A federal grand jury has indicted a Maryland state senator on charges of bribery, conspiracy, mail fraud and extortion in connection with a scheme involving Shoppers Food Warehouse.

State Sen. Ulysses S. Currie, 73, of Forestville, was indicted Wednesday on 18 criminal counts charging that he and executives of Shoppers took part in a scheme in which Currie was paid by the company in exchange for using his official position to influence dozens of matters that benefited the supermarket chain and its executives.

The scheme went on from 2002 to 2008, prosecutors said. In that time, Currie was paid from $3,000 per month in 2003 to $7,600 per month in 2007, but the payments were never reported on annual government ethics forms, prosecutors said.

According to the indictment, Currie lobbied state highway officials to get traffic signals installed at the site of two Shoppers stores -- one in Baltimore County, the other in Laurel.

The indictment said he also helped the company get $2 million in public funding for its project at Mondawmin Mall, and Currie smoothed the way for the company to transfer a liquor license in Prince George's County.

"Government officials cross a bright line when they accept payments in return for using the authority of their office, whether they take cash in envelopes or checks labeled as consulting payments," said U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein. "When businesses can obtain valuable government benefits by putting a senator on the payroll, it diminishes public confidence and disadvantages companies that refuse to go along with the pay-to-play approach."

The indictment follows a two-year long investigation that came to light in the spring of 2008.

Reached by phone on Wednesday by 11 News I-Team lead investigative reporter Jayne Miller, Currie said he had no comment on the indictment and no comment on whether he plans to stay in office.

However, shortly after making that statement, Senate President Mike Miller released a statement saying Currie told him he would step down from his position as chairman of the Budget and Taxation Committee until the matter is resolved.

"He believes that he will be unable to dedicate himself fully to serving as chairman of Budget and Taxation Committee as he works to prove his innocence," Miller said in the release. "I am saddened that the investigation of Sen. Currie has reached this point. Sen. Currie has confronted adversity throughout his life, and I am confident he will be exonerated." "When businesses can obtain valuable government benefits by putting a senator on the payroll, it diminishes public confidence and disadvantages companies that refuse to go along with the pay-to-play approach."
- U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein

Currie has been in the Legislature since 1987. He is currently running for re-election and is unopposed in this month's primary.

Two former grocery store chain executives are also charged in the scheme. They are William White, 67, of Annapolis, and Kevin Small, 55, of Lewisburg, Pa.

Gov. Martin O'Malley also issued a statement regarding the indictment.

"This is a sad day for the people of Prince George's County and Sen. Currie personally. People have the right to expect the highest ethical service from their public servants," he said.

Currie's lawyer told reporters that the senator committed no crime, calling the case an unusual bribery case because it doesn't involve cash payments under the table or a hush-hush deal.

Shoppers Food Warehouse has agreed to pay a $2.5 million fine.

A judge today decided to step down from the high-profile murder case against an Oklahoma City pharmacist.

Oklahoma County judge steps down from pharmacist's murder case Oklahoma County District Judge Tammy Bass-LeSure announced her decision this afternoon during a private 12-minute meeting with prosecutors and defense attorneys.

District Attorney David Prater asked her Monday morning to step down. Defense attorneys say they wanted the judge to stay on the case.

The televised jury trial for pharmacist Jerome Jay Ersland is set to begin Sept. 13. The pharmacist was charged with first-degree murder after he shot a masked robber six times in May 2009 inside the Reliable Discount Pharmacy in south Oklahoma City.

Ersland, 58, said he acted to defend himself and two female employees. Prosecutors say he went too far, shooting five more times after knocking out the unarmed robber, Antwun Parker, 16, with a shot to the head.

The change in judges means the trial could be delayed. Also, it probably will not be televised. The new judge on the case is District Judge Ray Elliott.

Prosecutors did not file anything in the case explaining their reasons for asking the judge to step down. Prosecutors said today they could not comment on the issue.

The Oklahoman has learned prosecutors are concerned about her dealings with Joe Brett Reynolds, one of the pharmacist's four defense attorneys. Prosecutors are expected to ask Bass-LeSure eventually to remove herself from any criminal case involving Reynolds.

To support their request, prosecutors have evidence gathered by someone "wearing a wire," a hidden microphone, during a conversation with the judge, The Oklahoman was told.

Box said Monday he is honored to have Reynolds on the defense team. Box also said Monday prosecutors are acting out of desperation because the case has shifted against them.

This morning, Box told reporters prosecutors "have a really bad case ... and for some reason they're trying madly to try to convict Jerome Ersland ... including, we believe, intimidating a judge to get her off the case."

Box today said Bass-LeSure is the second Oklahoma County judge prosecutors have tried to intimidate in the last six months. "Both of them have been African-American judges. We're upset about that," Box said.

Bass-LeSure met Monday with Jack Dawson, an Oklahoma City attorney. Dawson at one point Monday met with the district attorney. It was unclear if the judge hired Dawson to represent her. Dawson declined to comment Monday afternoon as he left the judge's chambers.

A Texas congresswoman has agreed to repay thousands of dollars in scholarship money to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, after acknowledging she gave awards to four relatives and a staff member’s two children, in violation of the group’s rules.

From 2005 through last year, Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Democrat who was first elected to Congress in 1992, provided 23 scholarships totaling $25,000 to two of her grandsons, two of her great-nephews and to an aide’s son and daughter. The Dallas Morning News first reported the story.

The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, a nonprofit group that operates separately from the Congressional Black Caucus, provides $10,000 annually for each of the 42 caucus members to award in scholarships. The foundation, financed by corporate donations, sets the rules for who is eligible, but each member decides how to award the money.

The foundation’s rules make it clear that applicants cannot be related to any member of the caucus, foundation staff members, board members, sponsors or members of its corporate advisory council. Several caucus members serve on the foundation’s board; Ms. Johnson was a member when her relatives first received scholarships.

In a statement Tuesday, Representative Donald M. Payne, the New Jersey Democrat who is chairman of the foundation, said the group had begun an audit of its scholarship program.

“There will be no self-dealing or nepotism in the awarding of college scholarships,” he said. Ms. Johnson’s press secretary, Dena Craig, said the congresswoman was recovering from major surgery and would not be able to comment. But in a statement, Ms. Johnson, who previously said she had unknowingly violated the rules, said she would repay the money by the end of the week.

It is unclear if Ms. Johnson’s actions violate Congressional rules. Neither the House Ethics Committee nor the House Office of Congressional Ethics would respond to questions.

Meredith McGhee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, a nonpartisan group that monitors campaign finance and ethics issues, said the ethics committee could investigate.

“The rules say members of Congress should not discriminate in any way in their actions while acting in an official capacity, and this clearly seems the case in giving scholarships to family and friends,” she said.

Anthony Carter was to begin his senior year at Crane High School next week.

Instead, his family plans a funeral.

"He was looking forward to graduating," said his grandmother, Donna Carr. "He was in his last year. He was a good boy. He went to school every day."

The 18-year-old Chicago Public Schools student was gunned down just after midnight Monday in the 4000 block of West Jackson. Police said he was talking with a group of people, a few doors from his home, when a gunman emerged from a vacant lot and opened fire. He was shot multiple times.

CPS spokeswoman Monique Bond confirmed it was the killing of a CPS student days before the Sept. 7 school year opening.

Carter's family said they did not know why he was shot. They said the young man was not involved with gangs. Police said there was no evidence of drugs being involved, but that the motive remained under investigation. The shooting happened as many people stood out on the street. "They're still trying to speak with witnesses," Police News Affairs Officer Daniel O'Brien said.

By midday -- long after Carter's mother, Nicole Carter, had arrived at the site of the shooting, falling to the ground in screams and woeful sobs of "They killed my baby! They killed my baby!" -- a memorial of cards, flowers, pictures and teddy bears was growing.

His grandmother said she and her grandson had just made a late-night trip to the corner store, when shots rang out. "We started running, and when I turned around, my grandson had been shot," she said.

Carter's aunt, Nina Carr, said her nephew -- the eldest of two brothers and three sisters -- was an honor roll student looking forward to prom, and to graduating.

Neighbors in their West Garfield Park neighborhood said they were used to such incidents, describing the area as drug- and gang-infested.

"I knew him a little bit. He was a good kid," said the family's next-door neighbor, Mario Emanuel. "But you know, kids today, there's a lot goes on at night. This type of incident is nothing new around here. They shoot and kill all the time."

Police and the family urged witnesses to come forward. "There were people out there," said his stepmother, Cashara Young. "We just want someone to come forward and at least say what they saw."

Anyone with information can call Harrison Area Detectives at 312-746-8252.

Almost 30 years ago, when Wayne Williams went on trial in two deaths that became known as the Atlanta child murders, DNA testing was not yet a staple of courtroom science.

Now it is. And new results have implicated Williams in the death of at least one 11-year-old victim.

When Patrick Baltazar's body was found dumped down a wooded slope behind an office park on February 13, 1981, a forensic scientist discovered two human scalp hairs inside the boy's shirt.

At trial, scientists from both the FBI and Royal Canadian Mounted Police would testify that, under a microscope, the hairs were consistent with those of Wayne Williams. But that was only a matter of judgment, not exact science.

In 2007, defense lawyers for Williams raised the question of DNA testing on dog hairs which were on bodies of many of the 27 boys and young men found dead during the two-year murder spree.

At the same time, the judge decided to allow those two hairs found on Baltazar to be sent to the FBI's DNA laboratory at Quantico, Virginia.

The laboratory report found the scalp hairs had the same type of DNA sequence as did Wayne Williams' own hair.

"I don't think they said it was a match," Williams told CNN. "I think they said [they] could not rule out whoever the hairs were from as being the possible donor."

But retired FBI scientist Harold Deadman, who testified about the hair findings in Williams' 1982 trial and later became head of the FBI's DNA lab, said it was the strongest finding possible with this particular type of testing.

"It would probably exclude 98 percent or so of the people in the world," Deadman said.

Of 1,148 African-American hair samples in the FBI's data base, the FBI said only 29 had the same sequence -- in other words, only 2½ of every 100 African-Americans.

None of the Caucasian or Hispanic hair samples in the data base had this sequence. When those samples are added in the total, then the odds rise to almost 130-to-1 against the hairs coming from any person other than Wayne Williams.

The FBI report said this: "Wayne Williams cannot be excluded as the source of the hair."

The finding is not ironclad. Because the hairs were incomplete, the type of testing, called mitochondrial DNA, can trace only the maternal line. Only with nucleic DNA testing, which includes paternal lineage, could the results be absolutely conclusive.

When reporters showed the DNA results to victim Baltazar's stepmother, Sheila Baltazar, she said, "Without a shadow of a doubt, I really in my heart believe Wayne Williams killed Patrick Baltazar."

Williams not only has denied he killed Patrick Baltazar, but has said he never met the boy.

Yet testimony at trial established various fibers found on the Baltazar clothing could be traced to a bedroom carpet in Wayne Williams' home, his bedspread, a yellow blanket found under that bed, a leather jacket hanging in Wayne's closet, and a gray glove in his station wagon.

See a map that tracks victims' bodies

There were also dog hairs on the Baltazar body which prosecution witnesses testified probably came from the Williams family's German Shepherd, "Sheba."

When those dog hairs were sent to a genetics laboratory in the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis, in 2007, the report said Sheba had the same DNA sequence. It said that DNA chain would be found in only 1 out of 100 dogs.

The Baltazar case was included among 10 other deaths presented to the jury in Wayne Williams trial, although he was not charged in any of those, and was convicted of murdering two adults whose bodies were found in an Atlanta river in the spring of 1981.

Scientists considered the hair and fiber evidence in the Baltazar murder to be among the strongest of their cases. However, the trial took place in the courts of Fulton County, which includes the largest part of Atlanta. Baltazar's body had been found just over the line in the DeKalb County portion of Atlanta, and trying to include his death among the Fulton County charges would have raised legal issues.

A filing on behalf of basketball superstar LeBron James dismisses as "rank speculation" claims by a Washington lawyer that he is the athlete's biological father, saying the man has "delusions" about alleged family ties.

Lawyers for James and his mother filed papers in federal court Monday seeking to dismiss a pending lawsuit. Leicester Stovell alleges the NBA all-star and his family have been involved in a cover-up to deny paternity, by committing fraud and misrepresentation.

The 14-page document said Stovell had completely failed to prove any of the facts alleged in his June 23 complaint. And they said he was motivated only by fame and money, calling Stovell's actions a "fanciful hope for celebrity."

The lawsuit claims Stovell met James' mother, Gloria, in a Washington bar and restaurant in 1984, when she was visiting from Ohio. She was 15 or 16 at the time, and Stovell says they had sex only once, and was informed by Gloria James months later that she was pregnant. He claims she told him the child would be named LeBron, similar to Leicester Bryce, Stovell's first and middle names.

Stovell is asking for unspecified millions of dollars in damages, and says he has been trying for three years to establish paternity, which he hopes would lead to financial and commercial opportunities. He is a solo legal practitioner in the District of Columbia, and filed the lawsuit on his own behalf.

He alleges a DNA test that showed he was not James' father was falsified.

James' attorneys, Frederick Nance and John Burlingame, dismissed those suggestions in often mocking tones aimed at the plaintiff.

"Stovell's claims for millions of dollars from his putative son and Gloria James are based upon rank speculation," said the court filing, "that a man who claims that as a 29-year-old lawyer he got a 15-year-old girl pregnant during a one-night stand and who never contributed a penny in child support would earn millions in commercial endorsements by crawling out of the woodwork after the child he never gave a thought to became an NBA star."

James, a native of Akron, Ohio, recently left the Cleveland Cavaliers to sign with the Miami Heat for what is believed to be one of the richest sports contracts in history. He is the reigning most valuable player of the NBA, and has carefully cultivated a public image as one of the most popular and talented athletes.

The complaint filed June 23 by Stovell said, "I recently have concluded that a comprehensive, sophisticated and well-funded effort might well have been under way for quite some time, perhaps beginning in its present form as early as when defendant LeBron James was in high school, to frustrate identification of his real father, and that there is a likelihood that the father in question is me."

James' lawyers think otherwise. "Stovell may truly believe that he is the father of LeBron James, even though a DNA test has told him otherwise. But his delusions do not give rise to a cause of action against either Gloria or LeBron James."

Public records show Stovell is a former government attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He filed a lawsuit in 2002 against the agency, alleging racial discrimination. Federal court records show the case was settled when the SEC paid him $230,000, while not admitting fault.

Shaun Stegall, a star on Kennesaw State's basketball team from 2004-08, was shot and killed Saturday night following an argument at his father's Decatur residence.

Georgia's Dave Bliss, top, and Kennesaw State's Shaun Stegall, bottom, battle for a loose ball during a 2007 basketball game in Athens. Stegall was shot and killed Saturday night following an argument at his father's Decatur residence.

A "drug-related altercation" broke out between two unidentified gunmen and Gerald Stegall Sr., 57, in the 2400 block of Mellville Avenue, DeKalb police spokeswoman Mekka Parish said. Stegall, 25, intervened and was shot repeatedly. He was pronounced dead a few hours later at a local hospital, Parish told reporeters.

The elder Stegall, who faces no criminal charges, was pistol-whipped, but his injuries were not believed to be serious.

His son's shooting came as a shock to the Kennesaw State campus, where Stegall emerged as a star after transferring from the University of Nebraska. He was one of just 11 players in the program's history to surpass 1,000 points during his career and twice led the Owls in rebounds.

"This is a very devastating and emotional time for all of us in the Kennesaw State basketball family," Owls head basketball coach Tony Ingle said. "Everyone who recruited and coached Shaun loved him. His mother and father, Tamika and Gerald, are just wonderful people and all of our thoughts and prayers are with them."

After graduating from Kennesaw State, Stegall played professionally for teams in Britain and Syria. The Stone Mountain native played prep ball for Redan High School.

His final game at KSU was easily his best, school officials said. Stegall scored 21 points to go with 18 rebounds, six assists and three steals to lead the Owls to a 65-61 victory over rival Mercer.

"Shaun is one of the primary reasons we were able to win our second straight Peach Belt Conference championship in 2005," Ingle said. "I have a lot of fond memories of Shaun the player, but also of Shaun the person."

Stegall's funeral will be held Saturday at Covenant Ministries Cathedral in Decatur, KSU announced.

Thousands of people joined the Rev. Al Sharpton and other leaders Saturday to commemorate the anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington in 1963. The event, billed as "Reclaim the Dream," included a five-mile march that culminated at the Mall, where conservative talk show host Glenn Beck had organized the simultaneous "Restoring Honor" rally.

In an interview before the gathering began at Dunbar High School in Northwest Washington, Sharpton said he called the event to show respect for the ideals of King, who made his famous "I Have a Dream" speech 47 years ago near where Beck spoke to thousands Saturday.

"People are clear in what Dr. King's dream was about, and we will not react to those who try to distort that dream," Sharpton said. He was one of several prominent leaders who condemned Beck's rally, despite cries from organizers that "Restoring Honor" was not intended to dishonor King or his work.

Police kept an alert eye on the crowds for both events, concerned that skirmishes might result from the opposing camps. The events prompted crowds at end-of-the-line Metro stations because of heavy ridership by those heading in from the suburbs. Metro officials said several stations were busy because of riders unfamiliar with how to buy fare cards. To ease the crunch, officials recommended that people at the Franconia-Springfield station (at the end of the Blue line in Fairfax County) and at the Shady Grove station (at the end of the Red line in Montgomery County) use other stations.

At one point, a line was wrapped around the block near Dunbar High School because of a bottleneck to get through the door to the athletic field, which, along with the bleachers, was filled by rally participants. Speakers addressed everything from education to ending gun violence to gay rights to congressional voting privileges for the District.

Early at the event, a gospel choir took the stage after a fervent prayer by Barbara Williams-Skinner, president of the Skinner Leadership Institute.

"What do you do when you've given your all? Child, you just stand," the crowd quietly sang.

Williams-Skinner made strong ties between the 1963 rally at which King spoke of his "dream" and the rally at the Northwest Washington high school. "Like Dr. King, we believe that the bank of justice is not bankrupt," she said. "We thank you God for raising up President Barack Obama as a small down payment on that dream."

Bianca Farmer, a senior at Dunbar, drew applause when she told the crowd to continue to celebrate the achievement that Obama represents. "We must be fearful of stopping there," she said. "The fight is not in the same arena as it was 47 years ago, but the fight lives on."

Some leaders Saturday pointed to what they characterized as lost ground in the quest for the principles that King held dear. "When I look at my television, I don't see the King crowd of blacks and whites together," said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), who worked as an aide for King at the 1963 march.

NAACP President Ben Jealous said: "We are not sure what the message of the Beck rally is, since he told them to leave their signs at home. We have to revitalize jobs and schools and reclaim Dr. King's dream."

Education Secretary Arne Duncan told the rally participants that education is the civil rights issue of this generation. "Parents: Turn off the television. Educators: We have to stop making excuses," he said. "The dividing line in our country today is less around white and black and more about educational opportunity. We've been too satisfied with second-class schools."

Five years after thousands of taxpayer-owned assets were laid to waste in the New Orleans area, local governments continue to haggle with FEMA over how much the feds will pony up to replace the critical infrastructure.

Share So far, FEMA has authorized $8.9 billion to restore thousands of properties across Louisiana that were wrecked by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, from schools to police stations to water plants. About $5.7 billion of that has hit the streets.

State officials say they expect that another $2 billion could be due, if local agencies can persist through negotiations with the often nitpicky federal bureaucracy. FEMA officials predict unlocking the remaining money could take two to three more years.

A state review last year found that nearly $1.8 billion in reimbursement requests were stuck in the pipeline in the New Orleans area alone, though that inventory likely included some items not eligible for reimbursement, such as building improvements that didn’t exist before the storms.

New Orleans city agencies had the most outstanding requests, at $1.6 billion, records show. Next was St. Bernard Parish, with $267 million, followed by Plaquemines Parish, with $96.8 million.

Settling such claims has virtually consumed the careers of public servants who, under program guidelines, usually must prove that every instance of damage — from a rusty lock on a fire hydrant to a single moldy pencil — resulted from the storms.

Governed by the federal Stafford Act, the Public Assistance program covers only disaster-related repairs, not prior damage or problems caused by improper maintenance. Local entities typically pick up a portion of the tab, but for Katrina and Rita, Congress agreed to pay the whole bill.

Though some lump-sum payments for more broadly defined damage have been granted, including the $1.8 billion settlement announced last week to repair New Orleans public schools, the typically tedious nature of identifying damage has bred frustration among local leaders desperate to restore community facilities.

“FEMA can focus on paperwork or they can focus on construction,” said Andy Kopplin, the top aide to New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu. “The people of New Orleans and the people of the United States of America want to see FEMA give us money to rebuild stuff, but their process has been all about paperwork.”

Claims remain unsettled

Among the mind-numbing disagreements was Jefferson Parish officials’ effort to secure about $3 million to rebuild a fire station on Grand Isle. FEMA officials, adhering strictly to federal regulations, wouldn’t authorize money for the project in a flood zone that spans the entire barrier island, said Deano Bonano, the parish’s homeland security director.

“How can you build a fire station and not build it on Grand Isle?” Bonano said. “People are going to be dead and houses are going to burn to the ground before the fire truck even gets there.”

After three years of haggling, federal officials finally granted the payment, Bonano said. The fire station opened last July.
FEMA employees said they’re sympathetic to local officials’ plight.

“It’s frustrating. I understand that,” said Mike Karl, interim director of the statewide FEMA office. “But this isn’t FEMA and our folks just saying that we want to do this because we want to be tough on you. We want to make sure that when we spend public money, it doesn’t get taken away in a future audit.”

Indeed, future evidence that FEMA authorized payments in violation of its own rules — even in good faith — could mean local officials have to give the money back, even if it’s already been spent.

Of the projects still in the queue, many are complex requests that can’t be finalized quickly, said James Clark of the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, the state agency that serves as the pass-though for reimbursement payments.

For instance, the Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff’s Office still hasn’t settled a claim estimated last year at almost $100 million to rebuild the justice complex, including a jail, Clark said.

“They are still making decisions about how to move forward with a permanent facility because their needs have changed quite a bit,” he said. Another glitch, he said, is that temporary buildings
erected since Katrina sit on property that would be needed for a complete rebuild.

In other cases, applicants’ outstanding claims cover many smaller projects, all with similar unresolved elements, Clark said. He pointed to several schools in St. Bernard and St. Tammany parishes run by the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

Because of the population upheaval, Catholic leaders moved and reorganized some schools. But they didn’t immediately repair every damaged building or replace all the ruined contents, Clark said, accounting for about $150 million in outstanding FEMA claims last year.

“They’ve got to finish (rebuilding) the schools before they can talk desks and books,” he said.

A Chicago-based comedian and radio personality who said he was denied the right to buy a house in Bridgeport because of race Thursday sued the homeowners and real estate agents involved in the deal.

George Willborn and his wife, Peytyn, filed the discrimination lawsuit in federal court, charging that homeowners Daniel and Adrienne Sabbia refused to sell them the home because the Willborns are black. The suit contends the couples had a verbal deal last January for $1.7 million on a five-bedroom home at 3300 S. Normal but that the Sabbias then declined to sign contracts.

George and Peytyn Willborn (pictured) leave the Federal Building after their attorneys filed a discrimination lawsuit Thursday.

The suit also names Prudential Rubloff Properties and Jeffrey Lowe of Lowe Group Chicago Inc., Realtors who were representing the Sabbias.

This month, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development filed a discrimination complaint against the Sabbias and the real estate agents. The Willborns have exercised their right to transfer that administrative hearing to federal court, requiring the Justice Department to seek damages on the couple's behalf.

The HUD case hinges on testimony Lowe gave to a federal investigator in which, according to the complaint, he said the Sabbias decided they would rather not sell to a black family.

Willie Gary, an attorney for the Willborns, said it is likely the separate cases will be consolidated. For now, the two-track legal process provides pressure for a financial settlement.

An attorney for the Sabbias could not be reached. Lawyers for the Realtors vociferously denied that their clients did anything wrong. Edward Feldman, an attorney with Miller Shakman & Beem LLP representing Lowe, said his client supports fair housing laws. "He wanted very much for the Sabbias to sell to the Willborns" and doesn't believe race led to the ultimate denial, Feldman said.

Lowe afterward "helped the Willborns by showing them other houses," Feldman said.

Attorney Ben Heller of the firm said the HUD case shows the agents took no part in discrimination. "There is simply no evidence that Jeff or Prudential acted inappropriately at any time," said Heller, of the firm Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP.

The Sabbias refused to close the sale despite protracted negotiations with the Willborns, the HUD complaint said, then took their home off the market. They re-listed it a couple of months later for $1.799 million, but have withdrawn it from the market again.

Willborn co-hosts the syndicated "Michael Baisden Show" on WSRB-FM (106.3) and formerly worked at WVAZ-FM (102.7).

The Bridgeport neighborhood, cradle of the Daley dynasty, has been known for hostility to blacks, although many think bigotry in the neighborhood has declined.

Asked why he would want his family there, Willborn said, "I didn't care where the home was. It was a specific type of house that my wife and I felt that we had earned the right to live in. . . . It just happened to be in Bridgeport."

Actor Wendell Pierce's biggest role today is running the Pontchartrain Park Community Development Corp., which is hard at work trying to rebuild the New Orleans neighborhood devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

Pierce was one of the stars of HBO's "The Wire" and most recently played a jazz trombone player in "Treme," HBO's look at New Orleans after Katrina. He talked to CNN about what it's like trying to revive "the Park."

Pontchartrain Park was featured in Soledad O'Brien's "CNN In America's New Orleans Rising."

Question: Tell me about the neighborhood where you grew up.

WENDELL PIERCE: Pontchartrain Park started in 1952 as a result of the civil rights movement. It was the only place where blacks were allowed during segregation to purchase post-World War II homes. Two hundred acres were given over to a golf course, with 1,000 homes around it, multidenominational churches, a university and schools.

We refer to it as "the Park," but I've described it as the black Mayberry. Although separate but equal, my parents' generation created something that was bucolic. It was great. It was an incubator for talent. ...

It was not only an idyllic place to grow up, there were also high expectations. It was expected that everyone would go to college. In the middle of it was this wonderful golf course created by Joseph Bartholomew, who did most of the golf courses in New Orleans but couldn't play on any of them.

Question: What was it like when you first saw Pontchartrain Park after Katrina?

PIERCE: It was devastation. We thought the neighborhood would never come back.

Urban Renewal
And then I realized there was too much history. It was one of the most stable neighborhoods in the United States: 90 percent home ownership, less than 10 percent poverty in a city with 80 percent, no crime. I put out a call to action to people in my generation. Too many people suffered and protested and worked too hard to create Pontchartrain Park. We're not going to let this one incident destroy it.

Question: How is your initiative to bring it back going?

PIERCE: It's going great. Some movement is happening with transfer of properties to us. We stand in line to get something like 250 properties, and we are up to 20 or 25 now. We put up our model homes, which are geothermal and solar. We have 200 people in line to purchase homes, and that's before any marketing.

Getting the [rebuilding] money is what's holding it up. We have the properties, the homes; we have people qualified with the bank, and we are still trying to access the money. That's the last difficult step.

The money to assist people comes through the state. But they keep changing the rules and the qualifications and the goal-lines all the time. So it isn't appropriated. That's because the state is hostile to the city and is trying to reappropriate the money to other parts of the state and not to the city of New Orleans. That's the political fight that you have to constantly have.

Three billion dollars has been appropriated [to rebuild after Katrina] and hasn't been spent in five years and that's because there's an agenda supported by many that don't want people to move back.

Question: What are the conditions in New Orleans now?

PIERCE: Right now in New Orleans, it's worse than the week of the storm. We're talking about people who own their property and who didn't receive any insurance. My parents had Allstate insurance, and they got $400 after paying premiums for 50 years. It was criminal, a criminal action. So you have people who own their property, like my parents did, whose insurance policies were not recognized. And there's $3 billion to assist them to get back in their homes, and the state is not doing anything to help them out. Why hasn't it been used? Because it's a concerted effort to reappropriate the money and keep the poor and black people out.

Let's put it this way. There is no large-scale redevelopment plan by any governmental entity in Louisiana, five years after Katrina. The only large-scale thing they did was to destroy public housing and get rid of a large population of minority people and the poor.

There are no large-scale initiatives. Mine is one of the largest. We plan to do 550 [homes in the Park]; compare that with the fact there are 30,000 to 50,000 blighted properties here. There is a concerted effort to redistrict the city, a concerted effort to keep thousands of people out, change the demographics of the city and hope people give up on a mass scale.

In times of crisis like this, we see the best and the worst of people. It's a reminder we are not far off from the days when the ugliest aspects of the country were made into law, so it can so easily go right back into it.

Question: So who's moving into Pontchartrain Park?

PIERCE: We have everyone imaginable; we have elderly, we have young couples trying to get in, we have 80-year-olds trying to get back into their properties. This is a close-knit community.

Who's moving in? Look in the mirror, and that's who's in Pontchartrain Park. No matter who you are, young or old, it's a diverse group of people, a predominantly African-American community that's been stable ever since it was constructed.

Meet some residents of Pontchartrain Park

Question: The government's not rebuilding New Orleans. Do you think grass-roots groups will bring New Orleans back?

PIERCE: While the government does not have a plan, it is the citizens who came to government and worked with them to lead them to reconstituting the neighborhoods.

The Lower 9th and St. Bernard neighborhoods were harder hit; they have further to go. This is happening all over the city. That's the saddest part. What surprised me the most [when I began this] was the lack of skill and competence on the government's part to know how to put this together, and how strong the effort to stop people from moving back to New Orleans is.

Question: What do you mean when you talk about "onesies and twosies"?

PIERCE: It's no good to build one or two houses in a city that has 50,000 blighted properties. Like, this church group says "We're doing three houses right here," a business group says it's doing two houses there, then "I'm a contractor; I've got three houses over here." We need large-scale development.

My group is not put together to do a hundred houses. Our goal is 7,000 in the city, about 550 in the Park.

Question: Did the HBO show "Treme" capture the real New Orleans?

PIERCE: Well -- you can't tell all the stories; there are so many, so you can't please everybody -- but there is an authenticity to our show. It's true and real. Of all the shows about the city, this comes the closest to being authentic.

Question: You play a jazz musician in "Treme" and do lots of numbers. Do you really play the trombone?

PIERCE: Yes, I do play the trombone, but I play very poorly, so they turn my mic off, and my sound double plays. But I learned every song, and I'm getting better!

Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, the state's first elected black district attorney, made national news after taking office in 2007 when he declared that he personally opposed the death penalty on moral and religious grounds.

Now mired in a rough re-election race, the 42-year-old Democrat said he's changed his mind about the use of capital punishment.

"I came in with a certain philosophical view. I don't have that anymore," Watkins told The Dallas Morning News recently. "From a religious standpoint, I think it's an archaic way of doing justice. But in this job, I've seen people who cannot be rehabilitated."

Despite his new philosophy, Watkins said he still has concerns that prosecutors somewhere might send the wrong person to death row. But he said that even when he was opposed to the death penalty, he still allowed his office to seek it when warranted. He even helped successfully prosecute a death penalty case two years ago.

Watkins' Republican opponent in the November election, Danny Clancy, supports the death penalty but said it should be used only for the most heinous crimes. He declined to comment on Watkins' new stance.

But the county's GOP chairman, Jonathan Neerman, said Watkins is "playing politics" and trying "to toughen his image."

"This sounds to me like he is trying to have it both ways in a political season," Neerman said. "Everything he's said heretofore has been in the realm of exonerations or rehabilitation. It seems to be the one thing he despises the most: locking bad guys up."

Watkins, though, said that his shift in thought has nothing to do with politics. It began, he said, after helping his prosecutors win a death sentence in December 2008 against Robert Sparks, who killed his wife, Chare Agnew, and her two sons, Harold Sublet, 9, and Raeqwon Agnew, 10. Sparks also raped his two teenage stepdaughters.

Watkins, who questioned the girls during the trial, said he grew close to them. Viewing crime scene photos in that case, among others, of the horrible things human beings do to each other made an impact, he said.

"That was the case that got me. Those little girls, the first time they came into my office, they were timid. They didn't see any hope," Watkins said. "But after, there was a spark there. They appreciated that Mr. Watkins stood up for us."

Still, the number of DNA exonerations nationwide, including 20 from Dallas County, gives him pause about the death penalty's use.

"I cannot argue against it morally, but I can argue against it broadly," Watkins said. "Given the DNA exonerations, there's a chance we've executed someone in Texas who did not commit the crime."

Watkins said that's less likely to happen now in Dallas County because of his death penalty review team.

The team includes Watkins and his top prosecutors – including those who will actually try the cases – who determine whether the office should pursue what he routinely calls "the ultimate punishment."

The team votes after considering the facts of the crime, the defendant's prior criminal history and mitigating circumstances, such as abuse or retardation. The majority rules.

In October, Watkins' prosecutors are expected to begin their ninth death penalty case since he became district attorney. Seven resulted in death sentences. The other ended with a life sentence after a judge declared a mistrial because the jury had not reached a decision on punishment.

Watkins and his prosecutors also reviewed the cases of the nearly 40 Dallas County offenders currently on death row to ensure that issues discovered with the county's wrongful convictions – such as faulty eyewitness testimony – weren't a problem in those cases.

Prosecutors said they completed the review several months ago with the belief that everyone on death row from Dallas County belonged there.

Watkins said he wants to make sure that remains the case, even if his old opposition to the death penalty no longer exists.

"Before, it was a moralistic standpoint. But it was the law," Watkins said. "Now you graduate to the next question: Will we ever execute someone who didn't do it?"

In the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina, an order circulated among New Orleans police authorizing officers to shoot looters, according to present and former members of the New Orleans Police Department.

It's not clear how broadly the order was communicated. Some officers who heard it say they refused to carry it out. Others say they understood it as a fundamental change in the standards on deadly force, which allow police to fire only to protect themselves or others from what appears to be an imminent physical threat.

The accounts of orders to "shoot looters," "take back the city" or "do what you have to do" are fragmentary. It remains unclear who originated them or whether they were heard by any of the officers involved in shooting 11 civilians in the days after Katrina. Thus far, no officers implicated in shootings have used the order as an explanation for their actions. Only one of the people shot by police -- Henry Glover -- was allegedly stealing goods at the time he was shot.

Still, current and former officers said the police orders -- taken together with tough talk from top public officials broadcast over the airwaves -- contributed to an atmosphere of confusion about how much force could be used to combat looting.

In one instance captured on a grainy videotape shot by a member of the force, a police captain relayed the instructions at morning roll call to cops preparing for the day's patrols.

"We have authority by martial law to shoot looters," Capt. James Scott told a few dozen officers in a portion of the tape viewed by reporters. Scott, then the commander of the 1st District, is now captain of the special operations division.

Another police captain, Harry Mendoza, told federal prosecutors last month that he was ordered by Warren Riley, then the department's second-in-command, to "take the city back and shoot looters.'' A lieutenant who worked for Mendoza, Mike Cahn III, said he remembered the scene similarly and would testify about it under oath if asked.

Mendoza and Cahn said in separate interviews that Riley made the remarks at a meeting at Harrah's New Orleans Casino, where police had established a command post. Mendoza quoted Riley as saying: "If you can sleep with it, do it,'' according to a document prepared by prosecutors and provided to lawyers defending police officers recently charged with federal offenses.

Riley denies the allegations

Riley denied telling officers they could shoot looters. "I didn't say anything like that," he said. "I heard rumors that someone else said that. But I certainly didn't say that, no.

"I may have said we need to take control of the city," Riley said. "That may have happened."

Riley also questioned the credibility of Mendoza, whom he fired in 2006 for alleged neglect of duties. Mendoza has since been reinstated; Riley has retired.

Scott declined comment but said through his attorney that a fuller version of the videotape places his remarks in a different context.
But he would not disclose what else he said that day or characterize more completely what he meant.

The officer who shot the video, Lt. Sandra Simpson, would not permit reporters to see the complete recording. New Orleans police officials have said that they do not consider the tape a public record and that it is thus up to Simpson whether to allow the tape to be viewed.

Scott's address to his officers came at a moment of widespread confusion about whether authorities had imposed martial law, a phrase used by then-Mayor Ray Nagin on the radio. In fact, martial law does not exist under Louisiana's Constitution. But experts in police training said the use of those words by politicians and in news reports may have fueled perceptions that the rules had changed.

Team reporting effort

In recent months, a team of reporters from The Times-Picayune, PBS Frontline, and ProPublica, the investigative newsroom, have examined Police Department leaders' conduct as part of a broader look at police shootings after Hurricane Katrina. A documentary drawn from that work airs Wednesday on Frontline, which can be seen locally on WYES-TV at 8 p.m..

Law & Disorder
The confusion about whether martial law had been declared was widely reported at the time. But until now, it was not known that some within the police force interpreted it to authorize shooting of looters who posed no direct threat.

New Orleans police came under unprecedented pressures after the city flooded. Many of the department's police stations were submerged in water. The command structure broke down as the radio system and computerized communications failed. Officers went for days without sleep as they rescued trapped residents from rooftops. Commanders relied on sporadic face-to-face meetings to direct operations.

"During the Katrina days, we weren't living in the real world, we were living in a holocaust,'' said former police Lt. David Benelli, who was assigned to the Superdome and has since retired. "We were living in a situation that no other police department ever had to endure.''

'Let's stop this crap now'

A mix of rumor and reality fueled concerns about the breakdown of civil order.

Nagin, the mayor, said in a televised interview days after the storm that there had been rapes and murders among the people taking shelter in the Superdome, a claim that turned out to be untrue. Police Superintendent Eddie Compass made similar statements.

On Aug. 30, 2005, Riley told the mayor he had heard an officer say on the radio: "I need more ammo. We need more ammo.''
Sally Forman, the mayor's communications chief at the time, said this report -- which, it later emerged, did not come from the NOPD -- had immediate impact.

Nagin, she recalled, directed Riley to "stop search and rescue and bring our force back to controlling the streets."

"The mayor said, 'Let's stop the looting, let's stop the lawlessness and let's put our police officers on the streets so that our citizens are protected,'" Forman said.

Nagin had one more message for the deputy superintendent, in Forman's recollection: "Let's stop this crap now."

"We will do that," responded Riley, according to Forman.

That same day, Nagin learned that a police officer, Kevin Thomas, had been shot in the head. Forman said, "It made the mayor furious. And that's when he said we need to declare martial law.''

Soon after, Nagin gave a radio interview in which he said he had called for martial law, adding to the confusion about the rules of engagement. Nagin declined to be interviewed.

Just after midnight, the pastor seized a woman's forehead with his large hand and she fell screaming and writhing on the ground. "Fire! Fire! Fire!" shouted the worshippers, raising their hands in the air.

Pastor Celestine Effiong's congregants are being delivered from what they firmly believe to be witchcraft. And in the darkness of the city and the villages beyond, similar shouts and screams echo from makeshift church to makeshift church.

"I have been delivered from witches and wizards today!" exclaimed one exhausted-looking woman.

Pastors in southeast Nigeria claim illness and poverty are caused by witches who bring terrible misfortune to those around them. And those denounced as witches must be cleansed through deliverance or cast out.

As daylight breaks, and we travel out to the rural villages it becomes apparent the most vulnerable to this stigmatization of witchcraft are children.

A crowd gathered around two brothers and their sister. Tears streamed down their mother's face as she cast out her children from the family, accusing them of causing the premature deaths of two of their siblings with black magic.

I was beaten by the prophet in the church.

--Samuel, 15, now homeless

"I am afraid. They are witches and they can kill me as well," she sobbed.

Taking his time to talk to the mother, Sam Ikpe-Itauma, an imposing man wearing a "Child's Rights & Rehabilitation Network" t-shirt, has come to try to rescue the three children.

"If we are not here there's a possibility of them being thrown into the river, buried alive or stabbed to death," Sam said.

He tries to persuade their mother and a crowd of villagers that the three children are not witches - but no one believes him. And so, putting the children in his white pick-up, he drives away to his orphanage and safety.

Sam runs Child's Rights & Rehabilitation Network, or CRARN -- an orphanage that supports nearly 200 children. All of them were accused of witchcraft and cast out by their families, often after being tortured. The orphanage provides security, healthcare, nutrition and counseling.

Godwin's story is typical. As he sat next to the quiet 5-year-old, Sam said that after Godwin's mother died, the church pastor told his family that "Godwin is responsible."

From his own investigation, questioning Godwin and talking with neighbors, Sam said that when a relative asked Godwin if he was a witch, "he said no and was beaten and made the confession that he actually killed the mother."

Sam said Godwin was locked up with his mother's corpse every night for three weeks with little food or water before a neighbor contacted Sam, who was able to rescue him.

Witches and wizards, they started getting afraid. I never gave them rest.

--Pastor Helen Ukpabio
Other children at his orphanage bear the scars of being beaten, attacked with boiling water, and cuts from machetes. But these children are the ones lucky to be alive.

"A child witch is said to be a witch when that child possessed with certain spiritual spells capable of making that child transform into cat, snake, vipers, insects, any other animal and that child is capable of wreaking havoc like killing of people, bringing diseases, misfortune into the family," Sam said.

"When a child is accused of being a witch -- that child is hated absolutely by everybody surrounding him so such children are sent out of the home... But unfortunately such children do not always live long. A lot of them, they're either killed, abandoned by the parents, tortured in the church or trafficked out of the city."

Sam doesn't believe in witchcraft and is trying to raise awareness in local communities now gripped by hysteria.

Belief in witchcraft is rooted in centuries of tradition, but it's only in the last 10 years, that it has become associated with child abuse, he said.

"It's a social crisis," he added. "Poverty propels this child witch phenomenon and poverty is a twin sister to ignorance.

"Most vulnerable children come from single parents, divorced parents, dysfunctional families."

But the orphanage has very little space for more children. Overstretched finances mean he can barely pay a skeleton staff of four people, as well as feed the children.

Instead, many children are left to roam the streets.

"My parents sent me out of the house -- said I'm a witch," said Samuel, a 15-year-old who has lived on the streets for five years after a local pastor blamed him for unexpected deaths in the family.

"I was beaten by the prophet in the church," he said in a quiet voice.

Samuel lives in an abandoned building with 10 other children accused of witchcraft. A local group, 'Stepping Stones Nigeria,' which is dedicated to helping street children, visits them.

"Religious leaders capitalize on the ignorance of some parents in the villages just to make some money off them," said Lucky Inyang, project coordinator for 'Stepping Stones Nigeria'.

"They can say your child is a witch and if you bring the child to the church we can deliver the child but eventually they don't deliver the children... The parents go back to the pastor and say, 'why is it you have not been able to deliver the child' and the pastor says 'Oh - this one has gone past deliverance - they've eaten too much flesh so you have to throw the child out.'"

And most pastors charge a fee for deliverance -- anywhere from $300 to $2,000.

One of the most notorious and influential pastors is Helen Ukpabio of Liberty Gospel Church. Her 1999 film, the widely distributed, "End of the Wicked" has been attacked by child rights groups for its depictions of Satan possessing children.

She had agreed to an interview but the meeting was continually postponed for two days.

But in her preaching at Liberty Gospel Church, she heralds success stories of how she has driven out demons through deliverance.

"Witches and wizards, they started getting afraid. I never gave them rest!" she shouted to a cheering congregation.

Some pastors believe education is a more powerful tool against witchcraft fears.

"One of the things that caused the parents to abandon the children is ignorance," explains another local pastor, Celestine Effiong.

The local government, however, accuses Sam Ikpe-Itauma and Lucky Inyang of using the children to run a scam.

"We insist that the name of Akwa Ibom state must not be smeared and the people of the world should not be deceived by certain NGOs who are claiming to be taking care of stigmatized children of Akwa Ibom," said Aniekan Umanah, the Information Commissioner of Nigeria's Akwa Ibom state.

"This is a ruse, they are making money for themselves."

Americans increasingly are convinced -- incorrectly -- that President Barack Obama is a Muslim, and a growing number are thoroughly confused about his religion.

Sen. Barack Obama visited the First Emanuel Baptist Church in Central City as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in August 2007. Church Pastor Charles Joseph Southall III and the choir put a blessing upon him. Nearly one in five people, or 18 percent, said they think Obama is Muslim, up from the 11 percent who said so in March 2009, according to a poll released Thursday. The proportion who correctly say he is a Christian is down to just 34 percent.

The largest share of people, 43 percent, said they don't know his religion, an increase from the 34 percent who said that in early 2009.

The survey, conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center and its affiliated Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, is based on interviews conducted before the controversy over whether Muslims should be permitted to construct a mosque near the World Trade Center site. Obama has said he believes Muslims have the right to build an Islamic center there, though he's also said he won't take a position on whether they should actually build it.

In a separate poll by Time magazine/ABT SRBI conducted Monday and Tuesday -- after Obama's comments about the mosque -- 24 percent said they think he is Muslim, 47 percent said they think he is Christian and 24 percent didn't know or didn't respond.

In addition, 61 percent opposed building the Muslim center near the Trade Center site and 26 percent said they favor it.

The Pew poll found that about three in 10 of Obama's fiercest political rivals, Republicans and conservatives, say he is a Muslim. That is up significantly from last year and far higher than the share of Democrats and liberals who say so. But even among his supporters, the number saying he is a Christian has fallen since 2009, with just 43 percent of blacks and 46 percent of Democrats saying he is Christian.

Among independents, 18 percent say Obama is Muslim -- up from 10 percent last year.

Pew analysts attribute the findings to attacks by his opponents and Obama's limited attendance at religious services, particularly in contrast with Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, whose worship was more public.

Andrew Kohut, the Pew Research Center's director, said the confusion partly reflects "the intensification of negative views about Obama among his critics." Alan Cooperman, the Pew Forum's associate director for research, said that with the public hearing little about Obama's religion, "maybe there's more possibility for other people to make suggestions that the president is this or he's really that or he's really a Muslim."

Obama is the Christian son of a Kenyan Muslim father and a Kansas mother. From age 6 to 10, Obama lived in predominantly Muslim Indonesia with his mother and Indonesian stepfather. His full name, Barack Hussein Obama, sounds Muslim to many.

White House officials did not provide on-the-record comments on the survey, but they prompted Pastor Kirbyjon Caldwell of Houston to call The Associated Press.

Caldwell, who said he has known Obama for years, said the president is a Christian who prays every day. He said he was not sure where the public confusion about the president's religion came from, but he called false media reports about it "a 24-hour noise box committed to presenting the president in a false light."

Six in 10 of those saying Obama is a Muslim said they got the information from the media, with the largest portion -- 16 percent -- saying it was on television. Eleven percent said they learned it from Obama's behavior and words.

Despite the confusion about Obama's religion, there is noteworthy support for how he uses it to make decisions. Nearly half, or 48 percent, said he relies on his religion the right amount when making policy choices, 21 percent said he uses it too little and 11 percent too much.

At the same time, the poll provides broad indications that the public feels religion is playing a diminished role in politics today, with fewer people than in 2008 saying the Democratic and Republican parties are friendly toward religion.

With elections for control of Congress just over two months away, the poll contains optimistic news for Republicans. Half of white non-Hispanic Catholics, plus three in 10 unaffiliated with a religion and a third of Jews, support the GOP -- all up since 2008.

The survey also found:

--The Democratic Party is seen as friendly to religion by 26 percent, while 43 percent say the same about the GOP. That's a 9 percentage point drop for Republicans since 2008, and 12 points lower for Democrats.

--Fifty-two percent say churches should stay away from politics, a reversal of the slim majorities that supported churches' political involvement from 1996 to 2006.

The poll, overseen by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, involved landline and cell phone interviews with 3,003 randomly chosen adults. It was conducted July 21-Aug. 5 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

As Mayor Mitch Landrieu's administration prepares to roll out 100 bricks-and-mortar recovery projects, the local branch of the NAACP plans to keep a close eye on whether the companies picked for the jobs comply with city laws that call for a significant portion of public contracts to go to local and disadvantaged firms.

The local branch of the NAACP wants to make sure local and disadvantaged contractors get a slice of Mayor Mitch Landrieu's $640 million recovery agenda, which includes rebuilding Norman Mayer Library in Gentilly. The facility was demolished last year.

The City Council last year approved a law calling for 50 percent of all public spending to go to locally owned companies and for 35 percent of all public spending to be directed to "socially and economically disadvantaged businesses, particularly of those businesses located in storm damaged areas."

Though the thresholds are not requirements but merely goals, the law says contractors must submit detailed documentation to prove they made "a good-faith effort" to hire local and disadvantaged subcontractors.

Local NAACP president Danatus King said Wednesday that the goals should be applied as standards to every recovery project on Landrieu's docket, from the $30 million redevelopment of the city's winding riverfront to the $100,000 renovation of West End Park at the lake.

"It's not a black or white thing. It's a New Orleans thing. That's money that's going to circulate and recirculate and recirculate in this city," King said. "We're not pushing for anything extra. We're just pushing for the law to be enforced."

If just half of the $640 million slated to be spent on the latest round of projects stays in the local economy, "that will go to increase our tax base, which in turn will improve our public education system and help us repair our streets," he said.

Initially pegged as a $1.5 billion recovery program, Landrieu has scaled back the effort to rebuild public assets destroyed by Hurricane Katrina to $1.2 billion because of budget shortfalls. About 311 projects with a combined value of $367 million have been completed or are under construction.

To make sure the participation goals are met, the NAACP branch plans to recruit volunteers -- ideally, one per project -- to monitor the procurement process, King said. The effort has been dubbed the Citizens' Compliance Campaign.

The organization also plans to reach out to firms that still struggle because of historic discrimination to encourage them to get certified as "disadvantaged business enterprises," or DBEs, so they qualify to meet the goals set for prime vendors, he said. Such companies typically are owned by minority and women entrepreneurs.

In announcing a plan to overhaul city contracting policies, Landrieu in June authorized a "provisional certification program" allowing disadvantaged businesses certified by state and quasi-city agencies to compete immediately for city business alongside those already certified by City Hall.

The mayor also announced he would establish an Office of Supplier Diversity to monitor the participation of disadvantaged firms in public work. A director has yet to be chosen, however, and the city's inspector general in a review this month found interim efforts to advance Landrieu's aim of boosting participation "not adequately staffed or funded to carry out its intended functions."

King cited that finding as the impetus for his group's effort to recruit citizen volunteers to monitor the procurement process.

Inspector General Ed Quatrevaux also raised questions about the whether the 2009 ordinance and an executive order issued in 2006 by former Mayor Ray Nagin conflict with earlier court rulings that prohibit "gender- and race-based criteria for DBEs." though he stopped short of concluding that current rules may have to be tossed out.

Landrieu's series of executive orders on contracting also commissioned a "disparity study" to quantify the gap between the availability of DBEs and the city's use of them. And the mayor vowed to explore the creation of a pool of money to provide bonding assistance to disadvantaged firms.

A federal judge on Tuesday emphatically rejected Troy Anthony Davis' claims that he was wrongly convicted of killing a Savannah police officer in 1989.

In a 172-page order, U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr. said Davis failed to prove his innocence during an extraordinary hearing in June ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court. Davis, on death row for 19 years, now has one final appeal before his death sentence can be carried out.

"Ultimately, while Mr. Davis' new evidence casts some additional, minimal doubt on his conviction, it is largely smoke and mirrors," Moore wrote. "The vast majority of the evidence at trial remains largely intact, and the new evidence is largely not credible or [is] lacking in probative value."

Having reviewed the voluminous court record, Moore concluded, "Mr. Davis vastly overstates the value of his evidence of innocence."

Davis, 41, was convicted of killing off-duty police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail 21 years ago as MacPhail ran to the aid of a homeless man being pistol-whipped outside a Burger King. The case has attracted international attention because a number of key prosecution witnesses either recanted or backed off their trial testimony. Other witnesses have come forward and said another man at the scene told them he was the actual killer.

The Supreme Court's order for a hearing on Davis' innocence claims was the first time in 50 years the high court had issued such a directive. In a footnote in his order, Moore suggested Davis should appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Davis’ sister, Martina Correia, said her family wasn’t giving up hope. “We will continue to fight," she said. "And we’ll appeal."

The slain officer's mother, Anneliese MacPhail, said she was pleased by the ruling but nervous that it may not stick.

“I’m not holding my breath,” said MacPhail, 76. “We’ve been through to much to think this is over soon. For 19 years we’ve been going back and forth, and too often in the 11th hour something happens.”

Danielle Garten, one of Davis' lawyers, said she still believes in Davis' innocence. "We're obviously extremely disappointed with the court's ruling and we strongly disagree with its findings and conclusions," she said.

MacPhail, 27 and a father of two, was gunned down before he could draw his weapon. After the killing, Sylvester "Redd" Coles went to the police with his lawyer and told them he and Davis were at the scene. At trial, he testified he was fleeing the scene when shots were fired, leaving Davis as the culprit. Coles denied being the triggerman.

At the June hearing, Davis' lawyers wanted to call witnesses who had given sworn statements that Coles had told them after the trial he was the actual killer. But Moore did not allow these witnesses to testify because Davis' lawyers did not subpoena Coles to testify. If they had, Moore wrote Tuesday, he could have tested the validity of Coles' alleged confessions.

If Coles had in fact confessed to these witnesses, Moore suggested there could be an explanation --"he believed that his reputation as a dangerous individual would be enhanced if he took credit for murdering Officer MacPhail." Davis failed to prove the alleged confessions were truthful, Moore noted.

Moore answered one question posed to him by the U.S. Supreme Court. He found that executing an innocent person would violate the Eighth Amendment's ban against cruel and unusual punishment.

"However, Mr. Davis is not innocent," Moore wrote.

Of the seven witnesses Davis' legal team say recanted their trial testimony, "only one is a meaningful, credible recantation." The value of this recantation -- given by a jailhouse snitch who testified Davis told him he killed MacPhail -- is diminished because it was already clear the witness testified falsely at trial, the judge said.

Shirley Sherrod, who received an apology after being forced to resign from the Agriculture Department in July, declined an offer Tuesday to serve as the agency's deputy director of the Office of Advocacy and Outreach.

The newly created position was designed to improve the department's civil rights efforts and image nationwide.

In an interview with Tony Harris on "CNN NewsRoom" Tuesday, Sherrod said she was uncertain about that role. "There are still many questions around that position," she said. "I just felt that taking the position at this time wouldn't exactly be where I should be at this point. ... Everything that should've happened with that position hadn't been made clear."

Sherrod said she also turned down an offer to return to her previous position as the department's director of rural development for Georgia. "When you look at everything that has happened in the last four or five weeks, it makes it difficult to go back to that position. I feel at this time I could do more to address issues not as a full-time employee of USDA," she told Harris.

Sherrod met Tuesday morning with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to discuss the offers. It was the first face-to-face meeting between the two since a controversial sequence of events last month culminated in Sherrod stepping down.

The two indicated that, while Sherrod will not return to the USDA as an official staffer, she is likely to serve in an unofficial advisory capacity to help address issues related to racism at the department.

In a joint news conference after their meeting, Vilsack noted that Sherrod had expressed strong interest in a final settlement of claims made by black farmers against the USDA, as well as lawsuits raised by women, Hispanics and Native Americans.

She said Vilsack pushed "really, really hard" for her to stay in the department during their roughly 90-minute meeting, but she just didn't "think at this point with all that has happened" that it would be possible to continue working there.

She needs to "take a break" from the furor surrounding her dismissal, she said.

But "it doesn't mean I'm not interested in that work, because I am," Sherrod told reporters at the Agriculture Department.

Sherrod said she enjoyed her work with the department and "would want to see (it) continue."

"We need to work on issues (of) discrimination and racism in this country, and I'd certainly like to play my role," Sherrod said.

She later told CNN's Harris: "I'm encouraged there are people who want to seriously talk about the racism that exists in this country. I'd like to see how we can deal with it and move forward. If I can help promote that discussion, it's something I would really like to do. I'd like to see us once and for all deal with it.

"It's a great country. Let's make it better. Let's all get along."

She praised "new processes in place" to prevent discrimination and inappropriate firings at the department, but said she doesn't "want to be the one to test it."

Sherrod was forced to resign from her position in Georgia in July after misleading and incomplete video footage of a speech she gave was posted on the internet and picked up in media reports. Vilsack apologized to her and offered her the promotion.

He repeated his previous assertions Tuesday that he did not speak with anyone at the White House before initially deciding to force Sherrod to step down.

"This was my responsibility," he said. "I disappointed the president (and) the country. ... I have to live with that."

The secretary has apologized "and I accept that," Sherrod replied.

The flap began after conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart posted a portion of a speech Sherrod gave in which she spoke of not offering her full help to a white farmer. The original post by Breitbart indicated that the incident Sherrod mentioned occurred when she worked for the Agriculture Department, and news outlets quickly picked up on the story.

However, the incident took place decades before she joined the department, and her speech in its unedited form made the point that people should move beyond race. In addition, the white farmer whom Sherrod mentioned has told reporters that she helped him save his farm.

"People were quick to judge," Sherrod told Harris. "Hopefully it won't happen again with others in the future. I'm hoping with all I went through and continue to deal with, at least in the future people will think first and give the opportunity to look before quickly and hastily making a decision."

Shirley Sherrod, who received an apology after being forced to resign from the Agriculture Department, will meet Tuesday morning with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to discuss a job offer.

It will be the first face-to-face meeting between the two since a controversial sequence of events last month culminated in her stepping down.

Sherrod, who was the Agriculture Department's Georgia Director of Rural Development, has said she is being offered the position of Deputy Director of the Office of Advocacy and Outreach.

The position includes administration and outreach to improve the Agriculture Department's civil rights efforts and image nationwide.

Sherrod was forced to resign in July after misleading and incomplete video footage of a speech she gave was posted on the internet and picked up in media reports. Vilsack apologized to her and offered her the promotion.

The flap began after conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart posted a portion of a speech Sherrod gave in which she spoke of not offering her full help to a white farmer. The original post by Breitbart indicated that the incident Sherrod mentioned occurred when she worked for the Agriculture Department, and news outlets quickly picked up on the story.

However, the incident took place decades before she joined the department, and her speech in its unedited form made the point that people should move beyond race. In addition, the white farmer who Sherrod mentioned has told reporters that she helped him save his farm.

Former pro basketball star Jayson Williams was sentenced to an additional year in prison Friday after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of driving while intoxicated, according to the Manhattan district attorney's office.

Williams had a blood-alcohol level of more than twice the legal limit when he crashed his Mercedes into a tree in lower Manhattan in January -- just a week before he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault for accidentally shooting and killing a limousine driver in New Jersey, the district attorney's office told reporter.

The year will be added on to the current five-year prison sentence the former NBA player is serving in state prison in New Jersey. He also was also slapped with a $16,433 fine to repair the tree he hit.

Williams had been sentenced to five years in prison after fatally shooting his limo driver, Costas "Gus" Christofi, in February 2002 at his New Jersey estate. Christofi had been hired to drive the former athlete and several of his friends to dinner after a sporting event in Pennsylvania.

The group, including four members of the Harlem Globetrotters, later went back to Williams' home. The prosecution argued that Williams was recklessly handling a 12-gauge shotgun when it discharged and that he and two others tried to make it look as if Christofi had shot himself.

Williams, who retired from the NBA in 1999 because of a leg injury, played nine seasons with the Philadelphia 76ers and the New Jersey Nets.