Page A3
June 16,1999
(Fije ÿlorUanô © b « n w
Conviction Overturned Yugoslav troops begin
withdrawal from Kosovo
in Cosby Case
Bi LARRY NEll MEISTER____________
O T he
A ssociated P ress
NEW YORK (AP) - Autumn Jack-
son, imprisoned for allegedly trying to
extort $40 million from Bill Cosby by
threatening to tell the tabloids she was
his illegitimate daughter, could soon
be free on bail after a federal appeals
court overturned her conviction.
Ms. Jackson, 24, w as sentenced
in 1997 to two years and two m onths
in prison after she was convicted o f
extortion, conspiracy and crossing
state lines to com m it a crim e. She has
served ju st over half o f the sentence.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court o f Ap­
peals on W ednesday ruled the trial
judge improperly instructed the jury
on the law o f extortion. The court also
overturned the convictions o f two ac­
com plices for the same reason, order­
ing the case returned to the lower
court for retrial.
Still, the appeals court said “evi­
dence at trial was plainly sufficient to
support verdicts o f guilty had the
ju ry been properly instructed.”
The appeals court said the judge
should have told jurors that in order to
convict Ms. Jackson, they needed to
find that she had wrongful intent. That
would have al lowed the jury to consider
whether Ms. Jackson truly believed she
was Cosby ’ s daughter and therefore did
not have any wrongful intent.
O ne ofher lawyers, Robert Baum,
said he w ould ask for Ms. Jackson to
be freed on bail as soon as today.
Prosecutors indicated they w ould not
oppose the request.
M arvin Sm ilon, a spokesm an for
U.S. A ttorney M ary Jo W hite, said
prosecutors h adn’t decided w hether
to appeal the ruling. A law yer for
C osby said the entertainer w ould
support whatever decision they make.
Prosecutors said Ms. Jackson de­
m anded the m oney from C osby on
Jan. 16, 1997 - the day C o sb y ’s 27-
year-old son, Ennis, was shot to death
in a robbery w hile changing a flat tire
on a Los A ngeles highw ay. I f Cosby
failed to com ply, she said, she would
tell her story to the superm arket tab­
loids. T he slaying o f C o sb y ’s son
was unrelated to the alleged plot.
Tw o days later, Ms. Jackson and
Jose M edina w ere arrested in New
Y ork in an FBI sting after signing a
$24 m illion p ay o ff agreem ent with
C o sb y ’s lawyers.
The case tami shed C osby’sw hole-
some TV unage as husband and father
when he was forced to disclose that he
had an affair with M s. Jack so n ’s
mother, Shawn Upshaw, in the 1970s.
He had provided her w ith m ore than
$ 100,000 in support over the years.
But he repeatedly denied he is
Ms. Jackson’s father, telling jurors
that he told Ms. Jackson: “ I will be
for you a father figure, but 1 am not
your father.”
The issue o f paternity was ruled
irrelevant to the charges. Cosby took a
paternity test after the trial to try to
settle the dispute, but Ms. Jackson and
her mother dec lined to take blood tests.
The appeals court also overturned
the case against M edina, w ho was
sentenced to five years and three
m onths in prison, and Boris Sabas,
who got three m onths behind bars.
Court Strikes Down ‘Street Gang’ Law
Chicago Law Targeted Gangs Hanging Out in Public
C T he
A ssociated P ress
W A SH IN G TO N - The Suprem e
Court today struck dow n a Chicago
law aim ed at preventing street gang
members and their friends from hang­
ing out in public. The 6-3 decision
ended a constitutional dispute that
captured the attention o f states and
com m unities across the nation.
The court said the 1992 anti-loiter-
mg ordinance, w hich resulted in
45,000 arrests in the three years it was
enforced, violated the rights o f the
people police arrested under it be­
cause it did not give them adequate
notice about w hat was forbidden.
The ruling lim its com m unities’
options in battling problem s caused
by street gangs.
The ordinance required police to
order any group o f people standing
around * 'w ith no apparent purpose’ ’
to m ove along if an officer believed
at least one o f them belonged to a
street gang. T hose w ho disregarded
the order w ould be arrested.
The Illinois Suprem e C ourt had
struck dow n the law, calling its lan­
guage too vague and ruling that it
gave police officers too m uch discre­
tion in deciding w hether there had
been a violation.
T o day’s decision said the state
court w as right.
‘’S ince the city can n o t c o n c eiv ­
ably have m eant to crim inalize each
in stance a citiz en stands in public
w ith a gang m em ber, the vagueness
that doom s this o rd in an ce is not the
product o f u n certain ty about the
norm al m ean in g o f ‘lo ite rin g ’ but
rath e r about w hat lo iterin g is co v ­
ered by the o rd in an ce and w hat is
n o t,” Ju stice Jo h n P aul S tevens
w rote for the court.
Stevens, the highest co u rt’s only
Chicago native, said the law required
police to tell people to m ove on w ith­
out inquiring about their purpose in
standing around.
" I t m atters not w hether the rea­
son that a gang m em ber and his fa­
ther, for exam ple, m ight loiter near
W rigley Field to rob an unsuspect­
ing fan or ju st to get a glim pse o f
Sam m y Sosa leaving the ballpark,”
hesaid. ‘T n e ith e r,ifth e irp u rp o se is
not apparent to a nearby police of­
ficer, she (the officer) indeed, she
" s h a ll” - order them to disperse.”
In finding fault with C hicago’s
anti-loitering law, Stevens was joined
by Justices Sandra D ay O ’Connor,
A nthony M. K ennedy, D avid H.
S outer, D avid H. G in sb u rg and
Stephen G. Breyer.
O ’Connor, Kennedy and Breyer
w rote separate opinions explaining
their views.
Justice A ntonin Scalia, w ho dis­
sented along w ith C h ief Justice W ¡1-
liam H. R e h n q u ist an d Ju stic e
C larence Thom as, took six m inutes
to read aloud from the bench part o f
his strongly w orded opinion.
"The citizens o f Chicago have de­
cided that depriving them selves o f the
freedom to ‘hang o u t’ w ith a gang
member is necessary to elim inate per­
vasive gang crim e and intim idation -
and that the elim ination o f the one is
worth the deprivation o f the other,”
he said. ‘ ’This court has no business
second-guessing either the degree o f
necessity or the fairness o f the trade."
He called the invalidated ordinance
" a perfectly reasonable m easure.”
P R IS T IN A , S e rb ia , Ju n e 10
(Reuters) - Y ugoslav arm y troops
began pulling o ut o f K osovo on
Thursday and the top regional com ­
mander said the w ithdraw al should
be com pleted as prom ised in 11 days.
A few hundred trucks carrying
several thousand troops, anti-aircraft
weapons, how itzers and light arm a­
ment pulled out o f K osovo’s provin­
cial capital Pristina and headed north
towards the Serbian border with the
southern province.
Later in the afternoon the first
convoy o f p o lice left K osovska
Mitrovica, the independent Beta news
agency reported. It said police trucks,
jeeps and buses filled with troops
travelled in a line headed north.
The soldiers — som e o f whom
were tearful — flashed their lights,
honked horns and gave the three­
fingered Serbian salute as they pulled
aw ay to fu lfil p ro m ise s by the
Yugoslav governm ent in a deal with
NATO agreed on W ednesday night.
“A ccording to the declaration o f
the Supreme C om m and, the w ith­
drawal o f part o f the troops is begin­
ning today from K osovo,” said M a­
jo r General Vladimir Lazarevic, com­
mander o f the arm y ’s Pristina Corps.
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Northwest Attendants
Agree to 5-Year Contract
ST. PAUL, Minn. (June 10) —
Northwest Airlines Corp., the fourth-
largest U.S. carrier, and the Teamsters
unionagreedtentativelyonanew five-
year contract covering 11,000 flight
attendants, averting a possible strike.
The agreement follows 2 1/2 years
o f negotiations that focused on wages,
pension benefits and jo b protection
in the final days. D etails o f the new
contract w eren ’t disclosed.
S t. P a u l, M in n e s o ta -b a s e d
N o rth w e st’s ag reem en t w ith the
union allow s the airline to avoid re­
peating the sum m er strike scenario it
encountered w ith its pilots last year.
Flight attendants voted last w eekend
to give their union leaders the option
to call a strike if necessary.
‘ ‘This is the agreement that our mem­
bers sent us to negotiate," said Billie
Davenport, president ofTeam sters Lo-
Under its terms, Belgrade has until
late on Thursday to start moving its
troops out o f Kosovo and must have
withdrawn all its forces within 11 days.
C o rre sp o n d e n ts d riv in g from
Belgrade to Pristina said traffic jam s
along the m ain road betw een the two
cities slow ed the w ithdraw al w hich
took place at tim es under the w atch­
ful eyes o f pilots in NATO aircraft
flying overhead.
The correspondents described the
hasty exodus as “orderly chaos” and
counted m ore than 300 m ilitary ve­
hicles on the road in the last 40-m ile
(60-km ) stretch into Pristina.
At least 40 civilian cars loaded
down with personal poessessions were
interspersed among the military ve­
hicles. It seemed some Serb families,
possibly fearing revenge attacks by
Kosovo Liberation Arm y guerrillas
or returning Kosovo Albanian refu­
gees, were leaving the province.
Som e international organisations
have voiced concern for minority
Serbs in the face o f possible retalia­
tion by returning ethnic Albanian
refugees. Serbs num bered ju st under
10 percent o f the population before
the air strikes and mass exodus from
K osovo began in March.
“In the next 11 days the whole
corps should be relocated...to their
new posts on the border between
K osovo and Serbia," he said.
Lazarevic said that N A TO peace­
keeping troops, due to m ove into the
shattered province as soon as there is
a verifiable sign ofw ithdraw al, faced
a tough challenge.
“Ahead o f us is a time o f peace but
also o f great challenge because the for­
eign troops...will have to take on the
responsibility o f securing the citizens o f
Kosovo., .and other political questions.”
Beta quoted him later as saying he
hoped “there w ill be a little more
w isdom in peacetim e.”
Earlier, Foreign M inistry spokes­
man N ebojsa V ujovic told reporters
in Belgrade that arm y and police
troops had started to pull out in line
with the peace plan.
“Y ugoslav arm y and police units
started their withdrawal from Kosovo
in absolute order, im plem enting a
very accurate and precise m echa­
nism for a w ithdraw al,” he said.
V ujovic attended m arathon talks
in M acedonia betw een seniorN A T O
and Y ugoslav army generals who
signed a plan detailing the withdrawal
o f Serb forces from K osovo.
ZoHAKA V tC IC IV IC
S U P P O R T IN G D IV E R S IT Y & C O O P E R A T IO N
cal 2000. The flight attendants were
seeking more benefits to compensate
for pay cuts they took in 1993 as the
carrier neared bankruptcy. Salaries for
Northwest flight attendants range from
about $15,000 to $59,000 a year.
Talks betw een the two sides have
been overseen by the National M e­
diation B oard since October.
Davenport said earlier this week
before the talks resumed in Washington
on Tuesday that the final discussions
would focus on pension benefits and
provisions forallowing flight attendants
to retire at an earlier age. In addition, the
union was still pushing the company to
agree to using more U.S. flight atten­
dants for flying in Japan, she said.
N orthw est pilots struck the air­
line in late A ugust last year, shutting
down the carrier for tw o w eeks and
causing it to post a loss for the year.
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