The Evening Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 6

A6 TUESDAY, JULY 2, 1991 THE EVENING SUN deology splits opinions of Thomas IfvS your CCxIL Court replacement 1 flr I 1 I Callers to SUNDIAL registered opinions vesterdav both before' 1 and after President Bush nominated a replacement for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court. Before the nomination, more than 78 percent of the callers, 119 out of 151, said Bush should not nominate a black, and 32 callers said he should. Somewhat fewer, 100 out of 152 callers, nearly 66 percent, said Bush should not name a liberal, and 52 said he should. After Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, a black judge, 52 percent of the callers, 102 out of 196, said they were pleased that a black had been nominated, and 94 callers said they weren't pleased. More than 64 percent of the callers, 125 out of 194, said they were pleased that the president nominated a conservative, and 69 callers said they were not.

To a continuing question, 1 85 callers out of 348 (53 percent) said they do not have concerns about the direction the court has taken, while 1 63 said they have such concerns. fv m. -A 1L. I Judge Thomas shakes hands with White House chief of staff John Sununu, center, and Attorney General Richard Thornburgh. Liberals vow to take close look at Thomas appears to be yet another step in the ideological hijacking of the Supreme Court by the radical right wing of the Republican Party," Brown said.

"Judge Thomas' record should offer no comfort to those who love the Constitution and believe in its protection. I hope the Senate will conduct the most searching inquiry into President Bush's nominee." Ralph G. Neas, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said that many of the coalition's 185 organizations "expressed serious concerns about Clarence Thomas' civil rights enforcement record while he was a member of the Reagan and Bush administrations." "We urge the Senate not to rush to judgment," Neas said. "With so many constitutional rights and personal liberties at stake, the Senate must make sure Clarence Thomas has demonstrated a commitment to equal opportunity and equal justice under the law." But Hatch observed that Thomas was raised by his grandparents in Pinpoint, in a house without indoor plumbing. "Anybody who takes him on in the area of civil rights is taking on the grandson of a sharecropper," Hatch said.

Thomas was born near Savannah, where he endured a difficult, impoverished childhood. Raised as a devout Catholic, he was the only black at an all-white seminary high school. He then attended Holy Cross College in Massachusetts and Yale Law School. "On a personal level, I have a great deal of admiration for him," said Mfume. "I think he's a sharp guy and he's done a lot in his own life to set an example about what you can do when you set your mind to it." But Thomas will come under microscopic scrutiny from the Senate Judiciary Committee, which must examine his nomination.

Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, a liberal who was the only Judiciary Committee member to oppose Thomas' confirmation last year to the appeals court, said he wanted to know Thomas' views on privacy and abortion. "I will not support yet another Reagan-Bush Supreme Court nominee who remains silent on a woman's right to choose, and then ascends to the court to weaken that right," he said. A spokesman for Sen. Barbara A.

Mikulski, the liberal Maryland Democrat, said she "will not prejudge the nomination of Judge Thomas. She will follow closely the proceedings of the Judiciary Committee but the nominee must meet three criteria: He must be of upstanding character, of superior competency and have a respect for fundamental constitutional rights." John Fairhall contributed to this story. appoint anybody who just on paper was not qualified," he said. "The issue is going to be ideology and as the Rev. Jackson was saying, 'reasoning, not And, beyond just the fact that he is currently a federal judge, what does he think in his head and his heart on issues of choice, civil rights and things of that nature.

I don't know yet," Schmoke said. "I don't really have any sense of where he's going to come out on those issues right now." Also at the Schmoke fund-raiser was Benjamin R. Civiletti, the Baltimore attorney who was attorney general in the Carter administration. "I think the president made a good choice," he said. "I think he put quality and qualifications ahead of minority quotas.

But there were a number of qualified minorities and I'm glad he chose one of them." The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People reserved judgment on the Thomas nomination. Marshall won his great civil rights victories, including the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, while general counsel for the NAACP. "We do not oppose and we do not support" Thomas' nomination right now, said Benjamin L. Hooks, the NAACP's executive director.

"I think he's been viewed as a conservative," Hooks said. "Like Joseph's coat, it had many colors." The civil rights group will make a decision after the judge is questioned during the confirmation hearing, he said. NAACP officials said they preferred that a black replace Marshall. Of 107 justices, only Marshall was black and only one has been a woman; 105 have been white men. "That is a quota system the NAACP is determined to break," Hooks said dryly.

Democratic Party chairman Ronald H. Brown attacked the nomination, perhaps foreshadowing a partisan fight during confirmation hearings in the Senate. "Yesterday's announcement Mfume, who was also in Schmoke's receiving line at the Center Club, said he was disappointed with, but not surprised by, the Thomas nomination. "As long as we continue to elect conservative presidents, we're going to get conservative Supreme Court nominees," Mfume said. "It's just a fact of life." It's the president's call, he said.

"We live in the kind of world where to the victor goes the spoils," Mfume said. "Unfortunately, he got two nominations to the Supreme Court in his first term neither of which represent the ideals that I think are important. "I think the court, being the court of last resolve, must in every way possible hold the trust of the people of this land. "If the court is too far to the right or too far to the left, it chips away at that kind of integrity. "And that's my fear," Mfume said.

"We just need balance and I would have preferred a much more moderate Republican. "People need to believe that there's balance in this court and that you can go there and get equal justice under the law." Nobody's going to fill the shoes of Marshall, Mfume said. "Clarence Thomas represents to some people a political oddity," he said. "He is a person of African ancestry who is extremely conservative in his interpretation of social law and social doctrine. That is going to be interesting to explain in the confirmation process." Schmoke knew Thomas when they were both at Yale University.

Thomas is 43, Schmoke 41. "But I got to know him much better after I worked in Washington a while and we had some mutual friends," said the mayor, who worked in the Carter administration. "You can like somebody on the personal side without getting into the professional issues." Thomas' "paper credentials" are fine, Schmoke said. "I've never seen any president WASHINGTON (AP) Wary Senate Democrats are promising to scrutinize Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas' views on abortion, affirmative action and other divisive issues, while President Bush clared, "I'm satisfied that this man will pass muster." Conservatives applauded Bush's selection yesterday of Thomas to succeed retiring Justice Thurgood Marshall and predicted that liberals would have trouble opposing the black judge. Still, civil rights groups have opposed Thomas on grounds he was insensitive to the concerns of minorities and the elderly as chairman of the federal Equal Employment Opportunities Commission in the 1980s.

"The fact that he is an African-American should not be a basis for avoiding very careful scrutiny of his civil rights record," said Julius L. Chambers, director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. While some Democrats immediately blasted the nomination, the party's biggest guns held their fire. Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine; and Sen. Edward M.

Kennedy, all promised a thorough review of the nomination. Confirmation hearings are expected to begin after Congress' August recess. Thomas, 43, would strengthen the conservative majority on the nine-member court. An unabashed conservative, he would succeed the REACTION, From Al his legal views until his hearings. Thomas is Bush's second nominee to the nation's highest court, and like Justice David Souter, he will benefit from having a moderate Republican senator to guide him through the process.

Conservatives generally applauded the Thomas nomination. Liberals deplored it. And Bush was in the catbird seat. "The president in this instance gets his chance to have his cake and eat it, too," Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-7th, said yesterday.

"Simply because he's appointed a person of color to the bench, he's free of the charge that he's insensitive," Mfume said. "And at the same time, he's appointed a person who is probably more conservative than some of the people who were being suggested. He recognizes if Mr. Thomas is not confirmed, it is not because he did not nominate a black person." Sen. Orrin G.

Hatch, a conservative Utah Republican, said Thomas is highly qualified. "He is fair-minded, he is a sensitive individual," Hatch said. "He is also very tough and independent. He is very much his own man very much like Justice Marshall." That was not an assessment many liberals agreed with. "Judge Marshall brought to the court magnificence," said the Rev.

Jesse Jackson, "excellence, commitment to civil rights, civil liberties, workers rights, women's rights, inclusion, expansion. "And unless Judge Thomas can change, he does not represent that tradition," Jackson said. Jackson, sometime liberal Democratic presidential candidate, stood in the receiving line with Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke at the mayor's fund-raiser yesterday at the Center Club. Jackson was in Baltimore to address the convention of the Missionaries of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Thomas has not been a federal judge very long, Jackson said, and he had some rocky days on the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Thomas, an ardent conservative and an outspoken critic of racial quotas, spent eight stormy years as EEOC chairman. He has been a judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia for 15 months.

"He must be asked a lot of questions," Jackson said. "After all, the court is swinging dangerously to the right, with narrow views that are almost an extension of Republican politics, as opposed to being that of jurists who sit above the political systems. "It seems," he said, "it's more and more a stacked court, which is not in the best interest of America or the best interest of the court." By matching bank surveillance photos with a photo of the murder suspect, FBI agents determined in January 1989 that the murder fugitive and the bank robber were the same man. Since then, Chester's photo has been published in wanted posters in post offices across the country. His story was also featured on the popular crime show "Unsolved Mysteries." Dearborn said the last bank robbery attributed to the well-dressed man occurred April 10, 1991, at First National Bank on West Ridgely Road.

After that, he disappeared, Dearborn said. Authorities traced him to Harrisburg, where he was reported driving a blue Camaro with Pennsylvania plates. However, the robber left after his photo was published in a local newspaper, Dearborn said. Authorities believe he went to Harrisburg so he could commute to the Baltimore area to rob banks. "The man is quite intelligent," Dearborn said.

"He just didn't make a lot of mistakes." However, the Camaro, which was registered to Chester's alias Ronald Smith, may have been one. Las Vegas FBI agents knew about the Chester case and thought it unusual for a car with Pennsylvania plates to be in Las Vegas. Authorities identified Chester through fingerprints. The FBI said the investigation isn't over. "Our job will be to find out what he's been up to the last couple of months," Dearborn said.

Joe Nawrozki contributed to this story. Associated Press 'l kept my word to the American people and to the Senate by picking the best man for the job on the merits. And the fact he's minority, so much the President Bush court's leading liberal its first and only black justice. Bush rejected suggestions that he chose Thomas because he wanted to keep a black in that seat. "I kept my word to the American people and to the Senate by picking 1 the best man for the job on the merits.

And the fact he's minority, so much the better," Bush said at a news conference outside his vacation home in Kennebunkport, Maine. "And I would strongly resent any charge that might be forthcoming on quotas when it relates to appointing the best man to the court," he said. The Senate last year confirmed Bush's appointment of Thomas to the Circuit Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia. Potential opponents of the nominee also promised in their statements to ignore Thomas' race when they examine his record. man in Baltimore.

Chester has been wanted in Prince George's County since the June 8, 1987, stabbing death of his wife, Aster Belaynek Chester, 33. Her body was found in the kitchen of the couple's Largo home after relatives reported they hadn't seen her in several days. Prince George's police obtained a fugitive warrant for Chester from the FBI. Chester is also a suspect in as many as 20 bank robberies that began the day after the woman was murdered and continued until April of this year, according to James Dearborn, an FBI spokesman in Baltimore. "It took four years, but at least we got him," Dearborn said.

Meanwhile, the day after his wife's death, police said Chester, then-co-owner of Chester and Williams Associates Insurance Co. in Washington D.C., began robbing banks. Dearborn said 15 to 20 banks, mostly in Baltimore County, were robbed by a well-dressed man wearing a fedora, who carried a briefcase and a large gun. The robberies netted an average of $2,000. The mustachioed robber, who also wore sunglasses, usually made everyone lie on the floor and told them somebody was watching the bank from the outside, authorities said.

At least one of the robberies occurred in Prince George's County and there may have been three or four in the Frederick area, Dearborn said. But the robber focused on Baltimore County. "Why Baltimore County, we haven't any idea," Dearborn said. Murder suspect caught after robbery mm wsmwtm Dfl FUGITIVE, From Al make bail on the most recent bank robbery charge. An FBI spokesman said the various prosecutors who want the suspect will have to decide where he will be tried first and on what charges.

"The decision-making process on this could take weeks," the spokesman said. "There are two U.S. attorneys and a state prosecutor in Prince George's County, Maryland who are trying to iron this out." In addition to federal bank robbery charges, Chester is also charged by the state with robbing the Mercantile Bank, 7000 Security Blvd. Sept. 22, 1989, Sgt.

Stephen Doarnberger, spokesman for the Baltimore County Police, said today. He said he did not know the county prosecutor's position on bringing Chester to trial. Chester and his car matched the descriptions of an armed robber who took an undisclosed amount of money from First Western Savings at 9:30 a.m. yesterday, Las Vegas police said. A 1991 blue Chevrolet Ca-maro matching the description of the getaway car was spotted at the store 15 minutes after the robbery, police said.

Police and FBI arrived, sealed off the area and arrested Chester as he walked outside the store, authorities said. i In the car, police found a .357 Magnum revolver, a semiautomatic pistol, clothes similar to those worn by the robber and money believed to have been stolen during the bank robbery, according to an FBI spokes i ii sX in it i I KMT Quiet, long-lasting mercury switch Adjustable heat anticipator Handsome finish Decorative cover ring We're selling everything GLEN DURNIE IOW OPEN IN 691 OBDNATICE RD, 5539800 PRICES MAY VARY AFTER JULYS, 1991 IP THERE ARE MARKET VARIATIONS. Til for S3. 3 days, 3 lines, only $14.85. Call 539-7700 Private panics only.

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