The Salt Lake Tribune from Salt Lake City, Utah • 1

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 22 1994 1994 THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE SALT LAKE CITY UTAH 84111 VOLUME 249 NUMBER 39 TODAYS READERSHIP: 341100 Utahs Taxing Problem: An Extra $72 Million Utahs TV Stations Switching Channels By Harold Schindler and John Keahey THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE Channel surfing in Utah may be a little confusing next spring CBS will move its programs to KUTV-Chan-nel 2 ending its 45-year relationship with Mormon Church-owned KSL-Channel 5 NBC leaves Channel 2 for Channel 5 Changes on the dial were prompted Monday by the $124 million sale of KUTV-Channel 2 to a joint venture between CBS Inc and Westing-house KUTVs majority owner the National Broadcasting Co sold its 88 percent interest The remaining 12 percent interest is held by the George Hatch family of Salt Lake City its one-time sole owners Jeffrey Hatch whose contract expires at the end of next year expects to remain as general manager If the sale is approved by the Federal Communications Commission as expected NBC would be KSLs only logical affiliation choice KSL executives acknowledged they have been in negotiations with NBC for months and they hope to have a deal soon Local news staffs the anchors sports peril See TELEVISION Page A-4 state has hit the cap on spending We cant even spend that excess money according to the law House Minority Whip Kelly Atkinson D-West Jordan said Monday It goes into the rainy-day fund or we refund it or we turn around and override the law so we can spend it State Budget Director Lynne Koga cautioned against relying on preliminary budget estimates We havent gotten any final revenue estimates Koga said Theyre all very weak estimates at this point There is a possibility that we could hit the limit Legislators concede that it would appear contradictory and politically dicey to declare a budget emergency in the middle of one of the states biggest economic upsurges Total surplus revenues the amount of tax collections over expectations have topped $587 million during the past six years Utahs statehouse is solidly under control of Republicans who pride themselves on being fiscal conservatives They are not eager to do anything that would stick them with a tax-and-spend label Charlie Johnson Leavitts chief of staff insists: We are See SURPLUS Page A-4 By Dan Harrie 1994 THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE Utah lawmakers and Gov Mike Leavitt may be in the politically awkward position of having more tax money than they can legally spend Thats right Tax collectors are bringing in so much monef that the Republican governor might be forced to declare a fiscal emergency to spend it all without violating state law And two-thirds of the Legislature would have to agree The problem if having too much money can be called a problem is that Utahs budget surpluses just wont quit Lawmakers recently were told there could be $72 million more in tax collections than planned for the fiscal year ending next June 30 That is nothing new for a state that has enjoyed a run of seven straight years of surplus But one thing is different this time: The predicted revenues smack up against a spending ceiling enacted six years ago There will probably be $30 million out there that cannot be appropriated Bill Asplund legislative research assistant director said Monday He told lawmakers last week that this is the first time the BIZARRE DEFENSES In the Courtroom Blame Game No Excuse Is Too Lame By Robert Davis USA TODAY Michael Ricksgers says he was asleep when he shot and killed his sleeping wife Daimion Osby contends he shot two unarmed men to death because of urban-survival syndrome Stephen Mobley blames his genes for making him kill Edward Kelly says he is not guilty of rape it was one of his 30 personalities who had sex The excuses do not always work In fact juries usually dismiss them out of hand But experts say these defenses are typical of the bizarre rationales that increasingly are being heard in courtrooms across the nation as defendants try to find something anything to blame Theyre outrageous says Kent Schei-degger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation who calls the tactics the stuff of lawyers who have nothing left to argue They should not be able to even get that to a jury Famed defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz author of The Abuse Excuse i diplomatic We live in an age of exotic aefense? and excuses he says If you can make 11 round like an illness people are much more sympathetic On Friday a jury of seven men and five women found Ricksgers 37 from Buffalo Township Pa guilty of first-degree murder The jury did not believe that sleep apnea a disorder that can cause snoring and odd jerky movements led him to pick up a 357-caliber Magnum handgun and shoot his wife Janet last Christmas His possible sentence: life in prison Creative Lawyering: So why do people come up with these defenses? When there is little dispute over guilt says John Parry of the American Bar Associations Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law defense lawyers must throw in whatever is possible Colin Ferguson charged with killing five and injuring 18 in a shooting spree aboard a Long Island commuter train last year plans to use a black rage defense his lawyer William Kuntsler says Years of discrimination boiled into a rage that led him to target whites according to the defense strategy The defense strategies some argue also come about as a result of the nationwide push to slap violent thugs with tougher sentences Abbe Smith of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School says that with new mandatory-minimum sentences three strikes and youre out laws and a rise in capital punishment lawyers feel more pressure to get clients off Some recent cases: Bln Georgia defense lawyers blame Stephen Mobleys genes Mobley was convicted of murdering John Collins a Dominos pizza store manager in 1991 In an appeal to keep him out of the electric chair lawyers are trying to convince the state Supreme Court that Mobleys chromosomes are to blame for his violent tendencies In Manassas Va Edward Kelly 44 blames one of his 30 personalities for the trouble he is in A woman Kelly met in group therapy claims he bound her with wire and raped her Kelly told investigators that one of his personalities named Spirit had consensual sex with one of the womans personalities In Fort Worth Texas Daimion Osbys lawyers argued this month that he shot two unarmed black men in the head last year because he suffered from urban survival syndrome Jury Didnt Buy It His lawyers argued that Osby who also is black was afflicted by a rational fear of other blacks in violent urban neighborhoods In his first trial in April a jury deadlocked But this months jury took a little more than five hours to find Osby guilty He was sentenced to life in prison But not everyone agrees that unusual defenses like urban-survival syndrome and sleep apnea are on the rise Jonas Rappeport medical director of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law says health-related defenses including insanity are used in only 1 percent of all felony cases and that only about one in 400 leads to acquittal In the end says Rappeport jurors are the final arbiters: I have great faith in the jury system and I have no concern that it will be abused THAT LONG SLOW SINKING FEELING A worker from San Francisco's Department of Water inspects the area where five cars dropped into a 100-foot stretch of road after a water main broke Sunday near Hyde Street and Pacific Avenue Hundreds of nearby residents were evacuated as officials feared potential gas leaks The Associated Press Dagny Spears sister of Navy pilot Lt Kara Hultgreen says goodbye to her sister Monday during funeral services at Arlington National Cemetery NATO Air Raid Disables Serb Runway Retaliatory Attack Meant As a Warning UN Says By John Pomfret THE WASHINGTON POST ZAGREB Croatia NATO fighter bombers launched the biggest air raid in the history of the alliance Monday dispatching more than 30 warplanes to bomb the runway at a rebel Serb airfield in Croatia The allies refrained from destroying Serb planes on the ground and the US admiral commanding the operation said the runway could be functioning again soon But he added that the point of the attack was less to destroy equipment than to warn Bosnian Serb leaders against repeating recent air attacks launched from the airfield at Udbina about 20 miles inside Croatia The NATO attack was triggered by two consecutive days of Serb airstrikes by planes based at Udbina on the Muslim enclave of Bihac in northwestern Bosnia It marked the fifth time Western warplanes have hit Serb targets since Feb 9 when the alliance ordered the Bosnian Serbs to withdraw their heavy weapons from around the capital of Sarajevo While it was the boldest show of international force since Yugoslavias wars of secession began four years ago the 45-minute assault by US British French and Dutch planes did not seek to pulverize the airfield or blow up planes US Adm Leighton Smith the commander of NATOs southern region said Our purpose today was to send a signal and I believe we did so He said the raid was not of sufficient magnitude to put the runway at Udbina completely out of action Its fairly easy to fib up a hole in an airfield so I dont expect this airfield to be out of commission for an awfully long time he told reporters in Naples He said if there had been aircraft on See NATO Page A-3 10000 Cheer Arafat Assail Extremists Islamic Leaders Say Rally Damages Fragile Truce COMBINED NEWS SERVICES GAZA CITY Gaza Strip PLO gunners fired into the air and denounced Muslim extremists Monday as 10000 people rallied in what Yasser Arafat billed as a show of support for peace with Israel Militant Islamic leaders burying the 14th victim of Fridays factional fighting called the rally a provocation likely to damage the truce worked out by Israeli Arab mediators Ordinary Gazans nervously watched the displays of firepower fearing that their impoverished homeland was on the brink of civil war We support democracy but we need security and stability to build our state Arafat told cheering supporters in city square We will not allow anybody to sow disorder and we will not allow anyone to destroy what we have built the Palestine Liberation Organization leader said Arafat is seeking broader public backing after bloody clashes Friday outside a Gaza City mosque between his police and Islamic activists opposed to negotiating with Israel About 200 supporters of the Islamic Resistance Movement or Hamas marched in the funeral procession of the 14th victim Ata Kanan 25 who died Monday of gunshot wounds in the head Arafat is a killer Instead of shooting at Israelis he is shooting at our sons Kanans father Mohammed 58 said tears streaming down his face as the body was lowered into a grave next to 10 of the other 13 victims At the PLO rally Arafat clearly elated by a crowd larger than the one that welcomed him on his arrival five months ago encouraged supporters to tear down a fence and come within feet of the stage See ARAFAT Page A-12 iw Family Friends Navy Give Final Salute To Woman F-14 Pilot Killed in Crash at Sea INDEX fied for her job and focused attention on the debate about women in combat especially women flying combat aircraft Her body was borne toward grave number 7710 in section 60 of the 612-acre national cemetery here on a black caisson with gold wheel hubs that was drawn by six white horses adorned in black As a bugler played taps on a silver horn Navy Secretary John Dalton presented a folded American flag to Hult-greens mother Sally Spears The Navys vice chief of naval operations Adm Stanley Arthur wearing a gold-braided sword presented a flag to her father Tor Hultgreen Since a memorial service had been held Oct 29 in San Antonio where her mother lives there were no eulogies no flyovers just the thunderous salutes of jetliners disappearing into the clouds from nearby National Airport The afternoon ceremony took just a See SALJJTE Page A-3 By Michael Ruane KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWS SERVICE ARLINGTON Va Her mothers fingers caressed the metal of the coffin lid Her sisters touched it with gentle pats of goodbye And her friends paused to gaze across sodden fields to the foggy horizon and remembrance Amid overcast skies misting rain and the solemn tap of drumsticks pioneer Naval aviator Lt Kara Hultgreen was laid to rest Monday in a coffin as gray as a jet fighter four weeks after her F-14 crashed in the Pacific ocean and killed her It was a formal disciplined farewell fitting in a way to the 29-year-old flier who had been one of the Navys first female combat fighter pilots when she died Oct 25 trying to land on an aircraft carrier It also was a full-fledged salute to a young pilot whose death has brought up anonymous rumors that she was unquali WEATHER: Mostly sunny but cold across the state Details: B-10 9.