Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 19

THE if I LOTTERY 2 DEATH NOTICES 5 OBITUARIES 5 NEIGHBORHOODS PAGE 3 STATE SECTION PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE THURSDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1999 The owner of an adult the mayor and theater on the North Side goes to court to ward off community leaders and to stay in business. m) 1 ipfi urn ffi) I Hi hMm 4 rH 14 -V II ill A iinrini X- Vhv.i i 8 h. Tin t- vvu-v'MUtlf-" ,4 until By Tom Barnes Post-Gazette Staff Writer The owner of the X-rated Garden Theater began a court battle yesterday to prevent Mayor Murphy and North Side leaders from turning out the lights on his long-running adult cinema. George Androtsakis denounced public officials whom his lawyer, Peter Georgiades, termed the "self-appointed guardians of the public morals" who are trying to put his client out of business on North Avenue. "The politicians fall all over themselves to be the first guy to hate pornography, just like they used to fall all over themselves to be the most anti-Communist guy in the country," Georgiades said.

"Who suffers? Free speech. And, ultimately, all of us. You don't have to go an adult theater if you don't like it." Joel Aaronson, special counsel for the city's Urban Redevelopment Authority, which is trying to seize the Garden through eminent domain, said the free speech defense was ridiculous. He said the city has been trying for at least 10 years to clean up the rundown area around Federal Street and North Avenue, and the URA was properly using its power of eminent domain when it attempted in 1997 to take the theater and several dozen other properties. Central North Side residents have long been complaining that the theater is a nuisance.

Murphy has a partly completed $40 million plan to redevelop the area around Federal and North, site of problem bars, vacant storefronts, drug activity and other evidence of what city officials call urban blight. The marquee at the Garden has dropped its previous references to "XXXX" or adult movies. Yesterday, it advertised "4 Big Hits," "Continuous All Day" with a "New Show every Wed. and Sun. In a brief interview yesterday outside Common Pleas Judge Alan Penkower's courtroom, Androtsakis, of New York City, said he owns about 35 theaters around the country, some adult.

Georgiades said the Garden is "profitable" but didn't release numbers. Another of Androtsakis' lawyers, Arthur Goldstein of New York City, said "approximately 50,000 customers a year attend the theater in lawful expression of their First Amendment rights." That amounts to about 135 patrons per day. Murphy spokesman Doug Root said later yesterday that framing the court case around pornography and free speech "is inaccurate and just plain silly." "The drive for changing that neighborhood came from the North Side residents' groups who desperately wanted a renovation of the area where the theater is located," Root said. "We trust the court will see through red herring arguments." Androtsakis contended that the campaign to close the Garden is "a 100 percent conspiracy" between Murphy, his executive secretary Tom Cox, community leaders and Barbara Luderowski. She is the owner of the Mattress Factory art gallery and Cox's choice for bringing new cultural and arts uses to the Federal-North area.

Georgiades has subpoenaed Murphy and two City Council members, Dan Onorato and Jim Ferlo, to ask them on the witness stand about anti-pornography statements they have made in the past. Assistant City Solicitor Virginia Spencer Scott moved to quash the subpoenas, saying Georgiades was just seeking publicity. Penkower said he may rule next week on whether the three officials must testify. Androtsakis said he offered $170,000 in cash to buy the vacant, boarded-up Masonic Measure targets inferior repairs Bill would force insurers to order quality auto parts ByJohnM.R. Bull Post-Gazette Harrisburg Correspondent HARRISBURG Daniel Del-laRova was driving down the highway when the hood of his car flew up and smashed into his windshield.

The hood latch had failed. It was a used car. The Reading man didn't know the hood had been replaced. And he didn't know the new hood was an imitation of the kind made by the car's manufacturer. The latch was poorly designed.

He could have died. He didn't know using inferior replacement parts was a common practice by the insurance industry, intent on cutting costs on car repairs by having bodyshops use non-manufacturer-made parts called "aftermarket parts." "Professional repairmen tell us they are pressured and often required by insurers to use replacement parts whose quality is untested, or whose quality has been found to be significantly inferior to the original parts," said state Sen. Michael A. O'Pake, -Reading. He and state Sen.

Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills, yesterday said they will introduce a bill banning the insurance industry from forcing or coercing people to use aftermarket body parts like hoods and doors and -bumpers when having their cars repaired after an accident. Under the bill, repair parts made by the car manufacturer must be used for the first five years after a car is bought, longer if the warranty lasts longer than five years. The rule would apply only to cases in which an insurance company is footing the cost of repair. State Farm last week was hit with a $1.2 billion jury verdict for using so-called aftermarket parts. The company was sued by policyholders who claimed the replacement parts are of inferior quality to those made and tested by the manufacturer.

The insurance industry argued that the parts are not inferior, and using the higher-priced parts would merely increase auto premiums. SEE REPAIRS, PAGE B-2 2 charged with fraud in district justice race By Marylynne Pitz Post-Gazette Staff Writer Two Allegheny Valley residents were charged yesterday with election fraud following a review by county investigators of 81 ballots and interviews with 200 people. John Tomson, 36, of Bracken-ridge, is charged with conspiracy, accused of submitting four false absentee ballots in the May primary and instructing Cynthia Hatajik 38, of Natrona Heights, to forge the names of four voters on those ballots and sign the envelopes. Hatajik is charged with one count of conspiracy, four counts of forgery and four counts of election code violations. The investigation is continuing and District Attorney Stephen A.

Zappala Jr. said yesterday that his office will obtain a court order to compel Tomson and Hatajik to give examples of their penmanship, which will be reviewed Dy handwriting experts from the state police in HarrisDurg. "If it's not one person, one vote, there's something really wrong," Zappala said. Tomson said he wanted to prevent the re-election of Carolyn Ben-gel, an incumbent Natrona district justice running against Ray Reczynski, Zappala said. SEE FRAUD, PAGE B-2 BRIAN O'NEILL Gunning for the bad guys Hhe panel included everyone from Attorney General Janet Reno to a local priest, but the guy who really stood out was the gun dealer.

He knew it, too. "A lot of you are probably wondering why I'm up here on the panel and not in jail," said Buddy Savage, who has owned Braverman Arms Co. in Wilkinsburg for 40 years. "We are gun dealers for the good guys." Savage was invited because Mayor Murphy and Reno's top man in town, U.S. Attorney Harry Litman, were announcing a partnership to combat gun violence and illicit firearms trafficking.

This effort bears the customary strained acronym Operation Target (Taking Aim to Reduce Gun Violence and End Trafficking) and it's loaded with the customary earnest promises. But before too many eyes glaze over, let us embrace the possibility that this effort will do some good. Because similar follow-the-gun strategies have worked well in Boston and Richmond. Because it stems from a father of three, Murphy, who has lived 25 years in a neighborhood that has endured more than its share of fatal shootings. But maybe most of all because the local gun dealer says it's about time.

"The things they talked about are things that our side of the argument has always talked about," Savage said later. "Get people to realize there are consequences to their actions." The Brady Law and the Pennsylvania instant-check system have stopped a world of illegal gun sales, but the tougher background checks have led to more "straw purchases," too. People with -clean records buy the guns only to sell them to people who can't buy them legally. Cops say three of every four guns involved in a Pittsburgh crime has been obtained through illegal purchases. Savage loves that the focus is on prosecuting illegal purchases.

"Attempting to purchase a firearm for a felon is tantamount to attempting to rob a bank," he said. To trace guns used in violent crimes, the city will assign two police officers full-time to work with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Making a straw purchase is now only a misdemeanor, but state Rep. Dan Frankel, a Democrat from Squirrel Hill, introduced a bill in Harrisburg last week that would toughen that penalty. Frankel claims 33 co-sponsors, including six Republicans.

There are other elements to Murphy's anti-gun agenda mandatory trigger locks and training courses and one-handgun-per-month purchase limits that Savage does not support. But he has no problem with tracing how guns got to the bad guys, or getting tougher with those who try to buy guns illegally. At a Greensburg gun show last summer, a background check prompted another dealer to deny a sale to a man who was wanted on a felony warrant. State police took the guy away, but Savage found out later the gun charge was plea bargained away. "The first thine they plea bargain away is the gun charges." We're never going to find all the bad guys with guns, but the odds of them slipping through the system just got tougher, and even people who don't clap for Janet Reno can't argue with that.

Bob DonaldsonPost-Gazette The Garden Theater on West North Avenue on the North Side. Owner George Androtsakis, inset at top right, owns about 35 theaters around the country, some adult. ing garage with street-level shops have been completed along Federal Street, but neither is occupied. The block bounded by Federal, North and Reddour streets, where the Garden is located, has been taken over by the URA and all the buildings are vacant except the Garden, the only property to fight the takeover. Goldstein said that because of restrictive Pittsburgh zoning laws, the Garden couldn't simply reopen elsewhere if it closes on North Avenue.

He said even with competition from video rentals, there is still a demand for adult films in theaters. SEE THEATER, PAGE B-2 Ridge signs death warrant for Abu-Jamal Hall next to the Garden and turn it into a "sixplex," six movie theaters showing conventional, first-run movies. But he said the URA hadn't even replied to his letters and phone calls. The redeveloped buildings would also have contained take-out restaurants featuring pizza or Mexican food. Georgiades claimed the city is using a "pretext" or "rationalization" of the Federal-North renewal project "to achieve an unlawful end, a silencing of the theater.

It's a result the Constitution prohibits. The Garden is a protected form of expression, no different than television, videotape or newspapers." So far, a new office-research building for Allegheny General Hospital and a new park Chris GardnerAssociated Press Mumia Abu-Jamal leaves a Philadelphia courthouse with a box of documents in July 1995. has insisted it has witnesses who either prove or disprove that Abu-Jamal shot Faulkner. The case has gained international attention, with celebrities, academics and activists de By Dennis B. Roddy Post-Gazette Staff Writer One day after he received a visit from a 1960s radical icon, Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted in the 1981 shooting death of a Philadelphia policeman, received an execution date.

Gov. Ridge yesterday included Abu-Jamal's name with a list of three inmates to be executed in December. On Tuesday, Angela Davis, the leftist civil rights activist who was once acquitted of murder, visited Abu-Jamal on Death Row at the State Correctional Institution Greene. Abu-Jamal, 45, a former Black Panther and onetime radio journalist, was convicted in the 1981 shooting death of Philadelphia police Officer Daniel Faulkner. Last week, the U.S.

Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of his 1982 conviction. Ridge set Abu-Jamal's execution for Dec. 2 at the State Correctional Institution Rockview, Centre County. Rockview has been the scene of three executions since the death penalty returned to Pennsylvania in 1995. Since the time of his conviction in July 1982, Abu-Jamal and his supporters have insisted that prosecutors ignored evidence, that the trial judge failed to allow him to subpoena crucial witnesses, and that the jury was racially biased against him.

Prosecutors pointed to the fact that Abu-Jamal was found wounded next to Faulkner's body alongside a pistol, registered in Abu-Jamal's name, with five empty shell casings. Each side manding a new trial, while the union representing Philadelphia's police officers as well as supporters of the Faulkner family have called for Abu-Jamal's execution. Leonard Weinglass, Abu-Jamal's attorney, yesterday broadly suggested that the timing of Ridge's warrant was suspicious but also suggested that Abu-Jamal was unlikely to be executed on Dec. 2 because of forthcoming appeals. "Gov.

Ridge signed a warrant in 1995 just before we went into state court. Now he signs one just before we go into federal court," Weinglass said. Abu-Jamal's lawyers have publicly suited they intend to file an appeal in U.S. District Court, called a habeas corpus petition, raising issues surrounding the handling of his 1982 trial Ridge's press secretary, Tim Reeves, called Weinglass' remark "worthy of a good conspiracy theory" and said Ridge has a standing policy of signing execution warrants for inmates within 30 days after a court has turned down an appeal. Abu-Jamal's lawyers anticipate they will be able to obtain a federal stay of execution with the appeal pending.

"It's his first federal habeas. It's my understanding the court will want to review the 29 issues he's raising and that can't be done by Dec. 2," Weinglass said. In announcing the execution, Ridge's office cited seven different instances in which Abu-Jamal was turned down on appeals. SEE ABU-JAMAL, PAGE B-2.