Courts

Cochran bashes Darden. Darden bashes Cochran. Shapiro bashes Bailey. Bailey bashes Shapiro. Book deals. Larry King. Yadda yadda yadda. The law. Well, not entirely. It just seems that way if you're a TV viewer. Nor, their strengths notwithstanding, are NBC's "Law & Order" and ABC's "Murder One" designed as primers on the courtroom.

In Los Angeles County, certain murders are more likely to be solved and successfully prosecuted than others. Killers of whites are more likely to be punished than killers of blacks or Latinos. Slayings that get publicity are more likely to end in convictions. And outcomes vary significantly from police agency to police agency and from courthouse to courthouse.

The brightly-colored envelopes appeared on the desks of every employee at the massive Los Angeles computer company on Valentine's Day. Expecting a holiday treat, each employee unsealed the package and pulled out--a subpoena. Score one for Stephen Raheb, whose job includes serving unwilling witnesses with subpoenas and other court documents.

Amid the roar of the downtown rush hour, a bus's horn blares at John Harrelson as he swerves his bike across its path toward the courthouse steps. Safely on the sidewalk, Harrelson shakes a finger at the driver as he charges into the building to deliver a stack of court documents before the business day ends. "What? Am I invisible?" he shouts. "Nobody respects us messengers downtown," said the 25-year-old Harrelson.

Federal drug prosecutions rose sharply under presidents Reagan and Bush, then leveled off during the Clinton administration, statistics released Saturday by a university-based research group showed.

A woman police wanted in connection with failing to make a scheduled court appearance was captured early Tuesday morning after a five-hour standoff with the Special Weapons and Tactics team. Members of the team fired tear gas into her apartment to force her out, according to Sgt. Dan Mastro of the West Valley Division. Police did not release the woman's name. Mastro said the incident began at about 10 p.m.

It is a 21st century courtroom, almost intimate in scale, that looks as if it were made for TV. Its walls are a neutral gray and the desktops a cool off-white, each with a recessed video monitor. The chairs are bright blue, echoed in an accent panel behind the bench. In this quiet, human-scale room in The Hague, trial began Tuesday for Dusan Tadic before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. And cable's Court TV is there to cover it.

A state task force appointed to study courtroom cameras was so divided about banning them from all criminal pretrial proceedings that panelists decided to issue a minority and a majority report, the chairman of the panel confirmed Monday. The majority report to the California Judicial Council recommends barring cameras from the pretrial proceedings and those portions of trials in which the jury is not present.

All living things must either adapt to the snow and cold that drape the nation's oldest national park in a vast white blanket each winter, or leave. Elk migrate to lowlands. Grizzly bears hibernate. And U.S. Magistrate Steven Cole retreats to his wood-paneled lair to catch up on months' worth of paperwork while the sounds of Eric Clapton issue from a boombox next to a frost-coated window.

A Cal State Northridge art historian set out to recapture the chaotic scene surrounding the Los Angeles County Courthouse--the site of the O. J. Simpson murder trial--and Monday night she did just that. The professor's exhibit opened to a barrage of news vans and cameras, replicating the daily happenings outside the courthouse.