Banner Graphic, Volume 19, Number 25, Greencastle, Putnam County, 4 October 1988 — Page 3

Goldsmith admits to Supreme Court that part of Indiana RICO is invalid

WASHINGTON (AP) Prosecutor Stephen Goldsmith of Indianapolis told the U.S Supreme Court a key part of Indiana’s antipomograhy law may be invalid. The high court is studying whether states may use anti-rack-eteering laws to close adult bookstores. : GOLDSMITH, ALSO the Republican nominee for Indiana lieutenant governor, conceded under questioning from the justices Monday during the opening day of the new court term that some pretrial seizures of material may be unconstitutional. But Goldsmith said the questionable nature of pre-trial seizures should not be a basis to throw out racketeering laws that are providing a growing number of states with a powerful new weapon to fight obscenity and organized crime. INVALIDATING SUCH laws “would provide a safe haven for organized crime,” Goldsmith said. John H. Weston, a Beverly Hills, Calif., lawyer representing Indiana bookstore owners, said the racketeering laws pose a major threat to free speech. Weston said laws like the one in Indiana not only threaten book sellers but also abridge “the American public’s right to receive vast quantities of material.”

Union blasts Indiana’s job-training costs

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) The Department of Commerce says an AFL-CIO report criticizing cost of the state’s job training grants to Japanese companies that locate in Indiana “was based on faulty mathematics.” Eight hours after the labor organization released its critique Monday, the department and Lt. Gov. John M. Mutz’s office issued a response calling the AFL-CIO report “completely erroneous.” THE LABOR organization claimed 10 Japanese companies that recently opened Indiana plants received state-funded training grants worth about $2,500 per job more than similar grants to other businesses. However, the Department of Commerce said the AFL-CIO analysis incorrectly used the cost of all incentives for a new business rather than just the cost of training grants in calculating its per-job training figure. “What we basically have here is faulty math,” said Jan Powell, Mutz’s press secretary. THE ACTUAL per-job training cost for the 10 Japanese companies was less than SI,OOO, according to commerce department figures. Charles Deppert, secretary-

Guilty mother gives up child, faces sterilization

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) Melody Baldwin has given up her 2-day-old son for adoption. Now, at a judge’s suggestion, she may prevent herself from ever being able to replace him. The 29-year-old Indianapolis woman, who signed adoption papers Monday after giving birth the day before, faced the prospect of being sterilized today as part of a plea bargain that would reduce her sentence for neglect of a dependant. MS. BALDWIN IS awaiting sentencing for administering lethal doses of depressants to another son, 4-year-old Joshua, two years ago. Marion Superior Court Judge Roy F. Jones has offered to give Ms. Baldwin a reduced sentence if she agrees to the sterilization. Jones has not set a sentencing date, nor did the sterilization need to be performed today, said the woman’s attorney, Michael J. Donahoe. However, medical

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STEPHEN GOLDSMITH Seizure before guilt unlawful

Indiana’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, patterned after the much-used federal RICO act, authorizes law enforcement officials to seize property used in a racketeering enterprise. THE LAW WAS used in March 1984 against three Fort Wayne bookstores selling sexually explicit materials. Each was accused of at two least violations of the state’s obscenity laws. Authorities padlocked the stores and seized all inventory. Similar legal action was taken against three

treasurer of the labor organization, said his group’s analysis of incentives to the companies that have come to Indiana in recent years showed they received training grants worth an average of $4,131 per job. Deppert based his study on a Department of Commerce computer printout called “County Summary for Business Expansion ” The figures listed next to each business on that summary include funds for training, low-interest loans to the communities in which the new businesses locate and money for improvements to roads and sewers near the new plant sites, according to the department. Deppert acknowledged today that the labor organization’s analysis had incorrectly counted all elements of the incentive packages as job training funds. “We have to eat a little crow,” he said. The Department of Commerce acknowledged in its response that the cost-per-job for an overall incentive package is almost always higher for a new domestic or foreign business, which requires road and sewer improvements, than for an existing business. Existing business already have

reasons dictate she can be sterilized only within 48 hours of giving birth before waiting six weeks for the proper conditions to return. Donahoe Monday night suggested his client was close to agreeing to the sterilization. “I THINK EVERYONE wants to make sure they’re doing the right thing and not leaving themselves open to criticism,” he said. Ms. Baldwin gave birth to an 8pound, 5-ounce boy at 11:16 a.m. Sunday at Wishard Hospital, where she was being detained in a psychiatric ward. Both the mother and child were reported in good condition. At 5:30 p.m. Monday, she signed the adoption papers and gave up her baby, Donahoe said. The attorney said rights to privacy prevented him from saying where the child was headed, who was present for the signing or what the mother’s mood was.

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stores in Indianapolis although those store owners did not appeal to the Supreme Court. The three Fort Wayne bookstores were allowed to reopen in April 1985, but only one, Fort Wayne Books, remains in business. It filed one of the appeals the Supreme Court agreed to study and decide by July. THE JUSTICES also are reviewing a companion case in which the Howard County, Ind., sheriff’s office charged Ronald Sappenfield with distributing obscene material and violating the state RICO law. The case has not yet gone to trial. An Indiana appeals court ruled in June 1985 that applying the state RICO law to those whose only offenses are alleged obscenity violates free speech rights. Padlocking bookstores accused but not convicted of selling obscene material is impermissible “prior restraint” on free expression, the appeals court said. BUT THE INDIANA Supreme Court in March 1987 reinstated the law. During an hour’s arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court Monday, Goldsmith was pressed to explain why law enforcement officials could seize a store’s entire inventory of books based on as little as two sales of an osbcene book.

road and sewer services available, the commerce department said. DEMOCRATIC gubernatorial candidate Evan Bayh, who has the AFL-ClO’s endorsement, has criticized Mutz’s commitments to foreign companies. Mutz, who heads the state’s economic development efforts, is Bayh’s Republican opponent in the November election. Deppert also argued that because the Japanese companies accept publicly funded incentives, the companies ought to be held to American standards for hiring minority and women employees. The AJL-CIO recently criticized Japanese employers for not hiring more women and blacks. “WE DON’T WANT to seem to

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Justice John Paul Stevens said the law seems to brand the bookstore as a criminal enterprise that authorizes an inventory-wide seizure “even if the rest of the store is filled with nothing but Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare.” GOLDSMITH SAID the law is designed to apply with equal force to, for example, drug dealers and smut peddlers. It would be “no different than if cocaine were sold twice,” he said. The purpose is to prevent organized crime from shielding the proceeds of illegal activities, he said. While Goldsmith conceded that pre-trial seizures of bookstore inventory may be unconstitutional, he argued that in the case of Fort Wayne Books the law enforcement activities were permissible. HE SAID THE store was convicted 39 times previously of obscenity violations. The justices also quizzed Weston vigorously. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist questioned why someone convicted of obscenity violations should be protected from having property seized any more than a drug dealer should enjoy that safeguard. “Peddling obscenity is not presumptively protected by the First Amendment,” he said.

be bashing the Japanese,” said Deppert at a news conference. “But we think if we are going to give them our tax money, they ought to hire Hoosiers.” In response, the Department of Commerce used the example of the Subaru-Isuzu Automotive plant under construction near Lafayette. At present, there are 10,270 applicants from 90 Indiana counties for the plant’s 1,700 jobs, the commerce department said. Minority hiring so far has made up about 8.7 percent of the workforce, and die company is writing an affirmative action plan, the department said. State officials are also monitoring SlA’s screening of applicants, the department said.

75-year-old man clubs pit bulls to save 6-year-old

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) A 6-year-old boy saved from two attacking pit bull dogs by a 75-year-old neighbor was reported in serious and stable condition today. Surgeons at Riley Hospital for Children spent several hours Monday re-attaching a large part of Brandon L. Spradley’s scalp and left ear, which were tom loose in the attack. POLICE CREDITED Karl R. Schreiner, a retired engineer, with saving the child’s life. Schreiner clubbed the dogs and warded them off the boy, officials said. “Based on the injuries I saw, I have no doubt in my mind that child would have been killed if somebody had not gotten those dogs off. He was terribly mauled,” said Dr. Benjamin J. Bryant, a surgeon at Wishard Memorial Hospital, who treated the child initially. The 4-year-old dogs were shot to death minutes after the rescue as they snarled and lunged at an Indianapolis policeman. Schreiner went after the dogs with a 2-by-2-inch piece of

Sun-Times editorial staff authorizes union to strike

CHICAGO (AP) The Chicago Sun-Times’ editorial staff authorized a strike after the newspaper’s management proposed to cut salaries by 10 percent. Members of the Chicago Newspaper Guild voted 145-4 Monday night to give union leaders permission to call a strike if contract talks don’t make progress, said reporter Tom Gibbons, guild unit chairman at the paper. NO STRIKE DATE was set, but Gibbons said “we don’t envision ourselves being at the negotiating table in February with no movement” on a contract. Gibbons said both sides will meet again Friday. The Sun-Times issued a statement expressing disappointment with the vote. The newspaper’s pay scale is “second only to The New York Times, with many staffers earning over $50,000 a year,” said the

October 4,1988 THE BANNERGRAPHC

wood, forcing them to leave the child. MR. SCHREINER IS a big hero. The guy did an excellent piece of work,” said Indianapolis Police Detective David E. Phillips. “Somebody had to do something,” Schreiner said. “So I just grabbed a club I have and went out there and beat them. They had the kid in the middle of the street chewing him.” Brandon, son of Rita Spradley, was standing at a school bus stop on the city’s northside waiting for his ride to school when the dogs attacked just before 9 a.m. Monday. “To the best of my knowledge, it was unprovoked,” Phillips said. “The kid tried to run, and the dogs dragged him down in the street. He might have gotten two or three steps.” Owners of the dogs were identified as Ronzell Collins, 50, of Indianapolis, and his stepson, Lawrence E. Kelley, 37, of McCordsville. They were issued summonses for keeping vicious dogs and not having a city license for one of the animals.

statement, read by spokesman Michael Soil. “The Chicago Tribune has reduced its costs, and if we are to remain competitive, we must reduce our costs,” Soli said. THE SUN-TIMES has offered a three-year contract with salaries 10 percent below current levels in the first year, 5 percent below current levels in the second year and back to current levels in the third year, Gibbons said. The paper also is seeking to stop paying extra money to night workers, he said. The guild has asked for a 7.5 percent increase in a one-year contract, he said. Staff at the paper have been working without a contract since May 31. Reporters recently tried to have a byline strike removing their names from stories but the SunTimes said such a move was illegal.

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