Conspiracy

A single count of conspiracy will be dropped against Manhattan Beach McMartin Pre-School defendant Ray Buckey, prosecutors said Wednesday, adding that they expect to proceed on the remaining 12 counts against him, with testimony from five children. "We do not intend to proceed with the conspiracy count, which will shorten the trial considerably and strengthen our case," Deputy Dist. Atty.

middle school students in Chimacum, Wash., pleaded not guilty to charges they plotted to shoot their classmates, teachers and administrators. Paul Mascho, 12, and Jill Martin, 14, appeared in Jefferson County Juvenile Court handcuffed at the waist with double links of chain wrapped around their bodies. Bail was set at $50,000 for the boy and $5,000 for the girl. Both were charged as juveniles with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.

Gordon H. Faulkner, the former state corrections commissioner, was sentenced Friday to 500 hours of community service and fined $1,000 for conspiracy to commit theft. The charge against Faulkner, who resigned as head of the prison system in December, stemmed from state payment of travel expenses for his assistant, Roy G. Chapman, for a 1979 trip to Texas.

Six Detroit police officers were indicted on charges of robbing and beating people on the streets of their precinct and hoarding money, guns and drugs from illegal searches of suspected drug houses. The officers were charged with federal civil rights conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

No doubt, stand-up comedians can have a field day with Steve Howe's problems. My soaring indignation is with Dodger management's misdirected compassion, organized baseball's inconveniencing the 99% who are innocent rather than penalizing the 1% guilty, the newspapers' conspiracy of silence in not printing that dope addiction is incurable, and with the Establishment which seems to want an addicted population (so) that they can keep giving it to us. Beverly Hills police have just purchased a dope-sniffing dog from Germany, but he's not trained to detect marijuana because, a spokesman said, we don't want to stop some guy with a roach in his car. Steve Howe is a victim; all the others are the criminal conspirators.

Police have arrested 41 Israeli Arabs and three Palestinians from the West Bank on suspicion of forming an underground, illegal possession of arms and conspiracy to attack police and soldiers, Israeli police said Tuesday. Of those arrested, 24 have been indicted, said Alik Ron, police chief in northern Israel. Ron stressed that such cases are unusual among Israel's Arab minority, who are mostly law-abiding.

A Baltimore cab driver was charged in a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan with conspiring to provide material support to the Lashkar-e-Taiba organization, which the U.S. designated a terrorist group in 2001. Mahmud Faruq Brent, 30, of Gwynn Oak, Md., described the time he spent at a terrorist training camp in Pakistan as "one of the better decisions in my life," prosecutors said.

Four men were charged Wednesday with taking part in a conspiracy to sell the Defense Department untested or improperly manufactured parts for military aircraft and ground-support systems. The men are charged in Los Angeles federal court with conspiracy and making false statements to the federal government for allegedly claiming that parts machined at A & R Precision in South Gate had been made and tested according to required procedures when they had not.

The phrase "The child is father of the man" best describes the juxtaposition of people involved in the final day of filming on the HBO movie "Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8" (reviewed by Dan Sullivan on Page 10). In a cramped studio in Glendale last January, seven of the original defendants whose anti-Vietnam protests disrupted the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago met for the first time since they stood trial the following year for conspiracy and intent to riot.