In a "Special 40th Anniversary Issue" of its newsletter, the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs noted that the District recently made some big news. The city offered the largest settlement in its history for a wrongful-death case involving a prisoner. The prisoner had been fatally stabbed at the D.C. Jail six years ago.

The murder occurred in December 2002. During a four-day period that month, three men were stabbed---only one survived. "No corrections officers witnessed the incidents," the Committee reports.

The Committee goes on to report that the D.C. Prisoner's Legal Services Project (now the D.C. Prisoners' Project of the Committee), along with the firm Sparks & Silber, and Covington & Burling filed the wrongful death case against the District on behalf of Pearl Beale. Beale is the mother of one of the deceased D.C. Jail inmates, Givon Pendleton. The case generated in excess of 50,000 pages of discovery documents. And thousands of pages of deposition transcripts. There were fights over a lot of the discovery right down to e-mail search terms.

Despite all the legal wrangling, depositions and discovery documents, the case landed big-time and in unexpected ways. Lawsuits involving inmates often disappear. This one did not. The lawyers in this case didn't back down.

The Washington Lawyers' Committee's newsletter has a great summary of the case's impact: "For more than four years, the case was inextricably linked with reform of the D.C. Jail, with plaintiffs' attorneys advocating on a wide range of issues, from security, staffing, and population limits to the naming of a reform-minded Director of the Department of Corrections."

Read More "Pearl Beale Gets Justice: City Gives Biggest Payout In Wrongful Death Of Inmate" »

Ms. Subpoena is back at work.

Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh today announced she'll be digging deep into her legislative toolbox to pry out information on this year's electoral fiascoes.

For one, Cheh announced at a council press conference this morning, she will be asking her council colleagues at the legislative meeting tomorrow to pass a resolution to enforce subpoenas on Sequoia Voting Systems, the manufacturer of the District's voting machines. Cheh, who is heading a special committee investigating this year's elections, had sought source code for Sequoia's software and other records in September in order to vet allegations of voting irregularities during the Sept. 9 primary. Sequoia has thus far refused to comply; the resolution would allow the council to ask a judge to force compliance.

In the second part of Cheh's investigative salvo, she plans to subpoena Board of Elections and Ethics executive director Sylvia Goldsberry-Adams, forcing her to submit to a deposition. Goldsberry-Adams had been scheduled to testify at a Nov. 13 hearing on the general election, but she did not show due to what was reported to be a medical emergency. At that all-day hearing, no other board member or staffer showed, and no written testimony was ever provided.

Read More "Mary Cheh Subpoenas Elections Board, Vendor" »

Local Republicans asked a court this morning to declare At-Large Councilmember-Elect Michael A. Brown ineligible to take office.

The petition to the D.C. Court of Appeals follows a decision by the Board of Elections and Ethics last Monday to certify Brown's victory. The D.C Republican Committee had sent a letter to the board asking that Brown's victory not be certified on the grounds that despite running as an independent, he's actually a Democrat. The board rejected that argument.

It's unclear how quickly a decision will be made, though D.C. GOP executive director Paul Craney says his group has filed will file a motion to expedite, seeing as Brown is scheduled to be sworn in Jan. 2.

UPDATE, 3 P.M.: D.C. GOP lawyer Charles Spies, in a conference call with reporters, says he expects to file a legal argument in the coming weeks. That reasoning will dwell on the definition of "affiliation" with respect to the Home Rule Act, which holds that no more than three of five councilmembers elected at-large can be "affiliated" with the same party.

Brown, he says, was within his rights to change his party registration from Democratic to no party, but he ran afoul of the law when he started putting the word "Democrat" on his campaign materials. The standard, Spies says, is whether "on Election Day, is the candidate affiliated with a particular political party?"

Spies says there's no doubt in his mind Brown was running as a Democrat: "This isn't a difficult case. This isn't reading tea leaves," he says. "We're asking the board to look at the candidate's own literature."

If the court does rule favorably, the board would be forced under law to declare the at-large spot vacant and hold a special election---which, according to Spies' reasoning, Michael Brown could conceivably enter, campaign for (without using the word "Democrat"), win, and be properly certified.

"If he had not on his brochures called himself a Democrat, on his Web site called himself a Democrat, on his biography called himself a Democrat," Spies says, "then, yes, he could have run as an independent."

Press release after jump.

Read More "D.C. GOP Goes to Court Over Michael Brown’s Party Status" »

The Robert Wone murder case heated up yesterday. One defendant was released. There was the news that all three roommates, who were charged with obstruction of justice, would be living together in a rented apartment. There was the news that a Grand Jury was looking into more charges. And finally, Wone's family filed a wrongful death civil suit in D.C. Superior Court against the three roommates.

One other aspect of the Wone case jumped out: There are some powerful attorneys on all sides of this case.

Read More "Robert Wone Case: Some Powerful Attorneys" »

Good morning, District denizens! And now, the news:

• Lt. James A. Cullen posted on the MDP-4D listserv that the 17 year old who was shot while near the 700 block of Decatur St. NW was treated and released from the hospital. Cullen also said that a "white Lexus sedan" may have been involved in the incident. According to Linda Brown, MPD Commander of the Fourth District, police are responding with gusto to the most recent shooting on Kennedy St. (which City Paper missed): "Our attention is continually focused in the 600-700 blocks of Jefferson, Kennedy and Longfellow.  We have executed several search warrants in this target area in the last few days in an effort to bring this gun violence to an end."
• Looking to rent out your place for inauguration but worried about getting busted for violating housing regulations? Fear not! According to The Washington Post Mayor Adrian M. Fenty decided yesterday to suspend "requirements for property inspections...from Jan. 13 through 27," as well as various other obstacles to renting out one's futon in Brightwood Park. (*Ahem* We have wireless Internet, folks! And the place is clean! *Ahem*) The last obstacle is the landlord. (Don't hold your breath for Fenty to suspend other pointless laws, the kind that do nothing to curb the behaviors they criminalize and generate less money than is required to enforce them.)
• Twilight, the vampire movie every chick wants to see, opens tonight. Critics have mixed opinions. Moviegoers should prepare themselves for violent hordes of XX's, ranging from 13 to 30 years of age, all of them screaming for the blood of Robert Pattinson. Check out Washington City Paper's showtimes for other movie listings.
• Prince of Petworth has a question for you.
• Calling all nerds: New FreakAngels, new Marriedtothesea, and new Penny-Arcade. Check them out now.

This afternoon I visited 1034 Quebec Place, where a massive fire claimed a life this morning. Firemen had a four-block area on lockdown. Pepco technicians were on every corner, assessing potential damage to the grid. Baleful neighbors watched the excavation and gave the professionals a wide berth. One woman told me that her daughter had called 911 before leaving for elementary school.

More photos below the jump.

[D.C. Fire Spokesman Alan Etter didn't have much in the way of updates by C.O.B., except to say that families in the adjoining houses had been displaced and that neither he nor the MPD could identify the victim conclusively.*]

Read More "Photos: Deadly Fire on Quebec Place, NW" »

At 8:05 this morning, more than 120 firefighters descended on 1034 Quebec Place, NW, where a massive blaze had consumed most of the house, inflicted extensive damage to the homes on either side, and charred a corpse on the second floor beyond recognition.

Read More "Two-Alarm Fire on Quebec Place, NW" »

In late December of last year, I wrote a cover story questioning whether the devastating Eastern Market fire might in fact have been caused by arson. The piece used several anonymous fire fighters, documents, and memos to make the case. Not only had Eastern Market been caused by arson, there may be another serial arsonist roaming Cap. Hill.

Of course, I confronted the Fire Chief Dennis L. Rubin. He got real hostile:

"When asked about the surveillance operation, Rubin replied: “May I ask who told you?” After this reporter refused to reveal his sources, the chief threatened him, saying: “I’m going to report you to the federal authorities [if you publish that].”

I am still waiting to hear from those federal authorities. This week two firefighters went on the record for a WJLA story. Both claim that the Eastern Market fire was arson.

Read More "Firefighters Turn Into Whistleblowers" »

Reprinted from this week's Loose Lips column

Two weeks ago, senior staff at the Office of the Chief Technology Officer got some fresh mountain air at taxpayer expense: 46 agency employees piled into vans and drove the approximately 80 miles to the Skyland Resort in Shenandoah National Park for a “leadership summit” hosted by agency head Vivek Kundra.

The mid-week junket, which included one night’s lodging in the resort’s quaint cabins, cost taxpayers about $23,000.

Now this isn’t quite as galling as the cohort of executives from AIG who spent some $440,000 at the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, Calif., mere days after the feds granted them an $85 billion bailout. And LL doesn’t begrudge an organization—even a government agency—“team-building exercises” and a change of venue. But with a $130 million-and-rising citywide revenue gap, couldn’t the airport Ramada have sufficed? Or perhaps that swank new citywide conference center atop One Judiciary Square—you know, the building where most of OCTO’s staff is housed?

Read More "OCTO Mountain Getaway Cost Taxpayers $23K" »

Edward Robinson-El came to the West End Library to be its new manager about a month ago. He had managed various libraries around Brooklyn, where he had customers of many ethnicities---Orthodox Jews, Italians, you name it—and income levels. Still, Robinson-El was surprised when he got to the West End Library and found out who his customers are.

Based on what he’d read about his new assignment, he was expecting mostly patrons from George Washington University. But he doesn’t get many college students at all.

Instead, he says, he gets a mix of kids and also young adults after school, parents with babies, and older adults all times of day. And homeless people. A lot of homeless people. Which is fine with him, but not so fine with some other people—we’ll call them the older, richer, whiter members of the neighborhood.

The library is down on 24th and L Streets NW, in that speck of expensive land called Square 37. The land was almost sold off to developers by emergency legislation last July but then in the end wasn’t, although it might be again. On July 18 the West End Library Friends issued a report detailing recommendations they wanted to see in any new redevelopment plans concerning this prime West End parcel.

It’s hard to be shocked by the results of a library report, but the document issued by the West End Library Friends clearly could use some sensitivity training:

Read More "D.C. Libraries: Not a Homeless Shelter, Especially in the West End" »

Winter in D.C. brings some doldrums, including very little snowfall and some very uninspiring professional sports teams. A ray of sunshine, though, breaks through via an annual Department of Public Works ritual: Suspension of the alternate-side street sweeping program and the associated halt of ticket-writing for street-sweeping infractions. In other words, a respite from those Sunday evening panic attacks--Shit, my car is on the south side of Corcoran!

This year, according to DPW spokesperson Linda Grant, the parking free-for-all will start on the week of Dec. 1. Grant says the department will send out notices in anticipation of the suspension. But hey DPW, don't spread the word too far and wide--it's always nice when clueless motorists operate under the pretense that the rules are in effect, leaving huge curbside gaps for the rest of us. Best to keep the updates to undertrafficked blogs.

It's always something, at least when it comes to elections in the District of Columbia.

This afternoon, Ward 3 Councilmember Mary M. Cheh, who chairs a special council committee on elections, announced in a press release that her office had found several minor anomalies with the Nov. 4 results that "may indicate larger problems in the District’s election software."

• In SMD 6B11, unofficial election results showed no precincts reporting and 5 undervotes.
• In SMD 5C09, which votes in a single precinct, 74, 15 votes were cast in Precinct 73.
• In SMD 6C09, three votes were recorded in that race in Precinct 1, when city registration records show that only two voters in that precinct should be eligible to vote in that race.

Here's Cheh's money quote: “We cannot afford to have these sleeper glitches, which can come to the surface unexpectedly like gremlins and damage confidence in the results the Board of Elections and Ethics reports.”

Cheh wants Sequoia to cough up the source code for their election-machine software, which the committee had subpoenaed after problems with the Sept. 9 primary election. Pro bono lawyers from firm Jenner & Block are helping Cheh enforce the subpoena.

The committee has a hearing scheduled for Thursday at 10 a.m.

As we all have figured out by now, BOEE is not the most reliable. But according to their latest updates on election returns, notorious ANC Commissioner and Ping Pong Hater Frank Winstead has lost his re-election bid. He got thumped:

Tom Whitley: 460 votes.
Frank Winstead: 161 votes.
Write-In: 11 votes.

This may be a huge victory for Mr. Whitley. But it's an even bigger victory for Ping-Pong enthusiasts (and folks who generally want to sit outside a coffee shop or book store or pizza place)....

With incumbent Republican Carol Schwartz running a write-in campaign to keep her at-large council seat, and with less than a week to Election Day, it's a fine time for LL to run down how write-in votes are counted in the District of Columbia.

Yesterday, representatives from four of the seven council campaigns, including Schwartz's, met with Board of Elections and Ethics Executive Director Sylvia Goldsberry-Adams and other staff to discuss what to expect on Election Day and beyond.

Like virtually everywhere else in the United States, the law on counting votes in the District is based on discerning a voter's intent. If the elections board can determine that intent by examining a ballot, that is a valid vote. "Every ballot shall be counted for the candidate for whom it was intended, if the electors intent can be ascertained from the ballot itself," D.C. regulations read.

The thing is, according to D.C.'s rules, the write-in votes are only tabulated if "the total number of write-ins reported...is sufficient to elect a write-in candidate." That's based on a machine count---more on that later.

If there's enough write-ins cast to elect, the board plans to have pollworkers gather at BOEE headquarters at One Judiciary Square at 9 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 6., to begin the tabulation process. "We'll go until they're done," BOEE spokesperson Dan Murphy says; campaigns would be allowed to have observers on hand.

Read More "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Counting Write-In Votes in the District of Columbia" »

I remember when thumb wrestling was taken seriously. It was something you played on long car rides, as you waited for a movie to start, etc. It was something you did when you were bored. It was something the slight, the skinny, the uncoordinated could do and still have a legit shot at winning. As I got older, the "game" got more complicated, we'd throw in new moves/new weapons like "The Snake" and "The Turtle." (the Turtle was totally unfair and a game killer; if you played the Turtle move you automatically had to apologize and start the game over--this did not stop us from playing the Turtle at all).

Thumb wrestling isn't a sport. But that doesn't mean it's not sacred. Now, Prince of Petworth is reporting that the Big Hunt is hosting a thumb-wresting tournament for a worthy cause. It's tonight.

I only worry that thumb-wrestling will become the latest game to be played ironically. First kickball. Then ping pong. Is thumb wrestling next?