Professional Misconduct

The Rev. Donn Moomaw, a nationally known clergyman disciplined two years ago for "sexual misconduct" with five women while he was pastor of Bel Air Presbyterian Church on Mulholland Drive has returned to active ministry at a San Diego County congregation with the blessings of Presbyterian officials.

With its worn interior, dust-coated liquor collection and unobtrusive location off the Costa Mesa Freeway, Santa Ana strip club Mr. J's hardly seems a place that would attract attention. Yet the topless bar is at the center of scandals that have cost three Orange County police officers their jobs and hampered prosecution of some defendants.

The boy who began life in a Midwest trailer park worked his way as a young man into the chambers of the U.S. Supreme Court, where he clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Though at times restrained and even shy, he rose to the top job at one of the nation's leading law schools, displaying a charm in public that sometimes dazzled donors, alumni and colleagues. He became a mentor and friend to students at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law; they lined up outside his office to see him.

A psychiatrist who was suspended from practicing after allegations of drug possession and professional misconduct has been sued by a female patient who alleged she was seduced during therapy sessions. In a lawsuit filed Monday in Orange County Superior Court, Vicki Sauer, 35, of Newport Beach alleged that Dr. Roger J. Palmieri "implant(ed) in her mind that she was not ready to be in a relationship with anyone except" the psychiatrist. Palmieri has generally denied the allegations.

A longtime Texas death row inmate whose case became a symbol of problems with the state's capital punishment system because his lawyer slept through significant portions of the trial agreed to plead guilty to murder Thursday in return for three life sentences. Attorneys for Calvin J. Burdine, 50, said he was happy that he no longer faced execution, even though he probably will spend the rest of his life behind bars. "The shocking facts of Mr.

Five top editors and a veteran columnist have resigned from the Santa Barbara News-Press, saying Thursday that the newspaper's billionaire owner had been meddling improperly in the editorial content of the 151-year-old publication. Editor Jerry Roberts was escorted from the newspaper's headquarters before noon as several staff members cried and others hurled obscenities at the new publisher, Travis K.

Two ex-judges and a prominent attorney were convicted Friday in a judicial corruption case that exposed a "good old boy" system of favoritism in the San Diego courts that the trial judge said had been festering for years. After seven days of deliberation, a federal court jury convicted ex-Superior Court Judges G. Dennis Adams and James Malkus and civil attorney Patrick R.

UC Irvine placed the chief of its medical center on paid administrative leave Wednesday, less than a week after shutting down the hospital's scandal-stricken liver transplant program. Dr. Ralph Cygan, chief executive officer of UCI Medical Center in Orange, will remain off the job while a committee of experts explores why the hospital turned down scores of donated organs even as patients on the waiting list were dying.