IN CASE YOU MISSED IT—"Closing Arguments In Wone Case," "World Cup Roundup," "Photos: Terry Huff"

Morning All. You better enjoy Metro today and Saturday. Those big fare increases are set to start on Sunday. WaPo's Ann Scott Tyson and Anita Kumar report that Metro approved those complicated fare hikes yesterday: "Metro's board of directors authorized an extensive package of fare increases Thursday as the agency approved a $1.4 billion operating budget and a plan to cover a projected $189 million shortfall for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The new fares include nearly $109 million worth of increases for people who ride rail, bus and MetroAccess, the service for the disabled. Because of the complexity of the fare increases, they will be implemented in three stages: on Sunday, on Aug. 1 and in the fall. One potentially confusing component is a new 20-cent 'peak-of-the-peak' rail surcharge that will start in August and affect riders who travel during the busiest times. The board had indicated in a vote last month that it would approve the changes. Rail fares this weekend will increase about 18 percent, with the peak boarding fare going from $1.65 to $1.95. The bus boarding charge will go up 20 percent, from $1.25 to $1.50 for SmarTrip users and from $1.35 to $1.70 for cash customers. Metro's board also agreed to cut the cost of SmarTrip cards in half, from $5 to $2.50, because the cost of the cards has fallen and because Metro wants to encourage riders to use them, said Peter Benjamin, the board chairman. Board member Jim Graham, who serves on the D.C. council, cast the only dissenting vote. He said he was concerned about the effect of the higher fares on the people least able to afford them."

AFTER THE JUMP—Peter Nickles would stay on if Fenty gains second term, Metro gets into the movie rental business, WaPo columnist stands up for social workers fired in wake of Banita Jacks case, and tragedy hits Ward 8 ANC Commissioner.

FOUR MORE YEARS OF NICKLES? District AG Peter Nickles, aka Fenty's Troll Doll, tells Jonetta Rose Barras on her WPFW radio show that he's open to remaining as the city's top lawyer for four more years. WaPo reports: "In a DC Politics interview on WPFW 89.3 FM, Rose-Barras told the city's top lawyer that there are some residents who will not vote to re-elect Fenty because of Nickles, his strained relations with the council and the view that he is a 'cantankerous old man,' who is to blame for 'a lot that has happened in this administration is bad.' 'I don't know if I'm cantankerous,' Nickles said, joking about his age, 71. 'I'm ready to take it on as long as the mayor wants me to take it on.' Nickles acknowledged that he has long had a cantankerous relationship with former mayor Marion Barry (D-Ward 8). But Nickles said he has had 'very good relations' with council members Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4), David Catania (I-At Large), Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), and at times, Chairman Vincent Gray. But, he said, 'I have found these other council members – particularly Barry, Michael Brown (I-At Large), Kwame Brown (D-At Large) and Harry Thomas Jr. (D-Ward 5) – completely unwilling to listen. No matter what the issue is, they are instinctively against the mayor.'" What about your biggest critics, Councilmembers Phil Mendelson and Mary Cheh? Anyway, Nickles ruled out running for attorney general; voters can decide in Nov. if the position should be an elected office. [Nickles opposes such a move].

Meanwhile, the D.C. Council rebuffed Nickles' attempt to allow indefinite response times for FOIA requests. WaPo's Ann Marimow reports: "Attorney General Peter Nickles' request for more time to respond to public requests for government information is unlikely to gain traction in the Council, where two members — Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4) and Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) — have introduced legislation to increase access and transparency. Nickles said the District is inundated with complex Freedom of Information Act requests and needs a 'safety valve' of additional time to respond, similar to what federal law allows. But Cheh said Nickles 'is looking for an open-ended excuse not to comply, and he's not going to get it. It's a simple invitation to delay, an invitation to mischief.' Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray, who is challenging Mayor Adrian Fenty in the September Democratic primary, also rejected the idea, calling the current response period 'sufficient.'"

CFSA AND BANITA JACKS FALLOUT: WaPo columnist Petula Dvorak takes up the cause of the social workers fired in the wake of the Banita Jacks case. She believes they should get their jobs back: "All of the social workers who had anything to do with the Jacks case were thumped in grand fashion by an angry and decisive Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D). For a city reeling from the discovery that Jacks's four children were dead and that Jacks had been living in squalor for weeks with their decaying bodies until she was found in January 2008, it felt righteous to fire everyone having anything to do with her case. A new director of the Child and Family Services Agency was installed, and Jacks was convicted of killing her girls. But [Carl] Miller and two other social workers are still fighting the case every day. And the city is fighting back. The case touched Miller's life in late 2007, when a school social worker called and told Miller that a student at her school had been truant, the mom wouldn't open the door when she came to investigate, and she was worried. On the phone, Miller was matter-of-fact, reminding the social worker that the woman had no legal obligation to let her inside. It seemed like educational neglect, nothing more; the social worker said the kids looked unkempt and were watching TV. That sounds like my own childhood. As satisfying as it may have been to can Miller because he didn't swoop in to save these girls, it's not realistic to end the career of a 34-year-old man who had been a reliable social worker for eight years." Dvorak doesn't say that the CFSA director resigned not over the Jacks case, but over her inability to handle a huge backlog of cases in its aftermath. She also doesn't mention that the court monitor had flagged CFSA's poor investigative skills a few months prior to the Jacks case making headlines—so social workers and their supervisors had ample warning that they needed to be more vigilant. Still this is a must read for anyone that followed the Jacks case, and Dvorak can be convincing especially regarding the one social worker fired after relying on the police to properly visit the Jacks home. The police officer lied to the social worker saying that he had seen the Jacks children and they were fine. He had never seen the kids.

GRAY VS. LEO ALEXANDER: Leo Alexander takes it to Vincent Gray during the latest mayoral forum, WaPo reports: "Alexander, who has been struggling to gain attention in what so far appears to be a two-man race, went on the offensive against Gray, accusing him of being as much to blame as Fenty for the city's problems. 'When you think of everything that has happened in the last three years, you cannot criticize this man, without looking at this man,' Alexander said, pointing at Gray and Fenty. Alexander specifically challenged Gray for not doing more to prevent Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee from laying off 266 teachers last year. 'It wouldn't be fair to talk about the betterment of DCPS, without talking about leadership of our council chairman,' Alexander said. 'When this council had the opportunity to stop those firings, but he did nothing.' A clearly agitated Gray fired back, accusing Alexander of misrepresenting his record, noting he and Council member Harry Thomas (D-Ward 5) worked on legislation to try to force Rhee to rehire the fired teachers. 'Let me begin by saying it's easy to sit up here when you've done nothing and pontificate,' Gray said to Alexander. 'If you did the research, you would understand the council wouldn't have the authority to turn this around despite the fact we tried.' Alexander responded: 'The gentleman said I have done nothing, let's talk about his do-nothing leadership on the city council.'"

OUR CONDOLENCES: WaPo is reporting that Ward 8 ANC Commissioner Anthony Muhammad's two sons were killed in a car crash in Silver Spring: "Muhammad family members did not comment. They were planning a vigil at Kennedy High School in Silver Spring on Thursday evening. Commissioners in Ward 8 said they were pulling together to support the family. 'Mr. Muhammad is an active, dedicated person in our community, and we're grieving with him. It's a tragic loss,' said Ward 8 commissioner Lendia Johnson. 'He's devastated, as far as I can say. He adored his children. He was an excellent father.' Barbara Clark, another Ward 8 commissioner, said she contacted Muhammad through a text message after the accident. Johnson said she admired Muhammad's sons for being upstanding and disciplined. 'They weren't the pants-hanging-down-low type,' she said, 'They were neat, clean, straightforward, obedient young men.'"

DROWNING: Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr. says he will hold a hearing on this week's drowning death of a child at the Turkey Thicket Rec Center pool. WaPo reports: "Yiana-Michelle Ballard, 6, was found unconscious at the rec center's crowded indoor pool about 2:20 p.m., officials said. She had been swimming with her family. Lifeguards tried to resuscitate her, but she was later pronounced dead at Children's National Medical Center. Police said Thursday that their special-victims unit was still investigating the circumstances of the death. Autopsy results were pending. 'This should have never happened,' said D.C. Council member Harry Thomas Jr. (D-Ward 5), who chairs the Committee on Libraries, Parks and Recreation. 'We are doing everything that needs to be done to make sure that this doesn't happen again.' Thomas said he plans to hold hearings next week to examine whether the city's pools are safe. He said he is consulting with officials from the American Red Cross to review pool safety procedures and might introduce emergency legislation to address the issue." More coverage via WUSA9.

FOLKLIFE FEST: WUSA9 offers a preview of this year's fest on the Mall.

RHEE: THE MOVIE STAR? Maybe not. But the school's chancellor gets a star turn in front of the cameras for a new education documentary.

METRO MOVIES: Rental kiosks are coming to Metro, reports WBJ. More coverage via the Examiner.

OF COURSE: People are raising pigs in Takoma Park.

FIRST LADIES: Duke Ellington students woo a pair of First Ladies with a little MJ.

THINK YOU GOT IT BAD: Tenants in one building are fighting landlord over broken AC.

HYDRANTS: D.C. officials are encouraging residents to not turn on hydrants as a way of combating this ridiculous heat.

FREE: HIV/AIDS testing.

MUST READ: WaPo's Paul Duggan's story on the murder of Manual Sanchez: "Fleeing poverty in El Salvador, he walked into the United States illegally across miles of desert in 1998. He worked as a bricklayer or as a laborer, depending on the economy, and drank heavily for a time, often squandering his wages. On May 28, behind a vacant tenement in Southeast Washington, where Sanchez, 29, and two of his cousins had been bagging trash and cutting weeds, the men were accosted by a pair of would-be robbers. Now Sanchez is gone, air-freighted back to his rural home town in a coffin, allegedly shot by a suspect six days past his 16th birthday, a ward of the city's youth rehabilitation agency. The accused killer, Javon Hale, and the other suspect, Rafael Douglas, also 16, are due in D.C. Superior Court on Friday for a preliminary hearing, each charged as an adult with murder after two witnesses identified them to police. Some killings rivet the media and the public: An esteemed lawyer mysteriously stabbed in Northwest Washington townhouse; a University of Virginia lacrosse star savagely pummeled in her apartment; a beloved D.C. school principal shot in his Silver Spring home. And some homicides go largely unnoticed beyond the tumbledown blocks where they occur, beyond the families and friends of the slain and the handcuffed and the authorities seeking justice. The shooting of Manuel DeJesus Sanchez was such a crime....The suspects, locked up without bond, have pleaded not guilty. Hale, who has a record of juvenile crime, had been let out of Boys Town, a group home, on a weekend pass just hours before Sanchez died bleeding on a dingy patch of Hillside Road SE in Benning Heights."

KOJO: Today's guests: Virginia congressional candidate Keith Fimian and Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot.

MAYOR'S SCHEDULE:

10:45 a.m.
Remarks
Ribbon Cutting for Deanwood Recreation Center and Library
Location: Deanwood Recreation Center and Library
49th and Quarles Streets, NE

D.C. COUNCIL'S SCHEDULE:

10 a.m.
Committee on Human Services (Round Table)
"Status of the District's Low Barrier, Transitional and Permanent Support Housing Programs for Adults, Youth and Families who are Homeless"
Location: John A. Wilson Building, Room 500

In a 46-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan held today that D.C.'s Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) is not yet ready to come out from under its court oversight. This represents a significant setback for Attorney General Peter Nickles, who has pressed to end the court-appointed monitoring of the troubled agency.

Hogan had taken months to come to his decision. In July 2008, in the aftermath of the Banita Jacks tragedy, Children's Rights filed its contempt motion. Soon, Hogan ordered CFSA to come up with a plan to fix itself. The District had a difficult time actually completing this task. Instead, Nickles drafted a plan without the court monitor's approval. Bad idea.

Meanwhile, Nickles and Fenty selected Dr. Roque Gerald to run the agency. They did so without consulting Children's Rights–another bad idea, and a violation of a court order. Hogan did not like this move, and Nickles ended up having to play defense.

Imagine all that Hogan had to sift through before issuing today's ruling. But wait, there's more!

As the debate continued through 2009, even a CFSA official suggested court oversight was a good thing, and University Legal Services published another scathing report on the agency. The court monitor issued a report critical of CFSA's foster care. And teens testified before the D.C. Council on the difficulties of aging out of the system.

What's at stake here? A review of recent Child Fatality Review Board reports suggests that a lot of kids die under the city's watch. Within the past year, two newborns died at D.C. General's family shelter.

In his ruling, Hogan held Mayor Adrian Fenty in contempt for not consulting with plaintiffs or court monitor in hiring Gerald.

Hogan also held the city in contempt for failing to come up a plan approved by the court monitor. He ruled that the District showed a "blatant disregard" in failing to work with the court monitor. He writes: "Intransigence may be a nominal improvement from indifference, but it is still unacceptable in this context."

Hogan dismissed the District's motion to end federal court oversight. In a number of key areas—conducting timely investigations, adoptions, and training of CFSA employees—the judge expressed skepticism that CFSA had improved enough to show compliance with court-approved benchmarks. He writes: "Unfortunately, in light of the District's refusal to abide by the simplest provisions of the Stipulated Order, the Court cannot find that a period of good faith has persisted. Nor has the District achieved, let alone established a period of consistent compliance."

While Hogan agreed that the District has made progress in improving CFSA, it has not done so in a complete, real and sustained way. "Undoubtedly, CFSA has taken measures to buttress reforms," Hogan writes. "But the defendants have not illustrated any, at least not in a manner that inspires enough confidence to support a conclusion that the agency's progress is 'durable and self-sustaining.'"

In his conclusion, Hogan writes:

"Extensive litigation on these motions has changed little. Although the District's child welfare system has improved drastically from the dismal state it was once in, the defendants have yet to deliver a fully satisfactory child welfare system....Supervision must persist until the defendants demonstrate that the District reliably satisfies its responsibilities."

The result: All the parties must formulate a plan for CFSA.

"It's very much the right ruling," Children's Rights Executive Director Marcia Lowry tells City Desk.  "I'm hoping this is finally going to ensure the case moves forward to accomplish the purposes of the agreement which the District has really stalled on."

Lowry still sees the courts as the appropriate venue for monitoring the troubled child-welfare agency.

"It's a fight over doing what's necessary," Lowry says. "The problem was there had been an agreement a long time ago about what should be accomplished for a child. The District about a year ago decided it didn't want to do that anymore so it didn't make a plan....That seemed to be a real disregard for what children need."

The case is now more than 20 years old.

"I have a lot of patience," Lowry says. "I represent a group of children in the District and I am going to represent them as vigoriously as I can....I find it a real waste of resources. This is a small system. It could have been fixed a long time ago."

File photo by Darrow Montgomery

"Families receive 24-hour services, which include shelter, meals, case management, outplacement services and aftercare services....The Family Development Advocate tracks program graduates for a period of 90 days up to one year. Contact is made with graduates, employers and outplacement service providers no less than once each month to identify issues that might otherwise cause loss of employment or the reoccurrence of displacement. The program complements this one on one support with regular workshops, which graduates attend to attain added preparation and support."

Shelter residents have a different take.

In the past week, City Desk has reported several items on D.C. General: overcrowded conditions, indifferent case workers, the death of a newborn, and staff soliticing sex from female residents in return for blankets and juice.

Problems with Families Forward, Inc. should not be new to city officials. In its report on the Banita Jacks case, the Inspector General flagged the group and the facility for poor management in dealing with that troubled family.

From December 2005 to April 2006, the Jacks family stayed at D.C. General under the watch of Families Forward. Among the key findings, the IG noted that the Jacks children were never interviewed "nor were their needs ever assessed." In what should be all too familiar to current shelter residents, the IG also reported the Jacks family did not see a case worker for nearly a month after first moving in.

It took the Families Forward staff nearly a month to have Banita Jacks fill out the basic intake forms. Even after their first meeting with a case worker, the IG noted that the worker completed only the first two pages of a nine page assessment form. Among the topics left blank: "Medical History," "Psychosocial/Family" history, and the case worker's own "subjective observations."

The IG also reported: "Based on interviews with the team and a review of the family's shelter case file, there is no indication that Families Forward made any referrals related to the physical or mental health needs of any family member."

The IG found that Families Forward "failed to conduct a thorough needs assessment." The IG wrote in its final report:

"A thorough assessment of [the parents] could have provided valuable insight into the family's needs and past challenges they faced, and that could have resulted in their being referred for further evaluation, treatment, or services."

The IG recommended:

*The D.C. Department of Human Services should consider proposing to the mayor a strategy for providing physical, mental health, and developmental screenings to all homeless children.

*The Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness as well as Families Forward should "review and amend in writing where necessary, the Hypothermia Shelter's intake, needs assessment, and case management processes to ensure that they are consistent not only with Families Forward's contractual obligations to the District, but also the intent...of the District's Homeless Services Reform Act."

Families Forward failed to return calls seeking comment. One worker who answered the phone  replied that he was too busy helping families to answer our questions.

In an interview late this afternoon, Councilmember Tommy Wells, who chairs the Committee on Human Services, says that the conditions at D.C. General are "awful."

Wells says that he plans on holding an oversight hearing on the D.C. General mess. "To any degree that staff added to[residents'] misery, they need to not just be fired but prosecuted for anything they've done wrong."

Wells continues: "If Families Forward is not capable of running a humane shelter then we are going to have to deal with that."

Wells says that, at a minimum, the shelter should be a humane living space.

Does Families Forward meet that definition?

"That's what the oversight hearing is for," Wells says.

*photo courtesy of DC Watch.

So when Wells orders up another hearing on CFSA, it amounts to a real test of patience. Progress is incremental. Answers are evasive. There's a lot of lowering of expectations. And there's always a lot of sad stories, and really sad statistics. On Friday, Wells held a hearing on the issues District wards face as they age out of the child-welfare system. The hearing was full of strong testimony from kids, pointed testimony from advocates, and the councilmember's own glass-is-half-full optimism.

Toward the end of the hours of testimony, Wells was stuck congratulating agency director Roque Gerald for at least visiting all the agency's group homes. Talk about setting the bar pretty low.

Kids dominated much of the hearing. These were kids who had overcome group homes, fostercare, abusive parents, and, well, the Child and Family Services Agency. They testified in business clothes. They spoke eloquently. They tempered criticism with praise for a social worker or a confession about their own emotional problems. In other words, these kids represented the system's best and brightest outcomes.

And yet, here's a brief summary of their testimony:

*One boy admitted that if it weren't for a friend's family, he'd be homeless. He's currently unemployed. This is a kid who had worked at CFSA and said that he had been privately counseled by Gerald.

*Another, a young mother, testified about her multiple placements. Wells asked her: Why would you need to move from one placement? "The environment. I don't want my son growing up in a not so good neighborhood witht he drama, the fighting. It's just a lot.You all could have helped me by giving me moral support..It's actually on me. You all helped me..It was just me. I had just too much on my load. It was just me."

*Another young woman testified about the staff at her old group home. The counselors would yell at kids, make fun of them, share confidential information about other girls in the house, threaten to cut off their allowances. In another home, the staff spent a lot of time gossiping about the residents.

*In an independent living program, a woman tesetified: "I received a lot of services however it was really up and down," she said, explaining that her social worker had too big a caseload to give her much focused attention. She left the system at 21, a single mother. "I had no preparation," she said. "I currently live on my own and it's not easy."

*A teenager testified that he had several relatives that wanted to take him in and care for him. And yet, CFSA made it too difficult for his relatives to house him. He is now 19 and lives in a group-home type facility. He enrolled at UDC but couldn't attend classes due to finances. "I haven't had a transitional meeting with anyone," he says.

Wells took in this testimony with patience. He made sure that whatever the kids wanted to say, they had the time to say it even if they went over the time limit. He gave them words of encouragement. He seemed genuinely moved by their testimony. Gerald also seemed quite taken with the kids. He didn't just show up at the end of the hearing or sit there and play with a Blackberry. He sat through all their statements and appeared to actually be listening.

Early in Gerald's testimony he made it clear that he wants to set a high standard for his agency. Sending kids off to vocational training or college is his "baseline." He talked up a trip his agency had organized in which they would be sending 15 fostercare kids to South Africa. And he highlighted a new Office of Youth Empowerment that would be focused on addressing the needs of the city wards and helping their transition out of the system. "I know the value of Facebook," he boasted with his usual earnestness.He also stated that city wards could access his new youth-empowerment office online. Another CFSA worker stressed that they were working on developing a new Facebook page.

And yet, Gerald, when questioned by Wells, couldn't exactly say whether the city's contracted group homes and independent living facilities had working computers and an Internet connection. Nor could he say exactly how many teenagers 16 and up the agency had in its care.

What about employment for the kids that are aging out, Wells prodded. How many youth are employed between the ages of 18 to 21? "I'd like to say 100 percent," Gerald replied.

Not exactly a straight answer. The director added his own watered-down version of that goal: All the kids that are aging out must at least be aggressively moving toward employment.

Wells then praised the director for at least visiting all 33 group home and independent living facilities. "I don't believe your predecessor did that," Wells noted.

The D.C. Superior Court judge convicted Jacks on 11 of the 12 counts she faced: four counts of felony murder, four of cruelty to children, and three of first-degree premeditated murder in the deaths of her three youngest girls, Tatianna Jacks, 11, N'Kiah Fogle, 6, and Aja Fogle, 5.

The judge acquitted Jacks only of premeditated murder in the killing of her oldest daughter, Brittany, who was 16.

Over the course of two hours, Weisberg drew heavily on the evidence given by medical examiners and forensic experts, noting that their findings “were consistent that all four deaths were homicide."

But in Brittany's case, on the matter of premeditation, Weisberg cited the difficulty in determining the cause of death, saying it remained unclear whether Brittany was stabbed by Jacks or whether she had stabbed herself. Given the extent to which Jacks "tortured [Brittany] emotionally and physically,” he said, she could have committed suicide.

Weisberg said Jacks had proved herself conscious of guilt, in both word and conduct: She intentionally obstructed law enforcement officials when they came to her house and discovered the bodies in January of last year. She intentionally created the impression that the house had been abandoned; she stopped using the front door and allowed the mail to pile up.

Jacks sat expressionless as the verdict was delivered. In fact, it was Weisberg who sat with his head in his hands as the crowd filed out of the courtroom. Assistant U.S. Attorney Deborah Sines described the case as “very sad.”

Defense attorney Peter Krauthamer reiterated that he had not pursued an insanity defense at Jacks's insistence, but declined to comment on why he decided to make a last-minute appeal on the insanity issue yesterday.

"I feel bad for Miss Jacks," he said. "She is looking at life in jail.”

Krauthamer said he plans to appeal.

Sentencing has been set for Oct. 16.

Weisberg convicted Jacks on four counts of felony murder in the girls' deaths. Weisberg also found Jacks guilty of first-degree premeditated murder in the deaths of the three youngest girls but acquitted her on the premeditated murder of her oldest daughter. She also was found guilty on lesser charges, including child cruelty.

No word yet on what happened with yesterday's last-minute insanity appeal. More forthcoming.

Both sides exchanged final volleys about the reliability of forensic evidence and the credentials of witnesses. Neither side mentioned the central question: the lack of an insanity plea.

Admittedly, insanity pleas rarely result in acquittal. One study in the '90s found that just 1 percent of defendants use them, and only a quarter of those are successful. But with no insanity plea, the defense was left scraping together a few tenuous arguments. In his 90-minute closing argument, Defense Attorney Peter Krauthamer summed the case up as follows: "There are a lot of things that don't make sense, but we don't have to explain them."

The prosecution had failed to meet its burden of proof, he said; the forensic scientists "lacked scientific rigor" and their accounts were riddled with inconsistencies and discrepancies.

Krauthamer went on to claim that the infamous argument heard through the wall before 16-year old Brittany Jacks, the oldest of the four children Jacks stands accused of killing, disappeared in early April 2007 was a typical mother-daughter tiff.

If there was neglect – and Krauthamer conceded there was – there was no child abuse, he insisted. The children were perfectly happy. Neighbors who testified otherwise were obviously driven by some personal vendetta. Jacks didn't try to isolate the children. She didn't starve them. She just couldn't pay the bills.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Jackson, who presented the prosecution's closing argument, offered a less charitable description of Jacks' home. She called it a "prison of torture" presided over by a calculating mother. Jackson described Jacks as a systematic, methodical killer of her own children who took them out of school, and isolated them from friends and family, and lied to anybody who stopped by to ask about their well-being.

"This is exactly what nightmares are made of...but they didn't wake from it," Jackson told Judge Frederick H. Weisberg.

Weisberg alone will decide the verdict. A decision could come as early as tomorrow.

The judge rejected Krauthamer’s claim that there was no evidence to support the twelve charges against Jacks, who is accused of killing her four daughters. The charges include premeditated first-degree murder and cruelty to children.

Krauthamer spent Friday afternoon working to discredit State Prosecutor Deborah Sines’ forensic evidence. It was his last chance; closing arguments in the trial will be Monday.

For most of the two-and-a-half hour court session Krauthamer did his best to discredit the prosecution’s last witness. He grilled forensic anthropologist Dr. William Rodriguez, doing his best to make Rodriguez admit that there was no way to confirm what appeared to be strangulation and stab wounds on the children’s bodies.

Krauthamer used passages from medical textbooks Rodiguez had co-authored to suggest that the marks around the necks of the three younger children, which the prosecution claimed were impressions left by whatever was used to strangle them, could also have been left by their t-shirts after they were already dead. Bodies expand as they decompose, Krauthamer noted, and t-shirts do not.

The defense attorney also claimed there was no proof that the punctures found in 16-year-old Brittany Jacks’ abdomen were what killed her. Rodriguez, pressed by Krauthamer, said the punctures were likely stab wounds, but that he could “not say that they were the absolute cause of death.”

After the prosecution’s final witness left the stand, Krauthamer called his own less than impressive witnesses. First, he had forensic examiner Herald A. Deadman cast doubt on whether the ligatures presented by the prosecution had been used to strangle the three youngest children.

Next, Krauthamer did his best to guide Public Defenders Service Staff Investigator Timothy Ruck into saying that, when he examined the Jacks’ house back in January 2008, the skylight over young Brittney Jacks’ body was un-shuttered, allowing sunshine to stream in and accelerate the decomposition. But Ruck failed to follow the script.

At first he said he thought it had been, but then—under Sines’ cross-examination—he acknowledged he couldn't be sure because it was a long time ago.

Worse, in a telltale blunder that threatened to overshadow his testimony, defense witness Ruck said he’d gone to Jacks’ house in 2008 “to examine the scene of the crime”—a somewhat unfortunate remark, given the defense’s claim that the four children had died in their sleep.

But enough about rule-makers.  All the rule-breakers, in DC and beyond, are after the jump.

• As countless politicians have proven, adultery is not an excuse to give up your elected office.  John Ensign agrees, regardless of his parents' $96,000 payoff of his mistress – he plans to seek reelection when his term runs out in 2012.  Could he still be holding out for the White House?  Only time will tell.

• The judge hearing the Banita Jacks case was treated to an earful during the second day of listening to her eight-hour police interrogation.  During the recording, Jacks admitted that she believed her three daughters were possessed by demons but would rise from the dead when the demons left their bodies.  She also contends that all four of her daughters died in their sleep, as a result of the demons, a fact that is inconsistent with the evidence gathered at the crime scene.

• A House panel investigating the Red Line crash heard testimony yesterday, with the majority of witnesses asking for money to fix the flawed transit system.  John Catoe, Metro's General Manager detailed the precautions he has taken since the crash but admits he still does not know what to do about the malfunctioning circuit between Takoma and Fort Totten that presumably caused the collision.

• Violent crimes are being reported with more frequency, in what are thought to be safe areas of the city.  The Borderstan blog reports an armed assault and a robbery in the 1400 blocks of Corcoran and S Streets NW, respectively, in addition to the armed robbery and several burglaries that occurred in the first week of July.  Meanwhile, in Georgetown, a young woman was sexually assaulted in her home, less than two blocks from the main gates of the university.  Neighbors and students are concerned, not only for their safety, but because very few people have been informed about the attack.

So keep your eyes and ears open, City Desk readers.  Rules and laws are for following, not breaking.

The plaintiff's, Children's Rights, a New York-based advocacy law firm which specializes in exposing troubled child welfare agencies and turning them around, was in its element. The District's lawyers were no match for Children's Rights founder and executive director Marcia Lowry. While both sides disputed whether or not the agency met those benchmarks—with the city attorney lamely complaining that some of the benchmarks were too difficult to meet—Hogan seemed most annoyed with point No. 4 of his stipulated order. It stated that the city must consult with the assigned court monitor as well as Lowry's group during the selection of a new CFSA director.

Lowry had contended that Children's Rights was not consulted. Hogan stated from the bench that the city had "blatantly" failed to comply with this aspect of his court order.

This evening, Loose Lips (aka Mike DeBonis) reached AG Peter Nickles and asked him to comment on Hogan's statements. Let's just say Nickles argument was less than legalistic. His response was all about feelings.

Nickles: "I know that I personally consulted with both [Court Monitor] Judith Meltzer and plaintiff's counsel on the very same day. I asked, is this sufficient consultation?" Nickles says that Meltzer thought it was enough to meet the court order. Lowry disagreed.She said she was notified of Dr. Roque Gerald's selection the day before the official announcement was made.

"She said she was opposed, that [this] wasn't sufficient consultation," Nickles recalls. "There's no way of consulting in advance with the plaintiffs, because they don't agree with anything we're doing."

Hmm. Shouldn't you consult in advance with the plaintiffs because a federal judge ordered you to? How hard would it have been to notify Lowry a week prior to Gerald's appointment?

This morning in U.S. District Court, Judge Thomas F. Hogan took up the on-going legal battle over the District's Child and Family Services Agency. At issue was whether or not the agency could be held in contempt. Hogan devoted much of his consternation on the how the District went about picking Dr. Roque Gerald (pictured) to head up CFSA.

At the time of Dr. Gerald's selection, City Desk questioned whether the District violated Hogan's order. We wrote:

"Last fall, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan issued an order stipulating a series of directives. One of those stipulations involved the future selection of a permanent director at CFSA. On Tuesday, Fenty announced his selection of interim director Roque Gerald to take over in a permanent capacity. Hogan had stipulated that “the Court Monitor and Plaintiffs will be included in the selection process for the permanent Director.'...

The Plaintiffs–Children’s Rights–say they were never consulted during the selection process. “We were not included in the process and I think given the problems the agency has had over the last several years the choice of the director was critically important,” says Children’s Rights Executive Director Marcia Robinson Lowry. She adds that this violated the court order."

While Gerald has gotten high praise from child advocates and has definitively saved the agency from the fallout over the Jacks case, Hogan suggested today that the city had indeed violated his order. Hogan dubbed the city's following of his order a "blatant" failure. Maybe he too doesn't like Fenty's secretive m.o.

The bulk of the nearly two hour proceedings over the contempt motion did not center on Gerald's selection. Instead, Children's Rights and the city's attorneys debated whether or not CFSA had made significant progress in helping kids in care. No kids testified. It was all lawyers debating the whether or not the agency had cleared various benchmarks.

Children's Rights' Lowry showed charts proving that the agency had failed to meet the majority of those benchmarks which covered everything from staff training to placing kids in foster homes. She told the court that the agency had "not yet reached a level where they are protecting children."

Lowry provided a staggering timeline of accepted benchmarks and the agency's slow and often negligent response dating back several years. She stated that CFSA had only met 15 out of the 68 benchmarks. This was just a mere snapshot of the agency's problems which were detailed in a recent court monitor's report.

Lowry's testimony touched on the court monitor's findings that fewer and fewer kids are leaving the system through adoption. The monitor also reported that a huge number of children and youth are living in unlicensed foster homes or facilities.

"As of January 31, 2009, there were 1575 children in foster home placements. Of the 1574 children, 74 (5 percent) children were placed in foster homes that exceeded their licensed capacity. Additionally, there were 178 children placed in group homes as of January 31, 2009. Of the 178 children, 39 (22%) children were placed in group homes that exceeded their licensed capacity of 8 children...."

The monitor also reported that of the 1007 foster homes where children were placed, 10 percent of those homes did not have current and valid licenses. Prior to the hearing, Children's Rights had flagged other aspects of the monitor's report—chief among them was the agency's alleged overuse of group homes and residential treatment facilities as housing options for children in care as well as how quick the agency investigated neglect/abuse allegations.

Again, this was a short hearing. City Attorney Ellen Efros kept her points short. She emphasized that the agency had made progress but that the benchmarks were too old and too tough to actually meet. She argued that the standards are lower in other cities—in other words, why can't we just lower our standards? Efros, though, could not cite any other jurisdiction's standards.

At one point early on in Efros' testimony, Hogan interrupted her and sounded an exasperated note: "We've been at this since 1989."

Hogan was referring to the agency's rollercoaster history—the inception of the class-action case, subsequent receivership and bumpy road since the city agency shedded court oversight in 2003. Hogan did not at all seemed pleased with Efros' attempts to jettison benchmarks that didn't fit her theory of a fit agency and denounce other benchmarks as too harsh.

"It seems...oversight by the judiciary is important," Hogan later stated.

Still, Hogan declined to rule on the contempt motion. He says he is keeping it under consideration. The next hearing is set for July 20.

As he left the courtroom, Gerald had no comment.

Prior to the hearing, Lowry talked about the problems with the city warehousing kids. "The placement process in the District is extremely hit or miss," she said. "There is not a real effort to develop the kinds of resources that the kids need and certainly there’s a very slipshod process about where the kids should go. There’s no question, there are too few appropriate foster homes and too few foster homes all together."

Lowry says the city needs to invest in a real plan. "I don't think there's anything approaching long-term planning," she explains. "One thing that's so alarming about the course that they are now on—they don't have any long term plans for the agency and certainly their aspirations for the agency are very insufficient."

In late August, Gerald moved to reduce the backlog. By the end of the year, the backlog had been all but finished as an on-going issue. At a recent conference, Gerald admitted that at least a few CFSA staffers celebrated with a small party. It had been a tough year. He also warmly cheered on his staff. This is a man who loves what he does and loves his people.

I've heard that Gerald had done well in his acting post—boosting morale and reaching out to the area's advocates and non-profits. The agency had gone through a significant turnover and still faces huge issues in terms of providing consistent care (there's still the pending federal court case). But at least from what I've heard people are hopeful that Gerald is the right person for the job.

"There are many areas of practice where the District continues to fall far short of the standards required in the LaShawn Amended Implementation Plan (AIP). Additionally, as is documented
in this report, there are multiple examples of inconsistent performance over time, suggesting that long-term sustainability of progress has not been achieved. The Quality Service Reviews
(QSRs), which assess the quality of case practice, continue to show inconsistent results."

The problems that the report highlights are significant.

After giving the report a quick read, we provide a few of the problem areas. Here is what the report states:

*Investigations into allegations of child abuse and/or neglected must be initiated within 48 hours. This means seeing the child or making a good faith effort to see the child within that time frame. CFSA has only met that 48 hour threshold 75 percent of the time.

*Investigations into abuse and neglect must be completed within 30 days. CFSA was only meeting that time threshold in 17 percent of its cases. It has showed improvement. But still the agency is not in the clear here. They have met that threshold 73 percent of the time for investigations opened in January of this year.

*No case worker shall handle more than than 12 cases at any given time. Twelve percent of CFSA's social workers had more than 12 cases. Nine percent had more than 15. The highest caseload found: 21 cases with one worker.

*No cases shall go unassigned for more than five business days. The monitor's report states that there were 35 cases that had not been assigned after five days.

*The monitor found that the number of employees overseeing cases–making sure they are done correctly–is insufficient for proper quality assurance.

Why is this important? The monitor notes that there were 69 children who had been the subject of four or more abuse/neglect cases in the past year, there were 223 children who had been placed in four different homes in the last year, and 83 children placed in facilities more than 100 miles from D.C.

The next hearing in federal court over CFSA is this Thursday.

The IG's office provides a timeline of events. Here's what caught my eye:

• May 1, 2007: A CFSA "Investigations Worker" and a D.C. cop visit the Jacks house. No one answers the door. But old junk mail is observed—the same junk mail from a previous visit—in front of the door. Also still at the door: a letter previously left by the CFSA worker.
• May 2, 2007: The CFSA worker goes to the house. Again, no one answers the door.
• May 16, 2007: Investigations Worker erroneously believes that the family has relocated to Charles County, Maryland. This came from another government worker. "Therefore recommends to his supervisor that the investigation be closed," the report states. "CFSA closes the case, and the Investigations Worker then sends a fax to Charles County Child Protective Services..."

By Aug. 25, D.C. Water and Sewer Authority disconnects service to the Jacks house; Washington Gas disconnects service as well. On Sept. 5, Pepco disconnects service.

On Jan. 9, U.S. Marshals begin eviction at the house, where they discover the bodies of Jacks' children.

The IG's office rips the CFSA worker:

The CFSA Investigations Worker told the team that had he been given more time, he might have been able to make contact with the family. The CFSA Investigations Worker recommended to his supervisor close the case 20 days after receipt of the hotline call to CFSA even though he had 30 days to complete the investigation.

Also looks like the D.C. police failed big time as well:

On April 30 between 11:54-11:57 a.m., an officer arrived at the Jacks house and tells the "dispatcher that he is available for assignment because 'there's an adult on the scene.' After being reminded by the dispatcher that the mother has withdrawn the children from school and has 'mental problems,' and that he is there to check on their welfare, Officer #1 says, 'The kids seem fine to me, ma'am.'

But there's a catch: The officer never sees the kids. According to the report, a police memo dated Jan. 13, 2008, states that when the officers arrived on the scene, the person that answered the door–presumably Banita Jacks–refused to allow them to check on the children.

Last night, City Desk got a bit of news on the triple homicide case—that the family did have contact with social services in 2006. Today, the Washington Post has an in-depth look at the problems between Erika Peters, her children and her live-in boyfriend.

The live-in boyfriend, Joseph Randolph Mays, was charged in the murders Saturday night.

The Post reports that Kimberly Trimble, Peters' sister, notified authorities about Joseph Mays' alleged abuse of one of the children: "Trimble said that about two years ago, she contacted the District's Child and Family Services Agency to report that Mays had shaken his daughter. A year after that, she said, she warned the principal at Holy Redeemer Catholic School to look out for marks on her sister's children. She said she did not remember what became of either warning."

This brings us back to CFSA and its involvement. Today we reached Attorney General Peter Nickles for a little more clarification.

Nickles says that CFSA received a hotline call in October 2006 concerning Erika Peters and her family. The call was for potential neglect or abuse. "The family engaged with CFSA in treatment," Nickles says. He refused to elaborate on the nature of the treatment.

"In 2007, a little more than a year after, the view was on behalf of the agency [that] the family was stable," Nickles says.

"Since that time, there has been no call, no indication" that there were problems in the Peters home at the Carver Terrace Apartments, Nickles added.

*photo of Erika Peters courtesy of WJLA.