friday after completing the first year of a 5-year term, Head said. Jenkins could not be reached Monday for comment.

Mayoral spokesman Bob Berg said Head's suspicions about the 70 years later, a man remembers the day unarmed protesters were killed Z(-m -'--1 hey buried the victims from the Ford Hunger March 70 years ago today. Their funeral was 15 1 shot at for daring to demand Henry Ford hire people during the Depression. "To my recollection, there's never been another funeral in Detroit like it," said Moore, who is one of the last living pants. "The funeral started at Ferry and Russell, went to Woodward, then down to Grand Circus Park. There was a band.

People who were standing on the sidewalk joined in. There was a tremendous outpouring of respect. This city was on the verge of revolution." Moore's body is strong and his mind is sharp; his recollections are backed by the ac- held after Dearborn police and Ford Motor Co. security personnel shot and killed five unarmed demonstrators next to the Ford Rouge plant. Up to 60,000 mourners turned out.

That one tumultuous week in 1932 is largely forgotten, but Dave Moore remembers it well. Moore, who will be 90 next month, was a teenager when he served as an honorary pall bearer. Five days earlier, he had marched down Miller Road with some 5,000 others. Like them, he was tear-gassed, drenched with water from fire hoses and Free Press archives Some of the estimated 60,000 mourners for the victims of the Ford Hunger March gather In Grand Circus Park March 12, 1932. Please see JOURNAL, Page 4B Please see POLICE, Page 4B Blanchard targets Detroit voters i i I Ex-governor opens bid says city key to election By KATHLEEN GRAY FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER Former Gov.

James Blanchard addresses a rally Monday at the Golightly Career and Technical Center in Detroit as he kicks off his campaign to regain the governorship. then," admitted Blanchard after his speech. "Detroit is key. They represent 22 percent of the vote in the primary. I'm focusing a lot of my time here." But Detroit was just the first stop on a statewide tour that will focus on Blanchard's economic plan.

The program is a mix of tax cuts, investments to strengthen the manufacturing sector in the state and the creation of a Michigan Talent Corps to attract and keep students once they graduate boot the Democrat from the state's top job. But on Monday, he stood before a crowd of about 200 people at the Golightly Career and Technical Center in Detroit. His campaign headquarters is in Detroit and one of his first major fundraisers of the upcoming campaign is a concert featuring the Foul-Tops Motown born and bred -f at the State Theatre in the heart of the city's entertainment district. "I should have found a better way to energize people back Former Gov. James Blanchard wasn't about to make the same mistakes he made last time he ran for governor as he launched his campaign Monday to regain the job he held for eight years.

In 1990, many Detroiters, feeling he had ignored them, stayed home on Election Day, helping Please see BLANCHARD, Page 3B WtLLiAM AHc-Hltvuetroit f-ree Press.