Newsday from New York, New York • 19

A i 4 js A Portman Hotel Gets Financing New York A major obstacle to the development of a 50-story hotel in Times Square has been cleared, according to its backers, who say an llth-hour agreement on financing will enable them to begin demolition of the half-century-old Picadilly Hotel on the site. A spokesman for the Picadilly said the hotel planned to shut its doors last night and that many of its guests had checked out during the day. According to Alan Bell, a spokesman for Atlanta architect John Portman, "We finally got our act together. We were down to the finish line. The 10-year-old project had stalled in recent weeks because of financing difficulties.

Robert Rafiky of the State Urban Development Corporation said that the official-dosing of the deal between the lenders, headed by Manufacturers Hanover Trust, will take place today in the Madison Avenue law offices of Rosenman, Colin, Freund, Lewis and Cohen. The hotel will be built by Portman and Marriot Corp. at Broadway and 45th Street with completed seen in mid-1985. It will cost more than $320 million, said to be the largest financial deal ever made for a single venture in the city. The agreement between the lenders and the owners saves the Koch administration and backers of the controversial hotel considerable embarrassment The rest of the site has been vacant since the demolition of the Helen Hayes and Monaco Theaters there in Some of the delay in building the hotel was attributed to a redesigning of the hotels entrance when the city decided not to back a proposed mall in front of it Another reason, according to insiders, was that $15 million needed UPI Photo Freight cars derailed at Spuyten Duyvil railway bridge in the Bronx delayed morning and evening rush hours Derailment Snags Rush Hours Combined Newt Services New York A freight train derailment knocked in the! Conrail service in the Bronx yesterday, snarling passengers for Spuyten Duyvil, Riverdale and Ludlow, all in the Bronx.

Other buses transported passengers to Yonkers to board trains for points farther norm. The cars that derailed carried salt, plywood, flour and newsprint, but no hazardous materials, a Conrail spokesman said. Two of the seven derailed cars overturned. The remainder were totally or partially off the tracks, the spokesman said. The train was en route from Selkirk, N.Y., to the Oak Brook rail yard in the Bronx, the spokesman said.

out both morning and evening rush hour rail traffic. Seven cars of a 56-car Conrail upstate derailed at the shortly after midnight, blocking both tracks into the city. Some 13,000 morning rush-hour passengers were bused from the Yonkers Station to Marble Hill with service delays of as much as one hour, Conrail reported The evening rush-hour schedule called for shuttle trains about every 15 minutes from Grand Central to ban 2,000 rooms and will include a 60-foot wraparound billboard. It will also include a theater. Dennis Duggan Queens Jury Shielded From Hinckley News The prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Jamie Wolff, argued that while Jandelli was apparently disturbed about his sisters impending marriage, he was sane when he slew her.

Posner gave the case against Jandelli, who is charged with second-degree murder, to the jury last night after lengthy summations and last-minute appearances by District Attorney John J. Santucd and veteran defense attorney Harry Lipsig. Santucd joined Wolff in Posners courtroom yes-Lipsig later joined Goldstone, a Lipdgs firm, in court and asked Poorer to declare a mistrial on grounds that Santucds sudden appearance "was calculated to affect the ji jurys By Gerald McKelvey Jamaica A State Supreme Court jury has been sequestered for 10 days because of John Hinckleys acquittal in the shooting of President Reagan. Hinckleys attorneys successfully raised the mean-. ity defense, the same defense posed in the trial of Robert Jandelli, 16, who is (barged with murdering his sister, Carol, 27, by bludgeoning her with a claw hammer and then slitting her throat at their Rockaway Beach home on Jan.

29, 1981. Justice Herbert Posner said yesterday that the day after Hinckley was acquitted on grounds that he was insane at the time he shot the Resident, he polled the jury in Jandellis murder trial to see if they had been inflnenfwrf by the verdict. He said he decided they had not been, but ordered the panel shielded from all further news about the Hinckley verdict to avoid a mistrial in Jandellis case. Tts a good thing we did, Posner said. He he would have been forced to discharge Jandellis jury if they had seen news accounts dealing with two jurors in the Hinckley trial who said they were not convinced Hinckley was insane even though they finally voted to acquit, or if the jury had read stories about the public and legislative outrage over Hinckleys acquittal.

The insanity defense in federal law is very similar to the defense in New York law. In both, defendants are presumed sane and accountable for their crimes. However, a defendant can claim to have been insane at the time of the crime and ask for acquittal The prosecution, in order to convict, then has the burden of proving the defendant sane. Hinckleys attorneys argued that at the time he shot Reagan and three other persons he was not criminally liable fin: his acts because he was insane. Bruce Goldstone, Jandellis attorney, said that Jandelli was suffering "an acute psychotic episode on the night he hammered his sisters head eight times and then slashed her throat with a kitchen knife.

of the and prejudicial to the rights record for all for my pres- disposition defendant. Santucd said he was the attorney of prosecutions in Queens. "I do not apologize ence, he told Posner. 1 belong here. denied Lipsig motion.

of City Seeking Electronic Welfare Payments official often complain that some recipients sell the checks and then apply for a new check, claiming the old one was lost or stolen. There was not a single incident of loss or duplicate payment in the 125,000 transactions in the experiment. Each welfare recipient taking part in the Manhattan experiment in an area between 60th and 115th Streets and from Central Park West to the Hudson River has a photo identification card with his or her signature ami an invisible code. When the card is placed in a computer terminal at a local bank or check-cashing facility, it displays the amount the dty wants to pay out The recipient signs a voucher and tbs signature is matched to the card. The "benefit center then pays the amount deposited by the dty for that recipient, or in the case of food stamps, ji provides the amount of food stamps specified by the dty.

New York (AP) A small-scale experiment in using electronic transfer of funds for welfare payments has proved so successful that the dty is seeking to enlarge the system dtywide. Thexperiment was primarily an effort to cut the cost of administrating the tits 1 15-million-a-month welfare program, but it also has paid dividends by oliminatTng the problem of lost or stolen checks. For the past eight month, about 10,000 West Side households have been getting public assistance including food stamps as well as welfare payments through the electronic transfer of funds between the dty and neighborhood banks or check-cashing facilities. Now the Human Resources Administration has asked for bids on expanding it to all 480,000 households i winfaMTMTig 850,000 persons that get welfare. Martin Burdick, HRAs deputy administrator for i income maintenance, said 35 firms have responded to the request for developing a city-wide system.

He plans to meet with all the firms next week to discuss the matter further and has set Aug. 16 as a target date for their final offers. Councilwoman Ruth Messinger, who represents the district' in which the experiment took place, said, "We have not gotten any complaints from recipients or from community groups about it. Burdick concurred that "Everyone seems to like it. The city expects to save money by converting to the new method, but Burdick refused to discuss administrative costs because firms bidding to handle the new system might benefit if they knew that The electronic transfer of funds would also eliminate the nagging problem of miaaing or stolen welfare While some checks are stolen from mailboxes, i it-C i i-v i f) 0 4 0Y' i aft.

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