Gun restrictions passed by District lawmakers in the wake of the Supreme Court's 2008 Heller v. District of Columbia decision are constitutional, a federal trial judge has ruled.

The plaintiffs—which include Dick Heller, the retired security guard whose name tops the landmark case—challenged the constitutionality of city laws implementing a registration process and restricting assault weapons and extended magazines.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina did not buy what they were selling. In a decision handed down today [PDF], Urbina roundly rejected their arguments and granted summary judgment to the city.

"While the Court recognized [in Heller] that the Second Amendment protects a natural right of an individual to keep and bear arms in the home in defense of self, family and property, it cautioned that that right is not unlimited," Urbina wrote.

That said, Urbina added that "no clear directive is contained in the Heller decision itself" as to what standard of legal scrutiny gun laws should be subjected to vis-a-vis the Heller-defined "right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home."

In the case of gun registration, Urbina found that that part of the law does indeed infringe upon the right to use guns in "defense of hearth and home," but he found that registration furthered a "important governmental interest." Citing deeply from the committee report prepared by the D.C. Council's judiciary panel, Urbina writes that "the Council provided ample evidence of the ways in which the registration requirements will effectuate the goal of promoting public safety."

Plaintiffs' arguments that the Supreme Court meant to legalize assault weapons and large ammo magazines didn't even get that far. "The plaintiffs assert that requiring an individual to pause to reload a firearm after discharging ten rounds of ammunition, like the invalidated trigger lock regulation, 'makes it impossible for citizens to use [firearms] for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional,'" Urbina writes. "This argument borders on the absurd."

Again, Urbina paid deference to city lawmakers: "The Council held extensive hearings and heard from numerous witnesses on both sides of the gun control divide before determining that assault weapons and large capacity ammunition feeding devices constitute weapons that are not in common use, are not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes and are 'dangerous and unusual,'" Urbina writes. "The court does not see fit to override that decision."

UPDATE, 3:25 P.M.: At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson, who shepherded the gun bill through the council, reacts: "I'm pleased with the decision. I am pleased that the court recognized recognized the public safety implications of this gun-control debate."

Mendelson says he expects ongoing appeals from the Heller plaintiffs. "Their scheme all along has been to strike down gun control. They would have virtually no gun control, and by virtually, I mean maybe they'd not allow bazookas. That doesn't lead to a safe society, particularly the nation's capital."

In a release, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence also lauded the decision: "Once again, the courts have rejected the gun lobby’s attempt to transform the core right to guns in the home for self-defense into a mandate for their ‘any gun, anywhere’ agenda," says the release.

UPDATE, 5 P.M.: Stephen P. Halbrook, the attorney for the Heller plaintiffs and a veteran of 2nd Amendment cases, says an appeal is "highly likely."

Halbrook takes issue with two aspects of Urbina's decision: First, his decision to apply a standard of review to the new D.C. laws that is "inconsistent with the original Heller decision by the Supreme Court." Second, he says, is that Urbina over-relied on the D.C. Council's committee report and "simply ignored the evidence we presented" challenging its findings.

The case would head to a three-judge panel of the District's federal appeals court. Lurking in the background is the possibility that another Supreme Court case, McDonald v. City of Chicago, could further define the limits of constitutional gun regulation. That case was argued earlier this month, and a decision is almost certain to be handed down by the time Urbina's decision is reviewed.

UPDATE, 5:22 P.M.: Attorney General Peter Nickles offered the following statement: "I am gratified that the Court repeatedly recognized the reasonable and conscientious efforts that the Council and the Mayor made to strike the proper balance between addressing the legitimate rights of firearm owners, and taking every reasonable action to assure the safety of the District’s residents and visitors."

His boss, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, said, "Today’s ruling affirms our efforts to ensure the highest possible standards of safety for District residents."

In a 23-page decision [PDF] granting the Board of Elections and Ethics' motion for summary judgment, Macaluso found that ballot initiatives are indeed subject to the city's Human Right Act, and that the initiative filed by the Stand4Marriage coalition to define marriage as between a man and a woman violates that act.

Additionally, Macaluso addressed whether the landmark 1995 Dean v. District case, which prohibited gay marriages at the time, still applies. The D.C. Council, she writes, "changed the landscape Dean surveyed" and thus "Dean is no longer controlling."

That man was David Rosenbaum, the New York Times reporter who was assaulted on a Chevy Chase street in January 2006 and later died of his injuries. City medics initially diagnosed Rosenbaum, 63, as being drunk, and Walker, according to the findings of a inspector general's investigation, chose to take him to Howard University Hospital rather than the much closer Sibley Memorial Hospital. She told her crewmate that was "because she needed to run her errands in that neighborhood, including going to the ATM and going by her house." The delay in his care, among other medic errors, contributed to his death.

After the investigation wrapped up in June 2006, the city moved to fire Walker. But it was already too late, it turns out.

The court today upheld an earlier administrative ruling that Walker's firing had violated city rules that place a 90-business-day limit on how long officials can wait after they "knew or should have known of the act or occurrence allegedly constituting cause" for a reprimand or firing.

According to the administrative judge and now a three-judge D.C. Court of Appeals panel, that 90-day period should have began when it was first alleged that Walker had broken department rules by directing the ambulance to go to Howard rather than Sibley. That happened in a round of initial interviews on Jan. 18, 2006, meaning that the city had until May 26 of that year to fire Walker. Instead, Walker wasn't fired until June 16, the day after the IG report was released.

The city argued that because there were some inconsistencies in those initial statements of Walker and another person in her ambulance crew, the 90-day rule should not have kicked in until the investigation's conclusion. But Senior Judge William C. Pryor found that "there is no substantial conflict between the respective statements" and thus the 90-day window began well before that.

Pryor wrote that the D.C. Council "has consistently articulated a policy of expeditious handling of adverse actions" and that it "did not intend that an agency should embark, free of any deadline, on an investigative period."

Attorney General Peter Nickles reacted to the ruling this afternoon in an interview with NewsChannel 8's Bruce DePuyt. "This is a very disappointing case," he said. "Our view was, when a individual is dissembling...we should only take action when we gathered all the facts. We'll fight back, but this was a setback."

Nickles added that the ruling "may be the last word on this matter" but he hinted that some fix for future circumstances may be in the offing.

In his appearance this morning on WRC-TV, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty addressed the gun allegations against Gilbert Arenas:

"Do I think he should ever play again in Washington?...I dunno whether or not. I guess it's a little bit too early to say. I think a lot of what people will think about this incident is, is he truly remorseful? Does he want to change? Does he want to make sure it doesn't happen again? I think that's always one of the biggest tests and standards for whether someone should be allowed to do something again. People deserve second chances, but they've really got to want them and desire them. It's too early to know all that."

”I was just distracted, frankly.”

—Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry, Feb. 10

When it came out in January that Barry had failed to file tax returns for the eighth time in nine years, it was a classic shock-but-no-surprise. After all, the guy's been the Teflon Taxpayer, repeatedly avoiding jail time for his lax attitude toward his 1040. But this time, the flouting was so blatant that everyone expected U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson to finally sink her teeth into the mayor-for-life. But then Barry produced the deus ex machina, revealing that he was ailing from a failed kidney—hence the "distraction." After transplant surgery, Barry was hauled before Robinson, who took a more skeptical view toward prosecutors than the guy who'd failed to pay his taxes. Barry got off with an extension of his probation, but no jail time.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

More from LL's Quotes of 2009

"I don’t understand your approach today, coming in and throwing down the gauntlet."

—U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan, Feb. 6

As Peter Nickles pushed out Linda Singer as attorney general in early 2008, he privately agitated on a matter he knew intimately: how many city functions have long been in the hands of federal judges, not the mayor. Nickles, after all, had helped put them there, suing the city up and down during the Barry years. But now—emboldened by evolving opinions on institutional reform litigation and a recent Supreme Court decision—he has a different perspective: It's time to take the agencies back. But is it? Nickles started the effort with the Child and Family Services Agency—a strange pick, considering it was only a year removed from a devastating failure, the Banita Jacks tragedy. His move to take back CFSA earned the above rebuke from federal judge Hogan, the agency's judicial overseer. But that hasn't chastened Nickles; as the year waned, he filed flurries of motions in cases involving special education, mental health, and more. Nickles' project is certainly a work in progress: He appears to be on the cusp of returning control of the District's school transportation system to mayoral control—a win to be sure. But control of CFSA seems to be a pipe dream, and another federal judge, Ellen Segal Huvelle, scolded Nickles in December over his move to dismiss a 33-year-old case involving developmental disability services. And then there's Pershing Park: One set of plaintiffs are seeking a consent decree covering police practices, raising the prospect that Nickles might end his tenure with more court oversight, not less.

More from LL's Quotes of 2009

Today, Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff denied a request from the Washington Teachers' Union to reinstate the fired employees, including 266 WTU members, pending the outcome of a lawsuit.

The employees were laid off by DCPS as part of a "reduction in force" necessitated by budget pressures; WTU claimed that the budget pressures were a ruse that were forced by DCPS overhiring teachers earlier in the year.

Bartnoff found the union's argument lacking on several fronts.

For one: The current teachers contract, she found, "provides no basis for any challenge to the merits of a [reduction in force], the procedures used in conducting a RIF, or the validity of a RIF as applied to any particular employee."

Bartnoff writes that she "recognizes that questions could be raised about particular RIF decisions, in terms of the position that was eliminated, the individual whose employment was terminated, or both." But bad individual firing decisions "do not establish that the RIF was a pretext for a mass discharge." Individual employees who were wronged are free to take their case to the city's Office of Employee Appeals.

Bartnoff, examining the merits of the WTU's case, handed the union what amounts to a legal death blow, "finding that the plaintiff has shown virtually no likelihood of success on the merits of its claim that the RIF was not really a RIF and instead should be considered a mass discharge."

"At most, the plaintiff showed that a large number of teachers were hired in the spring and summer of 2009, which DCPS does not dispute," Bartnoff writes. "But the plaintiff presented no evidence to refute the evidence presented by DCPS that its budget included those new teachers at the time they were hired, as well as the returning teachers, that DCPS was planning for the new school year based on the budget that was passed in early June and its budget agreement with the Council Chairman, and that the RIF was instituted in response to the $21 million budget reduction enacted by the City Council on July 31."

U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman's ruling this afternoon overturns an Oct. 9 decision by Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson to allow Syume to live in a halfway house pending trial. Prosecutors had asked that Syume be kept in jail due in part to comments he'd made on tape purportedly threatening the life of Abdulaziz Kamus, named in a Washington Post report as a FBI mole. On the tape, Syume can be heard saying Kamus will be "permanently eliminated" and that "they will come to him."

Robinson didn't see the comments as necessitating Syume's captivity; Friedman did. "The tape is clear that the intent was to kill Mr. Kamus," he said.

Prosecutors, in court today, told Friedman that Kamus and his family have been placed in protective custody because of the threats.

First came revelations that the man who bribed D.C. Council aide Ted Loza was none other than Abdul Kamus (pictured), a man this paper once hailed as the "de facto leader of D.C.’s Ethiopian community." Kamus' links to Loza's boss, Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham, are deep.

From the 2004 WCP article by Jonathan O'Connell:

On Sept. 16, [2004,] Kamus held a press conference in front of Dukem, a U Street Ethiopian restaurant, to request better police protection for African-owned businesses on the thoroughfare....At 1:30 p.m., a cream-colored Volkswagen Beetle convertible pulled up and Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham emerged, sporting a slight sunburn.

Graham had just returned from a five-week trip to Ethiopia, for which Kamus had arranged his travel and lodging. Graham, as well as his director of multicultural policy and community relations, Ted Loza, had spent the trip gathering a better understanding of Ethiopian culture. Upon following Kamus to the podium, Graham said “Tena yestelgn”—a greeting in Amharic, Ethiopia’s primary language. Kamus and the restaurant owners beamed.

Recently, Loza said he had never heard from an African-immigrant advocate before Kamus arrived. “He came to D.C., he asked the right questions, and [he] isn’t afraid to ask,” Loza said.

Kamus’ lobbying of Graham has paid off in big ways for the Ethiopian community. In March, after Metro fired about 30 Ethiopian parking-lot attendants after discovering millions of dollars in parking revenue was missing, Kamus complained to Graham, a Metro board member. Graham forcefully defended the fired Ethiopians at a press conference.

With Graham’s support, Kamus has tackled a variety of issues related to Ethiopian welfare in D.C. One of his greatest accomplishments was the April passage of the Language Access Act. Submitted by Graham, the law requires the city to provide translation services in Amharic. Kamus has since lobbied for the city to create a mayoral commission to serve the African refugee community, noting that the mayor currently has an nine-member Office on Latino Affairs and a five-member Office on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs.

Since then, Kamus (pronounced CAH-moo) has maintained his preeminent place in the city's Ethiopian culture. And, with taxi driving being a central part of that culture, it's no surprise he'd have a hand in that business.

Then there's Yitbarek Syume, who owns and operates both Jet Cab and United Fleet Management, a company that installs taximeters and does mechanic and body work for independent drivers. That outfit was named last week in a search warrant served to search Loza's office. This afternoon, LL stopped by UFM's headquarters in Eckington to find the premises vacant save for a single mechanic, who said Syume had left for the day.

But these business connections aren't exclusively Ethiopian: Washington Post reporter Del Wilber reports this afternoon that 'FBI agents Friday morning raided the home of Causton Toney in Northwest Washington, according to a law enforcement source.'

Toney, a D.C. Taxi Commission chair, is a partner with Syume in UFM and Jet Cab. He has not been charged.

File photo by Darrow Montgomery

Mallios was first among a relatively small cadre of D.C. attorneys representing restaurants, bars, clubs, and hotels in front of city liquor authorities; his services helped myriad establishments navigate an arcane licensing process and fend off countless neighbors and advisory neighborhood commissions.

He had been battling cancer for more than five years, says his law partner Steve O'Brien. Mallios had been active and practicing before his illness suddenly worsened a week ago.

O'Brien, a longtime competitor of Mallios' before their practices recently merged, says he cut a swath in the legal community that will not soon be filled. "Dmitri was my partner for three years; he was my friend for 30 years. Everything I know about alcoholic beverage law I learned from Dimitri. He is irreplaceable."

Legendary trial lawyer Jacob Stein counted Mallios as a friend for 40 years. "Personally, he had a great sense of humor," he says, and as a lawyer, "he was practical, sensible, empirical, and had no traces of ideology....A client who retained him would get the best service on offer."

"He was splendid with clients," Stein added, "and the clients are often very difficult to deal with."

Laurie Collins, a former ABC board member and a fellow parishioner at St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral remembers him as "a sweet, sweet man and a good lawyer."

"He was loved by not only the business community, which he mostly represented," she says, "but I think the community was very fond of him. He was very fair."

Andrew J. Kline, general counsel to the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington and another titan of the liquor bar, remembers him as "someone who was respected by his clients, his colleagues....He knew how to represent folks in the hospitality industry and represent them well."

The "dean" label, incidentally, was well earned—Mallios was referred to as such in a footnote to a D.C. Council committee report on a late '90s rewrite of the city alcoholic beverage laws. LL will also add that Mallios' checkbook will be missed by city officeholders—he was a frequent donor to local candidates.

But his friends will miss him more.

Says Kline, "I loved him. He was my friend, and we'll all miss him a lot."

Adds Stein, "I really, really miss him. He is a part of my own existence. There are certain things that he and I knew about that we would talk about, and now have I no one to talk about them with."

UPDATE, 2:49 P.M.: Lynne Breaux, RAMW president, notes that Mallios was recipient of her organization's Duke Zeibert Capital Achievement Award this year. That honor goes to "an individual whose dedication and leadership have helped transform Washington’s restaurant scene into today’s vibrant and thriving industry."

His write-up in the awards program: "Known as the dean of Washington’s Alcoholic Beverage Control attorneys, Dimitri Mallios is also called THE man to know…and the man to thank when you order your next margarita. Dimitri grew up in the restaurant business in DC – Trio, one of Washington’s classics – and attended GWU, undergraduate and law, giving him a distinct advantage of native regional knowledge. As described by the Washington Business Journal, Dimitri is “soft spoken but effective. Direct but respectful. Tough but good hearted.” A rare individual and an exceptional lawyer, we toast Dimitri Mallios and his significant contribution to the restaurant industry in the Washington Metropolitan area." More here.

UPDATE, 9/21: Restaurateur and impresario Joe Englert offers a less reverent but plenty heartfelt tribute to Mallios at Young & Hungry.

Yesterday, an arbitrator ruled that the D.C. police department's "All Hands on Deck" initiative violated the officers' contract and must be stopped. Chief Cathy L. Lanier promptly announced that the show must go on, indicating her intention to continue with AHOD weekends scheduled for November and December.

At this point, one cannot be surprised by the city opting for a take-no-prisoners strategy toward litigation. That's par for the course under bulldog Attorney General Peter J. Nickles.

But the decision to continue with AHODs during the appeal process stands to incur tremendous costs to the District in a time when city budgeting is under immense pressures. And not just in legal fees: In his decision yesterday, arbitrator John C. Truesdale awarded overtime pay to officers who have participated in this year's AHODs.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation provided by the police union indicates that overtime for each AHOD weekend could reach $1.5 million. (That's an extra $17.50 per hour for the 3,600 sworn patrol officers making an average of $35 per hour working three extra eight-hour shifts.) The department declined to provide its own figures, though police spokesperson Traci Hughes does say "it is a substantial amount."

Hughes says that Lanier took the costs into account when deciding to continue the program. "All of the ramifications are being considered," she says.

Let's review those ramifications: Taking the union's numbers, the arbitrator's decision already means the city is potentially on the hook for $10.6 million in unbudgeted costs. And now, by vowing to continue with the two additional AHODs, Lanier is possibly drawing another $3 million from a police budget recently trimmed by the D.C. Council.

Certainly the city hopes to prevail on appeals to the Public Employee Relations Board and, if necessary, D.C. Superior Court. Success, however, is far from assured. Are AHOD's crimefighting and public relations benefits worth risking $3 million in taxpayer funds in the meantime?

LL asked At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson, who oversees the police budget, if the cops can afford that kind of money. "Sure, if we give up something else," he says, adding that "presumably everything else is what they need."

If the ruling is upheld, and the city's on the hook for $10 million or more in overtime, he says, "That's going to be a serious problem."

Mendelson says he's "not an AHOD hater," but questions the wisdom of continuing the program in light of the arbitration ruling: "I've never had much patience for Peter Nickles' strategy of pursuing an action that has been struck down assuming there is an appeal that he will win. So far the record of success is thin....Rather than just add to the cost out of stubbornness, Mr. Nickles ought to be a little more careful and counsel suspending the program pending the appeal."

Nickles did not immediately reply for a request for comment.

The police union chief, Kristopher Baumann, prefers to focus on concerns beyond the price tag: "It's not only fiscally irresponsible, but just think about the message it sends to citizens and criminals, that the police chief and the attorney general don't respect the rule of law."

Judge Brook Hedge granted a preliminary injunction yesterday halting the sale, scheduled for today through Friday, as part of a lawsuit filed against the city by Aeon Financial LLC, billed as "one of the nation’s leading purchasers and servicers of delinquent municipal property tax liens."

LL has yet been unable to obtain a copy of Aeon's complaint, but Hedge's injunction order indicates some sort of dispute over whether properties with outstanding tax bills of less than $1,200 would actually been put up for sale tomorrow or not. Aeon seems to want them sold; the District does not. Hedge noted that the District provided no explanation of why this is so.

UPDATE, 3:30 P.M.: So here's the deal: Aeon's business is buying up a lot of properties at tax sales—last year, it spent $4.6 million buying 445 District properties, which is 35 percent of all the properties sold. This year, the company alleges in its complaint, the city has decided not to sell properties that owe less that $1,200 in taxes. That's a problem, Aeon says, because the city is required by law to sell all properties that haven't paid their taxes—and because the city isn't following the law, Aeon argues, any delinquent property owner who did have his property sold can ask a court to declare the entire auction illegitimate. That would be bad for Aeon.

UPDATE, 5:15 P.M.:David Umansky, a spokesperson for OTR, says that the office decided not to sell the sub-$1,200 properties to improve the efficiency of the auction. Last year, he points out, the auction did not include properties owing less than $1,000. (See Michael Neibauer's Examiner story yesterday for more.) "We think everyone agrees that the city should not be in the business of seizing properties for just a few hundred dollars," Umansky says. The city, he says, plans to appeal Hedge's ruling.

The District lost.

The implications of the ruling are narrow but sharp: It pretty much puts the kibosh on any attempts, short of congressional action, to expand the Office of the Attorney General's prosecutorial bailiwick beyond the smattering of low-rent misdemeanors it already handles.

As Scarcella noted in his original story back in June, the dispute pitted Attorney General Peter Nickles and his congressionally castrated office against the federal Department of Justice, which prosecutes the vast majority of District crimes, in a "rare public turf battle."

The conflict is rooted in the misdealings of Emerson Crawley, a D.C. Public Schools employee who stuck the city with $7,400 in bills for fancy meals that turned out not to be work-related. His bosses found out, told the U.S. attorney's office about it, but the federal prosecutors decided in 2007 not to bring charges—apparently the offense was too piddling to warrant the feds' valuable time.

OAG decided they wanted a crack at Crowley anyway, and filed charges against him under the District's "false claims" statute. Back in 1997, when the D.C. Council passed that law, making it illegal to defraud the D.C. government, they mandated that OAG prosecute those offenses.

But Crowley had a very good lawyer who happened to have once run the city legal shop—Fred Cooke, noted for his representation of Marion Barry, was in charge back when it was called the Office of Corporation Counsel—and Cooke questioned whether OAG had the authority to press the case.

After all, under the District's home-rule charter, the feds are entitled to prosecute all crimes, save for violations of "police or municipal regulations, where the maximum punishment is a fine only or imprisonment not exceeding one year." Moreover, the D.C. Council, Scarcella notes, is "specifically prohibited from enacting any law 'relating to the duties or powers' of the U.S. attorney's office."

So Crowley's trial judge sent the matter to the appeals court. In a hearing there last June, Scarcella reported, the District argued that the restrictions on the local AG's authority ran only to laws in place prior to home rule. After that, the council can make new crimes and let OAG prosecute them. The U.S. attorney's office "argued that Congress never meant to give the D.C. Council free rein to create new crimes and assign a prosecutor."

The court didn't buy the District's arguments. If the city wants more local prosecutorial power, it's going to have to go to Congress to get it.

The weird part about all this is that the feds can allow the District to prosecute cases it doesn't want to handle. They didn't do that in this case—meaning at DOJ made an affirmative decision that Crowley shouldn't be prosecuted by themselves or anyone else.

Nobody knows why, Scarcella writes: "Federal prosecutors have not stated their reasons for declining to file charges against Crawley."

UPDATE, 5:05 P.M.: Asked why he hasn't been able to reach an agreement with the feds to prosecute the case, Nickles says, "As best as I can fathom, it's a matter of establishing jurisdictional prerogatives."

Nickles points out that the District has a pointed interest in prosecuting crimes against the government itself and seems perplexed that there would be a dispute over doing so: "It seems to me awfully strange. It seems part and parcel of the whole home rule idea."

In the wake of today's decision, by a three-judge appeals panel, Nickles says he's considering either an appeal to the full appeals court, an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, or lobbying Congress to change the law.

"We're not just going to accept it, that's for sure," he says. "To me, this is serious."

Marion Barry appeared in front of cameras this morning for the first time since his Saturday-night arrest, but that's about all he did. Longtime lawyer Fred Cooke did virtually all the talking, while Barry stood behind him in a gray suit, fedora, and paisley tie, remaining mute save for an occasional whisper in Cooke's ear.

In contrast to yesterday's presser, where spokesperson Natalie Williams spent most of the time attacking the credibility of the alleged stalkee and glorifying Barry's munificence, Cooke stuck mostly to the confines of the legal case against his client.

"Mr. Barry specifically and vehemently denies stalking anyone," Cooke said. "We believe that the charge is baseless. We believe that the charge stems from a personal relationship that has gone horribly wrong in a lot of ways and has resulted in one party to that relationship striking out at Mr. Barry and repaying him for some of his kindnesses."

OK, so maybe Cooke didn't lay completely off the smear campaign, but he mentioned the name of the woman, Donna Watts-Brighthaupt, only once, in response to a question about her name.

Instead, Cooke emphasized the possibility that this will all go away very soon: "It is our hope that a careful review of the facts and circumstances by the Office of the United States Attorney will lead that office to conclude that no charges should be formally filed or lodged against Mr. Barry," he said, adding, "It's clear there was no stalking, no coercion....These are all facts that make it very difficult for the prosecutors to have a successful prosecution for stalking."

Cooke did entertain a few questions on the details of the relationship between Barry and Watts-Brighthaupt, saying the liaison "had run its course," having lasted "at least a year, maybe 18 months" and ended "within the last month or six weeks."

He referred to "verbal confrontations" between Barry and the woman's ex-husband in the past—which is what, he says, led Barry to have him banned from a Wilson Building event last Friday. "That individual had been confrontational with Mr. Barry in the past," Cooke explained, "and Mr. Barry thought that the decorum of the event required that that sort of behavior not reoccur."

As far as the events of Saturday, Cooke confirmed that the two planned to travel to Rehoboth Beach together, but they turned back to D.C. after having a late lunch in Annapolis. "I don't know what caused her to charge her mind," he said. "I know that she changed her mind." As to what happened afterward, the few details Cooke provided seemed to be mostly consistent with the sequence of events Watts-Brighthaupt described yesterday to LL—though Cooke insists that Barry was not following her when the arrest happened: "Mr. Barry was traveling on public streets on his way home," he said. "He was not following anyone." (He did contradict Williams' assertion yesterday that Watts-Brighthaupt's car was actually following Barry's when they entered Anacostia Park.)

Notably, Cooke declined to criticize Park Police on Barry's behalf, except to raise the question of what Barry could have possibly done during the traffic stop to justify a stalking charge—one that requires establishing a pattern of behavior: "I don't know how the officers decided that an offense happened in their presence that would allow them to arrest rather than investigate."

Asked about the charge might affect Barry's probation for federal tax offenses, Cooke said that given his expectation that charges would be dropped, it would have "zero effect." A source in the U.S. Attorney's Office confirms that in most cases, charges that are not pursued by prosecutors generally don't affect a preexisting probation agreement.

Concluded Cooke: "This is unfortunate, but it's not a distraction of such a proportion that would keep Mr. Barry from attention to the business of the council and the District of Columbia."

On his way down the Wilson Building steps to the microphones, Barry's arm was held by his spiritual adviser of late, Bishop Glen Staples of Ward 8's Temple of Praise. Also standing behind him were chief of staff Bernadette Tolson, confidante Anthony Mohammed, Williams, and two other gentlemen.

A reporter asked Cooke why Barry couldn't speak for himself: "Because he's a got a lawyer who's a pain in the butt," he said. "It would be malpractice if I allowed him to do that."

Video courtesy of WRC-TV

That's what LL heard from a fellow spectator in Courtroom 24 of the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse this morning, while we waited for the greatest thief of public funds in District government history, Harriette Walters, to enter, along with man who had her future in his hands, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan.

Truth be told, Sullivan's role was not quite that dramatic. Walters and her attorney, Steven C. Tabackman and worked out a plea deal with federal prosecutors, so it was left to Sullivan only to decide whether Walters would get 15 years of incarceration or 18 years. Still, those three years were debated, quite passionately at times, by Tabackman, Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Lynch, and by Walters herself.

Walters entered the courtroom dressed in a blue garment, her hair short and braided. She wore glasses that she took off and placed on the table for most of the proceeding. At the beginning of the hearing, Sullivan brought Walters, 52, up to a podium answer a few perfunctory questions; she then sat back down while Tabackman did what he could to spare three years of her life.

What Tabackman had to do was somehow convince Sullivan that a crime of great heinousness deserved something other than the 18-year maximum—a term that seemed already light to many, given that it came a day after Bernard Madoff was handed a 150-year federal sentence for a fraud similar in nature if not scope. Tabackman's strategy was a combination of being perfectly direct ("She took the money of the District of Columbia when it was not hers, and that was a terrible things to do") and attacking prosecutors for their "demagogy" for pointing out, in their sentencing memo, all of the things that the city could have bought for the $50 million Walters and her accomplices stole—AIDS clinics, schools, so on.

After all, Tabackman pointed out, the District did run a sizable surplus many of those years. "They built a stadium!" after all. Surely no particular project went in need thanks to his client's pilferings?

"She has never tried to justify or excuse or mitigate in any way the seriousness of her conduct," Tabackman pointed out, and indeed Walters has taken full responsibility for her thievery. But the whole role of a defense lawyer at a sentencing is to justify in some way—to mitigate.

For instance, defending her record as a public servant: "Fact of the matter is, of all the units over there [at the Office of Tax and Revenue], when she was running it, it worked better than anything." Or her supposed munificence ("She said, giving away money helped me sleep at night"). Or describing how he became friends with his client. Or pointing out her "pretty complex psychological needs." Or laying out her drug abuse; how she once weighed 400 pounds and is "enormously insecure." Or contrasting her with the likes of Enron villain Jeffrey Skilling.

Walters herself, asked to make a statement, also was perfectly direct: "On Nov. 7, 2007, I accepted full responsibility for the part I played in the commitment of this crime....I stand before your honor in full repentance," she said in her soft Caribbean patois. "I made a decision not to lie anymore."

In the end, none of that remorse got Walters much anywhere.

Lynch, for his part, emphasized the scale of the fraud, and Walters' place in it at the "top of the pyramid." How she was "sophisticated"—a word he must have used a dozen or more times. How she "corrupted her friends...corrupted the Office of Tax and Revenue...corrupted a federally chartered bank...corrupted her family." How the investigation into her crimes spent untold manhours and government dollars. That sending Walters to jail for the full 18 years "sends an important message to those 34,000 people" working for the D.C. government.

And Lynch prevailed upon the notion that her years of punishment should equal her years of wrongdoing, dating back to 1989: "Eighteen years is something that has justice to it...There is a sense of justice here that someone who has corrupted out city for 18 years would have to serve 18 years in prison."

While Lynch made his arguments, Walters stared at the wall, then started writing notes to Tabackman.

Powerful arguments, but Tabackman and Walters, actually, did hit upon a mitigation that appealed to Sullivan: Walters' willingness to sit in a conference room for two days and explain to a panel of lawyers, accountants, and other investigators engaged by the D.C. Council, and explain exactly how she has able to perpetrate her fraud, across a span of time that Sullivan described as "shocking."

"Harriette Walters," Tabackman said, "helped them understand as well as anyone could."

Sullivan asked Walters at length about the information she provided and how it helped the city understand how she did what she did. At one point, the judge asked her to describe how investigators reacted to the information she provided. "They kind of sat back in their chairs, and said, 'Well...,'" she said

Walters' hometown cooperation apparently pulled on the civic heartstrings of Sullivan, long a resident of Shepherd Park.

Lynch, in his presentation, argued that the information that Walters provided the District investigators "was not materially different" from what she told the feds—the information that led to the plea deal in the first place. "That would be double-counting," Lynch argued. "It's a good thing; it's a nice thing...but it's not materially different."

Sullivan didn't buy that; he appreciated that his fellow citizen of the District of Columbia—his fellow corrupt, thieving, greedy, "extremely intelligent, extremely sophisticated" citizen—had helped make the city a better in the small way that she could.

For those two days helping District authorities, he knocked six months off that 18-year maximum sentence. And Sullivan, knowing this city's government all too well, acknowledged that it might not do much good.

"The scheming is not going to stop," Sullivan said. "It's going to continue."