Board likely gets strip club again after judge's ruling
BY RAY GRONBERG : The Herald-Sun, Jan 25, 2007 : 11:58 pm ET
DURHAM -- Durham's Board of Adjustment is likely to have to again weigh in on a local man's attempt to site a new strip club off South Miami Boulevard, thanks to a judge's ruling that a March vote by the board that went against the project didn't settle the matter.
Lawyers for would-be club owner Larry Jones are trying to schedule a hearing, and weighing the strategy they'll use to get a decision that either goes in their client's favor or that at least could prompt a judge to rule on the merits of the case.
Jones' Oxford-based lawyers, Thomas Currin and Lori Dutra, are trying to overturn a Board of Adjustment vote that sided with city/county planners in saying that Jones' club would be too close to residential property to comply with Durham's land-use regulations.
In October, they and Assistant City Attorney Karen Sindelar argued the case in front of Superior Court Judge Ripley Rand who, a month later, declined to rule on the merits of the case.
Rand -- a visiting judge from Wake County and the son of N.C. Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand, D-Cumberland -- said the case was "not yet ripe for review in Superior Court" because Jones hadn't exhausted his potential remedies with the Board of Adjustment and the city.
The judge's Nov. 21 ruling said there was no evidence "that the board has either officially approved or rejected" Jones' project.
The wording apparently referred to the fact that the adjustment board's March vote didn't address the plan for the club directly, but instead focused on whether City/County Planning Director Frank Duke interpreted Durham law correctly when he measured the required buffer zone for the strip club from the boundary of a residential lot, rather than from the more distant boundary of a residential zoning district.
The lot in question straddles a zoning boundary, and lies partly in a residential zone and partly in an industrial zone. Durham law requires strip clubs and other "adult establishments" to be 1,000 feet away from the "property line of a residential zone."
Jones' site is slightly more than 1,000 from the zoning boundary, but is only 768 feet from the property line of the lot that straddles the boundary.
Rand's decision surprised lawyers on both sides of the case because they hadn't thought there was a question about whether the board's vote was its last word on the matter. Neither side had argued the point, and the adjustment board has the power to hear appeals of Duke's interpretations of Durham land-use law.
"When we've had appeals of other interpretations, they've been considered final" and thus ready for a judge's review, Sindelar said.
Dutra said Rand felt the board needed to vote on Jones' plan, not just on Duke's reading of the law.
"Sometimes that happens in these more administrative proceedings," she added.
East Durham activists have opposed Jones' project because they believe another adult establishment in the area will contribute to its crime problems. Jones' lawyers, by contrast, have maintained that city officials are trying to suppress a business protected by the U.S. Constitution's free-speech guarantees.
Rand's service on the bench has drawn criticism from the John William Pope Civitas Institute, a Raleigh think tank whose vice president is Durham City Councilman Thomas Stith.
The institute's president, Jack Hawke, penned a newsletter article earlier this month that called Rand a "Friend of Mike's," a reference to Gov. Mike Easley.
Easley has appointed Rand to the bench three times, most recently after voters elected a different judge to Rand's seat. The governor and Rand's father, the Senate majority leader, are longtime friends.
http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-813002.cfm
* Jones is the owner of Diamond Girls, where Precious tried out and made off with the cab.
Rand and Easley-- well the governor does appear to be very strip-club friendly. Contributions anyone?
Man convicted in mall shooting
By John Stevenson : The Herald-Sun, Jan 25, 2007 : 11:27 pm ET
DURHAM -- Lamar Bass was found guilty of first-degree murder Thursday and sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing another teen outside Northgate Mall, prompting the prosecutor to call on clergy, city officials and others to take the glamour out of gang activity and drug dealing.
Jurors began deliberating in Durham County Superior Court Wednesday afternoon and continued into Thursday afternoon before convicting Bass, who was 17 at the time, of fatally shooting 16-year-old Lazarren Tyqwan McLean outside the former Hecht's store at Northgate Mall on Dec. 26, 2005.
Bass was acquitted on a charge of shooting and wounding another man during the same incident.
That victim, Guinzell Nahdee Williamson, still has a bullet lodged in his neck but was unable to identify the gunman. Nor did anyone else testify that he saw Bass shoot Williamson.
But in the killing of McLean -- unlike the assault on Williamson -- at least one witness pointed to Bass as the shooter.
Evidence indicated that Bass may have threatened to "snatch" McLean's sister, and McLean was standing up for her just before bullets began flying.
Prosecutor Tracey Cline had told jurors in a closing argument Wednesday that Bass fired at least five shots, and that the slaying of McLean was an act of cold-blooded, premeditated murder -- an assertion with which the jury agreed in its verdict.
"I don't think there's any winner in this situation," Cline said after the case ended Thursday.
"We have two families in mourning," she added. "One youth is dead and another is going to prison for the rest of his life."
Characterizing the homicide as an act of senseless violence, Cline called for affirmative action to help prevent such incidents in the future.
"This spotlights the fact that we in Durham need to get our youths back on track," she said. "We need to catch our kids while they are in preschool and elementary school and give them appropriate role models. We need to de-glamorize gangs and drug dealers. I think we can do that through education."
Defense lawyer Woody Vann agreed with that assessment.
"This may not have been clearly a gang-related action, but it definitely had gang overtures," Vann said of the Northgate shooting.
"That tends to pervade a lot of what happens in Durham," said Vann. "Sad, but true."
Vann added that Thursday's mixed verdict confused him.
"All the evidence indicated there was but one shooter," he said. "Yet, they found my client guilty of shooting one victim and not the other. That made the verdict inconsistent in my mind."
According to Vann, Bass accepted his life sentence with outward calm, declining an opportunity to address the judge and the murder victim's relatives.
http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-812982.cfm
* One more off the streets for awhile. Woody is keeping busy. Good work Tracey and the jury.