c.1997 N.Y. Times News Service<
NEW YORK—Guy Molinari, the Staten Island borough president, onMonday called upon the New York state Legislature to pass lawsunder which doctors who perform a form of late-term abortion wouldbe charged with first-degree murder and executed by the same methodused in the abortions.
Molinari, a Republican, said he realized his proposal had littleif any chance of success in Albany. Still, in a letter to statelegislators, he said ``my proposal is intended to appeal to theconscience of both pro-life and pro-choice individuals to opentheir eyes to the brutal and horrific nature of this procedure.''
The procedure, called ``partial-birth abortion'' by opponentsand but technically ``intact dilation and extraction,'' is alate-term abortion in which a fetus is partly extracted from thebirth canal and then its brains are suctioned out to collapse theskull and complete the delivery.
In an interview, Molinari strongly advocated subjectingphysicians who perform the procedure to execution under thatmethod. He said that the abortion procedure ``is a form ofpremeditated murder'' and should be punishable by death.
``If it's as painless as the doctors and pro-choice peoplesuggest, then why not?'' Molinari said.
He added that he had not yet talked with any legislator aboutsponsoring such a bill. Nor has he yet determined how—or by whom_ the proposed punishment should be administered.
Last year, President Clinton 
vetoed a ban on the procedurebecause it did not include an exception for cases in which themother's general health was at risk. The only exception was whenthe mother's life was jeopardized.
The House of Representatives voted last week to ban theprocedure, by more than enough votes to override a presidentialveto. The Senate does not plan to take the matter up until lateApril because it is still about seven votes shy of being able tooverride a veto.
Rep. Susan Molinari of Staten Island, the borough president'sdaughter, said that she had spoken with her father about hisannouncement, but that she did not share his views on how doctorsshould be punished. Ms. Molinari, a Republican who supports awoman's right to abortion, voted in favor of banning the procedure.
``He felt a need to highlight the public discussion of thisissue,'' Ms. Molinari said. ``I understand his intent and I admirehis passion. I just think it might cause more problems.''
Molinari's proposal drew strong reaction.
``My God, I'm speechless,'' said Ron Fitzsimmons, executivedirector of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, alobbying group based in Alexandria, Va., that represents 200abortion clinics. ``Why aren't these people spending their energieseliminating the need for these procedures. It's all politics.''
Allen Cappelli, one of several Democrats considering runningagainst Molinari in the November election, criticized Molinari'sposition as needlessly provocative. ``Since borough presidents havenothing to do with this issue, his statement sensationalizessomething that is, essentially, a painful personal choice,'' hesaid.
c.1997 N.Y. Times News Service<
WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decidewhether, and under what circumstances, the courts of one state canrefuse to honor rulings by the courts of another state.
While the case before the justices involves an automobileaccident, the decision could affect the way courts handle animportant range of legal issues that cross state lines, from childsupport and custody to the eventual interstate recognition ofmarriage between gay partners if Hawaii or any other statevalidates such marriages.
The case requires the Supreme Court to interpret a clause in theConstitution that instructs states to give ``full faith andcredit'' to the ``public acts, records, and judicial proceedings ofevery other state.'' The clause, Section One of Article IV, hasreceived surprisingly little attention from the court over theyears.
In this case, the General Motors Corp. had obtained an orderfrom a Michigan state court to prevent a former General Motorsengineer from testifying as an expert witness in lawsuits againstthe company. The injunction was part of a settlement of a suit andcountersuit between General Motors and the engineer, Ronald Elwell,who left the company on bad terms in 1991.
In 1993, Elwell was called as an expert witness in a lawsuitagainst General Motors by the children of a Missouri woman who diedin a Chevrolet Blazer that caught fire in a collision. The FederalDistrict Court in Kansas City permitted Elwell's testimony,refusing to honor the Michigan order on the ground that Missourihas a public policy that favors full disclosure of all relevantinformation in court proceedings. The jury found for the plaintiffsand awarded them $11.3 million.
General Motors appealed on the basis of the Constitution's fullfaith and credit clause, arguing that courts in Missouri were boundto honor the Michigan court's order. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court ofAppeals, in St. Louis, agreed, ruling that the District Court had``incorrectly used Missouri's interest in full and fair discoveryto override its interest in giving full faith and credit to asister state's judgment.''
In their appeal to the Supreme Court, the plaintiffs are arguingthat people who did not participate and were not represented inearlier proceedings in another state should not be bound by theoutcome. If not overturned, they told the court, the appealscourt's ruling ``would provide wrongdoers with a blueprint forpurchasing the silence of potentially vital witnesses.''
``Such an assault upon the integrity of the judicial systemfinds no support in the full faith and credit principle,'' theplaintiffs' appeal continued.
The case, Baker vs. General Motors, No. 96-653, raises thequestion of whether courts can read exceptions into the full faithand credit guarantee based on ``public policy.'' This question isat the heart of the heated debate over the implications of statecourt rulings in Hawaii that have brought that state to the vergeof recognizing gay marriages as a matter of state constitutionallaw.
Congress responded last year by passing the Defense of MarriageAct, which bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages and wasintended by its sponsors to provide a legal basis, in the form of astatement of federal public policy, for a state to refuse torecognize a gay marriage that was valid in another state.
The open question about the Defense of Marriage Act is whetherit is constitutional under the full faith and credit clause. Whilethe new case before the court will not answer that questiondirectly, the justices' treatment of whether a state's publicpolicy can be a shield against applying the full faith and creditclause could shape the eventual answer.
There were also these developments at the Court on Monday.
No-Knock Searches
The court heard arguments Monday on whether the police areconstitutionally required to knock and announce their presencebefore executing a warrant to search for drugs in someone's home orhotel room.
Two years ago, the court ruled unanimously, in a case fromArkansas, that the Fourth Amendment's prohibition againstunreasonable search generally bars unannounced entries by thepolice. At the same time, the court said in Wilson vs. Arkansasthat no-knock searches could be justified more easily in drug casesthan in other types of searches because the evidence of narcoticsis so easy to destroy and because suspects in drug cases are likelyto respond with violence.
Shortly after that decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court in a1996 ruling created a blanket exception for drug cases to the usualknock-and-announce rule. That exception ``essentially swallows therule,'' David Karpe, a lawyer representing a convicted cocainedealer who is appealing the decision, told the court on Monday.
``In Wilson vs. Arkansas, this court gave an inch, and theWisconsin Supreme Court took a mile,'' Karpe said. His client,Steiney Richards, was convicted on the basis of evidence the policefound when they broke into his Madison motel room to execute asearch warrant.
Karpe argued, in Richards vs. Wisconsin, No. 96-5955, that thevalidity of a no-knock search should be based on the circumstancesof each case. James Doyle, the Wisconsin attorney general, defendedthe state court's creation of a blanket rule for drug cases as a``common sense'' approach to protecting police officers andpreventing the destruction of evidence.
The Clinton administration argued for a middle ground, in whicha no-knock entry would be regarded as ordinarily justified in drugsearches, but would be regarded as unreasonable if the police knewin a particular instance that neither they nor the evidence wouldbe in danger if they announced their presence before entering.
Indecency on Cable TV
Without comment, the justices affirmed a Federal DistrictCourt's refusal to block a new law regulating sexually explicitprogramming on cable television. The decision means the law, asection of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, can now takeeffect while the owners of companies that provide sexually explicitprogramming pursue their challenge before a special three-judgefederal panel in Wilmington, Del.
The law requires operators of cable systems to make sure theaudio and visual portions of the signal of channels carryingsexually explicit programming do not bleed into neighboringchannels. If that is not technically feasible, or the operator doesnot want to undertake the expense of blocking and scrambling thesignal, the law requires that sexually explicit programming belimited to the hours between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., when children areless likely to see it.
Complaints about the problem known in the industry as ``signalbleed'' had prompted Congress to add this provision to the law thatis better known for its regulation of indecent material on theInternet, the subject of a separate case now before the justices.
The cable provision was challenged by Playboy EntertainmentGroup and Spice Entertainment Cos., providers of sexually explicitprogramming, who argued that the law's restrictions violated theirrights under the First Amendment. The case was Playboy vs. UnitedStates, No. 96-1034.
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