Bell jurors ordered to begin anew after panelist is dismissed

After nearly five days of deliberations, jurors in the Bell corruption trial were ordered Thursday to begin anew after a member of the panel was dismissed for misconduct and replaced by an alternate.

The original juror, a white-haired woman identified only as Juror No. 3, told Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy she had gone onto a legal website to look up jury instructions and then asked her daughter to help find a definition for the word "coercion."

Although all but one defense attorney requested that the woman stay, Kennedy said the juror needed to be removed. "She has spoken about the deliberations with her daughter, she has conducted research on the Internet, and I've repeatedly, repeatedly throughout this trial — probably hundreds of times — cautioned the jury not to do that," the judge said.

The removal came after jurors notified the judge that they were deadlocked and that continued deliberations seemed fruitless.

It was unclear how to interpret the day's events, whether the dismissed juror had been a lone holdout or an indication of a fractured jury.

The juror started to tell the judge which way she was leaning in the case, saying she had gone online "looking to see at what point can I get the harassment to stop.... How long do I have to stay in there and deliberate with them when I have made my decision that I didn't think there was —"

Kennedy cut her off before she could finish.

The woman clasped her hands over her mouth and said, "I'm sorry."

Two defense attorneys thought she was leaning toward acquittal and wanted her to stay. "I would have preferred the deadlock to a guilty verdict," said Alex Kessel, the attorney for George Mirabal, one of six former council members charged with misappropriation of public funds.

The council members are charged with inflating their salaries in what prosecutors contend was a far-reaching web of corruption in which fat paychecks were placed ahead of the needs of the city's largely immigrant, working-poor constituents.

When attorneys and defendants were summoned to the courtroom Thursday morning, they were initially told that the jury appeared to be deadlocked.

"Your honor, we have reached a point where as a jury we have fundamental disagreements and cannot reach a unanimous verdict in this case," read a note signed by two jurors, including the foreman, that was given to Kennedy.

A note from another juror alerted the judge that Juror No. 3 had consulted an outside attorney. That did not appear to be the case, but her other actions were revealed under questioning from the judge.

The same juror made a tearful request Monday to be removed from the panel because she felt others were picking on her. Kennedy told the woman that although discussions can get heated, it was important to continue deliberating.

On Thursday, however, the juror again broke into tears and said she had spoken with her daughter about "the abuse I have suffered." She said her daughter told her, "Mom, they're trying to find the weak link."

The woman said she had turned to the Internet to better understand the rules about jury deliberations and came across the word "coercion." After her daughter helped her look up the word's definition, she wrote it down on a piece of paper and brought it with her to court. When the judge asked to see the paper she went into the jury room to retrieve it.

The woman later left the courtroom in tears.

With an alternate in place, Kennedy told the panel to act as if the earlier deliberations had not taken place. The alternate had sat in the jury box during the four-week trial but did not take part in deliberations.

Former council members Luis Artiga, Victor Bello, George Cole, Oscar Hernandez, Teresa Jacobo and Mirabal are accused of drawing annual salaries of as much as $100,000 a year by serving on boards that did little work and seldom met, part of a scandal that drew national attention to the small city in 2010.

Prosecutors said that Bell's charter follows state law regarding council members' compensation. In a city the size of Bell, council members should be paid no more than $8,076 a year.

The trial began in late January, and the case went to the jury last Friday.

As the jury resumed deliberations in downtown Los Angeles, the verdict was clearly in on the streets of Bell.

One resident unfurled old protest banners and signs from the days when the pay scandal was first exposed and then called former members of an activist group that had led the charge for reform in the city.

"We're holding our breaths and waiting," Denise Rodarte, a member of the grassroots group Bell Assn. to Stop the Abuse, said in regard to a verdict.

"It's cut and dry: Local elected officials were supposed to make a certain amount of money, and they made a lot more."

corina.knoll@latimes.com

jeff.gottlieb@latimes.com

Times staff writer Ruben Vives contributed to this report.

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Fans keep love alive for 'Walking Dead' star

LOS ANGELES (AP) — From week to week fans simply never know which characters will survive the relentless zombie attacks on AMC's hit series "The Walking Dead."

That unpredictability keeps viewers on the edge of their seats and the shows' stars in a constant state of alertness.

"You see series and they last a long time and sometimes the writing gets lazy or the acting gets lazy. Because we're in a zombie apocalypse and anyone can go at any time, it sort of keeps us fresh and on our toes," Norman Reedus told The Associated Press Friday.

Fans lined up around the block to watch a panel discussion with Reedus and his co-stars at Paleyfest, the annual Southern California TV celebration. Many in the crowd showed their support for Reedus' crossbow-wielding character, Daryl Dixon, with their "If Daryl dies we riot!" T-shirts.

The 44-year-old actor says his vocal fan base is responsible for his character's impressive longevity in a series that seems to have no qualms in axing its most popular characters.

"Hell yes. Oh my god, yes," he said. "(They're) keeping me on the show."

"The Walking Dead" focuses on a rag-tag band of surviving refugees, including unruly brothers Daryl and Merle Dixon, who were not part of the series' comic book origins.

"I want to be Daryl Dixon in my next life," joked co-star Laurie Holden. "He's sexy and he's got the rugged thing going on."

When asked about his breakout star status, Reedus becomes humble and tries to turn the spotlight on his Golden Globe-nominated cast.

"I watch them grow and I watch myself grow. It's one of those acting things where like I'll be in a scene with her or with him and I'll say should I try this? And they'll go 'yeah' and I'll believe them and I'll trust them. Everyone wants everyone to just kill it," Reedus said with a laugh.

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Online: www.amctv.com/shows/the-walking-dead

www.paleycenter.org

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Follow Nicole Evatt on Twitter at http://twitter.com/NicoleEvatt

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U.S. Judges Offer Addicts a Way to Avoid Prison

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Emily Leitch of Brooklyn, with her son, Nazir, 4, was arrested for importing cocaine but went to “drug court” to avoid prison.

Federal judges around the country are teaming up with prosecutors to create special treatment programs for drug-addicted defendants who would otherwise face significant prison time, an effort intended to sidestep drug laws widely seen as inflexible and overly punitive.

The Justice Department has tentatively embraced the new approach, allowing United States attorneys to reduce or even dismiss charges in some drug cases.

The effort follows decades of success for “drug courts” at the state level, which legal experts have long cited as a less expensive and more effective alternative to prison for dealing with many low-level repeat offenders.

But it is striking that the model is spreading at the federal level, where judges have increasingly pushed back against rules that restrict their ability to make their own determination of appropriate sentences.

So far, federal judges have instituted programs in California, Connecticut, Illinois, New Hampshire, New York, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington. About 400 defendants have been involved nationwide.

In Federal District Court in Brooklyn on Thursday, Judge John Gleeson issued an opinion praising the new approach as a way to address swelling prison costs and disproportionate sentences for drug trafficking.

“Presentence programs like ours and those in other districts mean that a growing number of courts are no longer reflexively sentencing federal defendants who do not belong in prison to the costly prison terms recommended by the sentencing guidelines,” Judge Gleeson wrote.

The opinion came a year after Judge Gleeson, with the federal agency known as Pretrial Services, started a program that made achieving sobriety an incentive for drug-addicted defendants to avoid prison. The program had its first graduate this year: Emily Leitch, a Brooklyn woman with a long history of substance abuse who was arrested entering the country at Kennedy International Airport with over 13 kilograms of cocaine, about 30 pounds, in her luggage.

“I want to thank the federal government for giving me a chance,” Ms. Leitch said. “I always wanted to stand up as a sober person.”

The new approach is being prompted in part by the Obama administration, which previously supported legislation that scaled back sentences for crimes involving crack cocaine. The Justice Department has supported additional changes to the federal sentencing guidelines to permit the use of drug or mental health treatment as an alternative to incarceration for certain low-level offenders and changed its own policies to make those options more available.

“We recognize that imprisonment alone is not a complete strategy for reducing crime,” James M. Cole, the deputy attorney general, said in a statement. “Drug courts, re-entry courts and other related programs along with enforcement are all part of the solution.”

For nearly 30 years, the United States Sentencing Commission has established guidelines for sentencing, a role it was given in 1984 after studies found that federal judges were giving defendants widely varying sentences for similar crimes. The commission’s recommendations are approved by Congress, causing judges to bristle at what they consider interference with their judicial independence.

“When you impose a sentence that you believe is unjust, it is a very difficult thing to do,” Stefan R. Underhill, a federal judge in Connecticut, said in an interview. “It feels wrong.”

The development of drug courts may meet resistance from some Republicans in Congress.

“It is important that courts give deference to Congressional authority over sentencing,” Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin, a member and former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. He said sentencing should not depend “on what judge happens to decide the case or what judicial circuit the defendant happens to be in.”

At the state level, pretrial drug courts have benefited from bipartisan support, with liberals supporting the programs as more focused on rehabilitation, and conservatives supporting them as a way to cut spending.

Under the model being used in state and federal courts, defendants must accept responsibility for their crimes and agree to receive drug treatment and other social services and attend regular meetings with judges who monitor their progress. In return for successful participation, they receive a reduced sentence or no jail time at all. If they fail, they are sent to prison.

The drug court option is not available to those facing more serious charges, like people accused of being high-level dealers or traffickers, or accused of a violent crime. (These programs differ from re-entry drug courts, which federal judges have long used to help offenders integrate into society after prison.)

In interviews, the federal judges who run the other programs pointed to a mix of reasons for their involvement.

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Pro sports leagues aim to put workers' comp out of play

One would think that we've learned from bitter experience not to trust a word uttered by our major professional sports leagues.

Yet here they are trying to put another howler over on us. This is their assertion that retired pro athletes — many of them from outside the state — are ripping off California's workers' compensation system for hundreds of millions of dollars.

The state Legislature is setting itself up to swallow this one whole: A bill to close this supposed loophole has been introduced by Assembly Insurance Committee Chairman Henry Perea (D-Fresno).

Let's start with the bottom line: This bill would be a total sellout to the major pro sports leagues and their billionaire team owners, who pay the workers' compensation claims won by their workers. Its victims would be athletes whose limbs, joints, backs and craniums were pounded relentlessly on the field of play and who were left with inadequate treatment or support after they retired.

Let's also home in on whose interests are most at stake: It's the National Football League, which is facing a tidal wave of legal claims related to long-term neurological damage suffered by players. Claims from more than 4,000 players and their families have been consolidated in a single immense lawsuit in Philadelphia federal court, where pretrial maneuvering has been lumbering on for months.

Among their allegations is that the NFL suppressed evidence that the concussions caused by its style of play could have long-term health consequences. The league has consistently denied that it tried to mislead players.

Perea's bill serves the NFL and the pro sports leagues and teams in basball, basketball, hockey and soccer. (Apparently lacrosse, rugby and softball leagues didn't have the juice to get their way in Sacramento.) It's purportedly a response to the upsurge in workers' comp claims filed by pro athletes, including many who never played for California teams, that started around 2007.

There were several reasons for the increase. Under state law, you can file a claim if you can argue that you suffered an injury in California, even if your employer was located elsewhere; it's a rare pro athlete who doesn't occasionally play an away game against a California team.

More important, California is one of nine states that allow workers' compensation for "cumulative trauma" injuries, those that build up over time. The most familiar of these are carpal tunnel injuries suffered by typists. But they also encompass knee or back damage from years of blocking and tackling, or neurological damage from repeated concussions.

"The NFL is not terribly worried about cumulative knee trauma," says Frank Neuhauser, a social insurance expert at UC Berkeley. "They understand what they're going to pay for that. But they're terrified of brain injuries, which can cost millions and result in complete disability." The NFL didn't reply to my request for comment on the workers' comp issue.

It's hardly shocking that the NFL and other major leagues would want to shut down this avenue of compensation. Nor is it very surprising that they would resort to disinformation.

"The NFL knows this could be detrimental to their bottom line," says attorney Mel Owens, who played nine years for the Los Angeles Rams in the 1980s and now represents athletes in workers' comp cases. "So they couch it in terms of players abusing the system."

The leagues' bid for sympathy depends on most laypersons having no idea about how workers' compensation works. So here's a primer. To begin with, taxpayers don't pay for workers' comp; employers do, either by buying commercial workers' comp insurance or (if they're big enough) self-insuring. Their premiums are overwhelmingly based on their type of business and their claims record. The premium paid by the employer of file clerks will be very different from that of a skyscraper builder.

Therefore, if California workers'-comp judges take a more liberal view of long-term brain injuries for football players (and as yet there's no evidence that they do), that may drive up premiums paid by sports teams, but it won't affect the premium paid by grocery stores.

The leagues "are trying to make it look like these are costs that will fall on all employers," Neuhauser says. "But it has nothing to do with current rates. Sports teams' premiums will go up, but not those for construction companies or anyone else."

Then there's the notion, also happily peddled by the leagues, that the athletes are getting away like bandits, abetted by aggressive lawyers. A 2012 analysis done for the NFL and the professional baseball, basketball and hockey major leagues by the benefits consulting firm Milliman Inc. estimated the cost of already-filed California cumulative trauma claims by athletes at $747 million.

That sounds like a lot, until you realize that it covers 4,500 players, for an average of $166,000 each, which includes the cost of medical treatment. Is that a lot for injuries that may be crippling for life and include Alzheimer's or other neurological syndromes? For a player judged partially but permanently disabled, the maximum benefit is $270 a week for up to 320 weeks. Long story short: No player is getting rich off these payments.

Nor are the players typically coasting into retirement with superstar nest eggs. Consider Reggie Williams. A standout linebacker who played 14 seasons for the Cincinnati Bengals, including two Super Bowls, he made $45,000 in his rookie year, 1976, and topped out at $445,000 after 14 seasons.

Now 58, Williams has suffered through 24 operations on his right knee, leaving the knee looking like hamburger and that leg 3 inches shorter than his left. "I never played a game where I didn't get hurt," he told me. That includes 14 games in California against the Rams, Raiders, 49ers and Chargers. "Now I wake up every day in extreme pain." Five years ago he had to leave a job with Walt Disney Co. because he could barely stand on his feet.

In 2008, Williams filed for workers' compensation in California, but the Bengals have blocked that claim, for now, arguing that under his employment contract he was required to file in Ohio. If the team wins, he may be out of luck, for the statute of limitations on Ohio workers' comp claims has long passed, and the state doesn't cover cumulative trauma.

"The NFL doesn't want to be liable for any of this," says Williams' lawyer, Owens. He points out that taxpayers bear the ultimate cost if the leagues skate on their obligations. "If the players can't get workers' comp benefits and they can't get health insurance, they end up on Social Security disability and Medicare," Owens said.

Why California legislators should bend over backward to help out franchise-owning plutocrats is a mystery. That's especially true since the reason athletes have to resort to workers' comp in the first place is that the owners have abdicated their responsibility to care for the injured players who have made them rich. Sure, they'll pay lip service to player health, but talk is cheap. It looks even cheaper in light of the NFL's new broadcast contracts, which are worth more than $40 billion over the next decade.

If the leagues want their California problem to go away, that would be easy: reach deals with the players' unions providing lifetime injury coverage superior to what they can get from workers' compensation. That's a very low bar, even when you're trying to clear it while carrying bagfuls of money.

Michael Hiltzik's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Reach him at mhiltzik@latimes.com, read past columns at latimes.com/hiltzik, check out facebook.com/hiltzik and follow @latimeshiltzik on Twitter.

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Jury in Bell corruption trial may be deadlocked

A court spokeswoman said Thursday the jury in the Bell corruption case appears to be deadlocked.

“The jurors may be at an impasse,” said Patricia Kelly, a spokeswoman for L.A. County Superior Court.

Jurors sent a note to the judge Thursday morning, and all the attorneys in the case were called in.

Six former Bell City Council members are accused of stealing public money by paying themselves extraordinary salaries in one of Los Angeles County’s poorest cities.

Luis Artiga, Victor Bello, George Cole, Oscar Hernandez, Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal are accused of misappropriation of public funds, felony counts that could bring prison terms.

They were arrested in September 2010 and have been free on bail.

The nearly $100,000 salaries drawn by most of the former elected officials are part of a much larger municipal corruption case in the southeast Los Angeles County city in which prosecutors allege that money from the city’s modest general fund flowed freely to top officials.

The three defendants who testified painted a picture of a city as a place led by a controlling, manipulative administrator who handed out enormous salaries, loaned city money and padded future pensions. Robert Rizzo, the former adminstrator, and ex-assistant city manager Angela Spaccia are also awaiting trial.

The four-week trial of the former council members turned on extremes.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward Miller said the council members were little more than common thieves who were consumed with fattening their paychecks at the expense of the city’s largely immigrant, working-poor residents.

Miller said the accused represented the “one-percenters" of Bell who had “apparently forgotten who they are and where they live."

Defense attorneys said the former city leaders -- one a pastor, another a mom-and-pop grocery store owner, another a funeral director -- were dedicated public servants who put in long hours and tirelessly responded to the needs of their constituents.

Jacobo testified that Rizzo informed her she could quit her job as a real estate agent and receive a full-time salary as a council member. She said she asked City Attorney Edward Lee if that was possible and he nodded his head.

"I thought I was doing a very good job to be able to earn that, yes," Jacobo said.

Cole said Rizzo was so intimidating that the former councilman voted for a 12% annual pay raise out of fear the city programs he established would be gutted by Rizzo in retaliation if he opposed the pay hikes.

The defense argued that the prosecution failed to prove criminal negligence -- that their clients knew what they were doing was wrong or that a reasonable person would know it was wrong.

The attorney for Hernandez, the city’s mayor at the time of the arrests, said his client had only a grade-school education, was known more for his heart than his intellect and was, perhaps, not overly “scholarly.”

Prosecutors argued that the council members pushed up their salaries by serving on city boards that rarely met and, in one case, existed only as a means for paying them even more money.

Jurors were also left to deal with the question of whether council members were protected by a City Charter that was approved in a special election that drew fewer than 400 voters.

Defense attorneys say the charter allowed council members to be paid for serving on the authorities.

But the prosecutor argued that the charter -- a quasi-constitution for a city -- set salaries at what councils in similar-sized cities were receiving under state law: $8,076 a year. Because council members automatically serve on boards and commissions, the district attorney said the total compensation for all of each council member's work was included in that figure.

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George Lopez to host Playboy Jazz Festival

LOS ANGELES (AP) — George Lopez is taking over as master of ceremonies of the annual Playboy Jazz Festival.

The comedian was announced as the festival's new host Thursday at an event at the Playboy Mansion.

"This is iconic," said the former star of the ABC sitcom "George Lopez" and the TBS talk show "Lopez Tonight." ''I've never been here before. I was married for 17 years. I couldn't even have a Playboy air freshener."

Bill Cosby previously served as the festival's host for more than 30 years. Cosby was a fixture at the gathering of jazz luminaries since the first festival was held in 1979.

Lopez said Cosby called him to give him advice on the gig. His tips included not letting musicians in his dressing room "because they'll eat all your food and drink all your drink," joked Lopez.

This year's show will feature such artists as Herbie Hancock, Jeffrey Osborne, Sheila E. and Grace Kelly, who were on hand at Thursday's event.

The Playboy Jazz Festival is scheduled for June 15 and 16 at the Hollywood Bowl.

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang .

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Online:

http://www.playboyjazzfestival.com

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Jane C. Wright, Pioneering Oncologist, Dies at 93

Dr. Jane C. Wright, a pioneering oncologist who helped elevate chemotherapy from a last resort for cancer patients to an often viable treatment option, died on Feb. 19 at her home in Guttenberg, N.J. She was 93.

Her death was confirmed by her daughter Jane Jones, who said her mother had dementia.

Dr. Wright descended from a distinguished medical family that defied racial barriers in a profession long dominated by white men. Her father, Dr. Louis T. Wright, was among the first blacks to graduate from Harvard Medical School and was reported to be the first black doctor appointed to the staff of a New York City hospital. His father was an early graduate of what became the Meharry Medical College, the first medical school in the South for African-Americans, founded in Nashville in 1876.

Dr. Jane Wright began her career as a researcher working alongside her father at a cancer center he established at Harlem Hospital in New York.

Together, they and others studied the effects of a variety of drugs on tumors, experimented with chemotherapeutic agents on leukemia in mice and eventually treated patients, with some success, with new anticancer drugs, including triethylene melamine.

After her father died in 1952, Dr. Wright took over as director of the center, which was known as the Harlem Hospital Cancer Research Foundation. In 1955, she joined the faculty of the New York University Medical Center as director of cancer research, where her work focused on correlating the responses of tissue cultures to anticancer drugs with the responses of patients.

In 1964, working as part of a team at the N.Y.U. School of Medicine, Dr. Wright developed a nonsurgical method, using a catheter system, to deliver heavy doses of anticancer drugs to previously hard-to-reach tumor areas in the kidneys, spleen and elsewhere.

That same year, Dr. Wright was the only woman among seven physicians who, recognizing the unique needs of doctors caring for cancer patients, founded the American Society of Clinical Oncologists, known as ASCO. She was also appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to the President’s Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer and Stroke, led by the heart surgeon Dr. Michael E. DeBakey. Its recommendations emphasized better communication among doctors, hospitals and research institutions and resulted in a national network of treatment centers.

In 1967, Dr. Wright became head of the chemotherapy department and associate dean at New York Medical College. News reports at the time said it was the first time a black woman had held so high a post at an American medical school.

“Not only was her work scientific, but it was visionary for the whole science of oncology,” Dr. Sandra Swain, the current president of ASCO, said in a telephone interview. “She was part of the group that first realized we needed a separate organization to deal with the providers who care for cancer patients. But beyond that it’s amazing to me that a black woman, in her day and age, was able to do what she did.”

Jane Cooke Wright was born in Manhattan on Nov. 30, 1919. Her mother, the former Corinne Cooke, was a substitute teacher in the New York City schools.

Ms. Wright attended the Ethical Culture school in Manhattan and the Fieldston School in the Bronx (now collectively known Ethical Culture Fieldston School) and graduated from Smith College, where she studied art before turning to medicine. She received a full scholarship to New York Medical College, earning her medical degree in 1945. Before beginning research with her father, she worked as a doctor in the city schools.

Dr. Wright’s marriage, in 1947, to David D. Jones, a lawyer, ended with his death in 1976. She is survived by their two daughters, Jane and Alison Jones, and a sister, Barbara Wright Pierce, who is also a doctor.

As both a student and a doctor, Dr. Wright said in interviews, she was always aware that as a black woman she was an unusual presence in medical institutions. But she never felt she was a victim of racial prejudice, she said.

“I know I’m a member of two minority groups,” she said in an interview with The New York Post in 1967, “but I don’t think of myself that way. Sure, a woman has to try twice as hard. But — racial prejudice? I’ve met very little of it.”

She added, “It could be I met it — and wasn’t intelligent enough to recognize it.”

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Airports big and small may feel effects of federal budget feud

Get ready for longer lines at Los Angeles International Airport, slower delivery of packages and the possible shutdown of small Southern California airport control towers if a resolution isn't reached on federal budget cuts.

The good news is that the biggest effects probably will not take hold until April, giving President Obama and congressional leaders time to hammer out a deal to resolve the budget feud.

But if no agreement is reached, the Federal Aviation Administration will be forced to cut its budget about $600 million. That could force the FAA to close more than 100 air traffic control towers across the country, primarily at smaller regional airports, including in Santa Monica, Victorville and Oxnard.

The night shift for air traffic controllers could also be eliminated at about 70 larger airports, including LA/Ontario International.

The federal agency has also put out the option of furloughing FAA employees for one or two days per two-week pay period, beginning in mid-April.

At Los Angeles International Airport, officials say it is too early to gauge how much of an effect the budget cuts would have on the average air traveler.

But Transportation Security Administration head John Pistole said lines at security gates at major airports across the country could grow longer during the peak spring and summer travel seasons if he is forced to cut overtime pay, which would reduce the number of screening officers.

"The longer it goes, the greater the potential impact," he said of the budget battle.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Assn. expects the cuts to lead to fewer flights and increased delays of as long as 90 minutes during peak hours.

"Safety will remain the top priority, but in order to maintain the appropriate level of safety with fewer controllers, fewer planes will be allowed in the sky, as well as in and out of airports," the group said in a statement.

The FAA has announced plans to shut down towers at airports with fewer than 150,000 landings and takeoffs a year. Santa Monica Airport, which is on the FAA closure list, operates about 105,000 landings and takeoffs a year. Van Nuys Airport, which is not on the list, has more than 250,000 landings and takeoffs.

Still, the effect on smaller airports on the FAA cut list may not be severe because pilots can land and depart without the help of an air traffic controller by keeping track of each other through radio communications.

Joe Justice, who operates Justice Aviation, a company that offers flying lessons at Santa Monica Airport, said he doesn't expect his business to face major changes if the tower is closed.

"We would continue to give flying lessons," he said. "There would be no reason not to. We would depart here and practice at a place where there is an open tower."

Private jet charter companies said they may even get more business if sequestration increases delays on commercial airlines, forcing passengers to charter a jet.

"People who are sitting on the fence about wanting to hire a private jet may spend the extra money so they won't be caught in a situation where they have no idea how long their delays will be," said Ben Schusterman, founder of Los Angeles-based ElJet.

The closure of overnight shifts at the control tower in Ontario could eliminate 12 passenger flights, or 9% of operations, but a bigger effect would be the loss of 73 cargo flights, or 36% of all cargo operations.

Cargo operators at Ontario said they were still unsure of the effect of budget cuts on their businesses.

"UPS is closely monitoring the sequestration proceedings," United Parcel Service Inc. spokesman Mike Mangeot said. "And while we are in communications with the FAA regarding the effects of the possible cuts, it is premature to speculate at this time."

hugo.martin@latimes.com

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Santa Cruz hit hard by officers' deaths

SANTA CRUZ — Flags throughout this sparkling beach town flew at half-staff Wednesday. The entire Police Department was meeting with grief counselors. Handmade signs cropped up, sympathy cards to a stunned city.

"Thank you for your service Santa Cruz Police Department. RIP Detective Baker. RIP Detective Butler." That's what Mary Gregg wrote in neat black letters on yellow construction paper, hanging her message in the window of the downtown check-cashing store where she works.

"Something," she felt, "had to be said today."

Best known for its surfing museum and a roller coaster that Bay Area newspaper columnist Herb Caen described as "one long shriek," Santa Cruz is not used to the kind of pain that rippled through town the day after a gunfight left two veteran officers — and the man they were investigating — dead.

The city's Police Department, which has less than 100 sworn officers, had operated for 150 years without losing a single one in the line of duty. Until Tuesday afternoon, when two veteran detectives in plainclothes walked up to Jeremy Goulet's house as part of a misdemeanor sexual assault investigation.

Sgt. Loran "Butch" Baker, 51, and Det. Elizabeth Butler, 38, were killed on Goulet's doorstep, Santa Cruz County Sheriff Phil Wowak said during a news conference near an impromptu memorial at police headquarters.

"We don't know all that happened when they came into contact with Goulet," said Wowak, whose department is leading the investigation so Santa Cruz police can mourn. "We do know what was left in the aftermath."

The 35-year-old Goulet, who had a long history of run-ins with the law, killed and disarmed the detectives before fleeing in Baker's car, Wowak said. Law enforcement officers from throughout the region began a sweep of the Santa Cruz neighborhood where Baker and Butler were slain. A short time later, Goulet ditched the car and tried to flee on foot.

In the ensuing gun battle, Wowak said, Goulet shot up a firetruck, sending firefighters, medical personnel and passersby scrambling. After killing the suspect, authorities discovered Goulet had been wearing body armor and had three guns.

"It is our belief that two of the three weapons belonged to the Santa Cruz Police Department, but we haven't confirmed it," said Wowak, adding that it was still unclear whether Goulet had taken the body armor from Baker's car or had it on before the shooting broke out.

"We know now that he was distraught," the sheriff said. "We know now that he had the intention of harming himself and possibly the police.… There's no doubt in anyone's mind that the officers who engaged Goulet stopped an imminent threat to the community."

Goulet had been arrested Friday on suspicion of disorderly conduct. Local news accounts said he had broken into the home of a co-worker and been fired from his job at The Kind Grind coffeehouse Saturday. A manager at the beachfront shop declined to comment Wednesday.

According to Goulet's father, the barista — who recently had moved from Berkeley to Santa Cruz — was a ticking time bomb who held police and the justice system in deep contempt. Ronald Goulet, 64, told the Associated Press that his son had had numerous run-ins with the law and had sworn he would never go back to jail.

But the elder Goulet said he never thought his troubled son would turn to such violence.

Goulet said his son undermined any success in the military (he reportedly was a member of the Marine Corps Reserves and later the Army) or college because of an insatiable desire to peep in the windows of women as they showered or dressed.

"He's got one problem, peeping in windows," his father said. "I asked him, 'Why don't you just go to a strip club?' He said he wants a good girl that doesn't know she's being spied on, and said he couldn't stop doing it."

In 2008, a Portland, Ore., jury convicted Jeremy Goulet on misdemeanor counts of unlawful possession of a firearm and invasion of personal privacy after he peeked into a woman's bathroom as she showered, said Don Rees, a chief deputy district attorney in Multnomah County.

Goulet faced additional charges, including attempted murder, after he allegedly fired a gun at the woman's boyfriend. The two had fought after Goulet was spotted outside the woman's condo, but a jury acquitted him of those charges, Rees said.

During the trial, Goulet admitted that he liked to use his cellphone to record unsuspecting women undressing, according to the Oregonian newspaper. Prosecutors alleged he had peeped at women "hundreds of times" without getting caught.

Goulet was given three years' probation, Rees said, but spent time in jail after his probation was revoked.

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Colleges, theaters to create new Civil War plays

WASHINGTON (AP) — Four major universities are joining theater companies in Boston, Baltimore, Washington and Atlanta in a project to commission new plays, music and dance compositions about the Civil War and its lasting legacy 150 years later.

The National Civil War Project is being announced Thursday in Washington and will involve programming over the next two years to mark the 150th anniversary of the war between the North and the South. Beyond commissioning new works, organizers plan for university faculty to integrate the arts into their academic programs on campus.

Under the program, Harvard University will partner with the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass.; the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center will join CENTERSTAGE in Baltimore; George Washington University is working with Arena Stage in Washington, and Atlanta's Alliance Theatre will join Emory University.

Each collaboration will evoke unique perspectives on the Civil War in each region.

At Harvard, a new piece called "The Boston Abolitionists" about the abolitionist movement and the trial of a fugitive slave will be performed in May. Separately, Matthew Aucoin, an assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, is using Walt Whitman's poetry about being a medic to develop a new opera.

In Atlanta, Alliance Theatre and Emory will develop a new theatrical production of U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey's Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Native Guard," with a workshop planned for 2014. It recounts the story of a black Civil War regiment assigned to guard white Confederate soldiers on Ship Island off Mississippi's Gulf Coast.

Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith, who helped guide the project, said this is a chance to reevaluate the Civil War and consider the issues that still resonate in American life.

"This is an anniversary of what is arguably one of the most important times in American history," she said. "And the same questions behind state rights and civil rights continue to infuse who we are as a country."

In September, the University of Maryland will host a national conference on civil rights and health disparities among minority populations to mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.

Choreographer Liz Lerman, a 2002 MacArthur Foundation "genius" fellow, helped in developing the partnerships between theaters and universities during a semester spent at Harvard. She said artists can help professors animate their scholarship as more traditional lectures move online, and the Civil War is a good subject to connect art and academics.

"It's something about the fact that we're still trying to understand it," Lerman said. "There are enough civil wars still going on in the world, I myself am trying to understand what it must be like."

Lerman is developing a new dance theater piece in Washington called "Healing Wars" to explore the role of women and innovations in healing for amputees from the Civil War through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Characters will migrate between past and present. The piece will feature actor Bill Pullman and eight dancers.

Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust, a Civil War historian, has been leading the university to integrate the arts with academic pursuits, through theater, exhibits or other art forms.

"Engaging students through art and art-making is one of the ways in which universities prepare young women and men for life in a world that is far better connected and far more complex than at any other point in human history," she wrote in an email about the Civil War project.

At this anniversary of the war, she said it's important to remember how the values of freedom and equality were defined in President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address as the war's purpose.

George Washington University President Steven Knapp said the Civil War transformed American history, culture and industry — even the concept of American democracy by redefining equality. Tackling such a subject between academia and theater could provide a new model for learning, he said.

"It's an experiment," Knapp said, "to see how far we can go in bringing together the strengths of the university and the strengths of the theater company."

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Follow Brett Zongker at https://twitter.com/DCArtBeat

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