Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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Shepard trial moves to second day by Steven K. Paulson Associated Press 1 Laramie, Wvo. — Matthew Shepard was struck at least 20 times, the blows raining down so hard that they fractured his skull a half-dozen times, a coroner testified today. “Matthew Shepard died as a result of the blunt trauma injuries he sustained to his head and face,” said Patrick Allen, coroner for Colorado’s Larimer County, where Shepard died. Some jurors winced as they viewed graphic photos of the homosexual college student’s injuries, including his bloodied face and ear. Allen testified as the trial of Aaron McKin ney entered a second day in the Albany County Courthouse. He‘s accused of kidnapping, robbery and first-degree murder. Defense attorneys have said McKinney was guilty of manslaughter, but have argued that his judgment was affected by drugs, alcohol and child hood memories of sexual abuse. On Monday, jurors saw pictures of the pon derosa pine fence where Shepard was left to die, his hands tied behind his back, and the pool of blood caused by blows as he fought his attackers. Shepard’s mother, Judy, dabbed her eyes when prosecutors showed jurors the graphic photos while McKinney’s father, William, bowed his head. McK inney barely glanced up. “Matthew Shepard made a frail attempt to fight back,” said prosecutor Cal Rerucha during open ing statements Monday. “McKinney struck him as hard as he could” Defense attorneys countered that McKinney, who faces the death penalty, didn’t intend to kill Shepard when he and a friend accompanied Shep ard from a Laramie bar after he asked McKinney for a ride home. The 21-year-old University of Wyoming fresh man was driven to a remote area, pistol-whipped and left overnight in near-freezing temperatures. The defense portrayed McKinney as the vic tim of sexual abuse who lashed out when approached for a gay encounter. McKinney’s judgment that night was affected by alcohol, methamphetamines and “some sexually traumatic and confusing events in his life,” defense attorney Jason Tangeman told jurors. Tangeman said McKinney, 22, was confused by homosexual encounters when he was younger. In one case, McKinney was forced into an oral sex act with a neighborhood bully, Tangeman said. “Did Matthew Shepard deserve to die? No, that’s ridiculous. No manslaughter victim deserved to die,” he said. “That’s what Aaron McKinney is guilty of — manslaughter. ” McKinney has been chaiged with first-degree murder, kidnapping and robbery. ’The trial of the other man accused of the slay ing that shocked the nation, Russell Henderson, ended in April just before a jury was seated. Hen derson pleaded guilty to felony murder and kid napping and was sentenced to life in prison. The plea allowed Henderson to avoid the death penal ty On Monday, prosecutors called their first three witnesses: Aaron Kreifels, the college student who found Shepard; Charles Dolan, the neighbor who tried to help; and Albany County Deputy Reggie Fluty, who said she told the barely breathing vic tim, “Baby, I’m so sorry this happened.” Kreifels and Dolan described efforts to free Shepard from the fence, his hands tied to the bot tom of a post. Fluty said it appeared that Shepard had been crying. Shepard was taken to a hospital, where he died five days later. China arrests more protesters on Tiananmen Square by John Leichster Associated Press Bbjng—Chinese police detained dozens of Falun Gopg ^riiitual movement members Tuesday, pulling them into police vans after they staged a second day of civil disobedience in Tiananmen Square to protest a government ban on their group. The low-key protest, which participants knew assured their arrests, showed that the Communist government's three-month crackdown ami its cam paign of vilification against Falun Gong leaders has yet to eradicate the popular movement. A New Yoric-based spokeswoman for the group claimed that police officers have arrested about 1,000 members over the past few days, a report that couldn’t be independently verified On Tuesday, police took at least 36 people from the square, often in batches of six or more. They included middle-aged or older women and a mid dle-aged man who was forced into a van along with seven women and teen-agers. By gathering in clumps amid the throngs of tourists on Tiananmen Square, the protesters hoped to highlight their disapproval of a proposed law against Falun Gong and other groups China’s com munist leaders view as dangerous cults. The na tional legislature is reviewing the law this week at the Great Hall of the People beside Tiananmen Square. Fouce officers in street ciotnes aistmguisnea the Falun Gong adherents from Chinese tourists in the vast square by quietly asking people if they came to protest Those who answered “yes” were quickly detained Gail Rachiin, the New York-based spokeswoman for Falun Gong, said the protesters “just want to have the government understand them.” “All they want to do is meditate,” she said. Falun Gong adherents were taken away after similar acts at Tiananmen Square on Monday. A Wfeb site run by the group said police beat and de tained a dozen followers who unfurled a Rdun Gong banner. Rachlin said two members jumped to their dearlis from a train after being detained in Beijing and tor tured. One was still handcuffed, Rachlin said. Without directly addressing the allegations of mistreatment and mass arrests, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue defended the •crackdown on Falun Gong as lawful. “It is an illegal organization that constitutes a cult,” Zhang said. “The oiganization has upset social order and has damaged the health of practi tioners.” President Jiang Zemin likened Falun Gong to groups like the Branch Davidians in the United States and Jean’s Aum Shinri Kyo. The Davidi ans’ 51-day standoff with the FBI in 1993 ended with the deaths of 81 sect members; Aum killed 12 people and sickened thousands with a 1995 poi son gas attack on the Tokyo subway. “No responsible government should let such cult activities go unchecked,” Jiang, who is on a two-week foreign tour, told the French newspaper T /a Pi aum Falun Gong was founded by a former govern ment clerk who now lives in the United States. Its blend of traditional meditation, slow-motion ex ercises and Buddhist and Taoist ideas is said to pro mote health and morality. It had a wide following throughout much of China, particularly among re tirees, the unemployed and others who have trouble affording medical care. Poll: Gore makes gains against Bradley, Bush Staff Reports ^ Associated Press Washngton — Vice President A1 Gore widened^ his lead against Democratic presidential rival^ Bill Bradley and gained ground on Republican front-runner Geoige W. Bush in a poll released Monday. Gore has stretched his lead over Bradley, a f former New Jersey senator, to 25 points — 57 ’ percent to 32 percent in the CNN/USA To day/Gallup poll. Bradley had narrowed the national margin in that same poll to 12 points earlier this month. He has been running even with Gore in re cent state polls in key locations like Iowa, New Hampshire and New York. Gore, who last month moved his campaign from Washington to Nashville, Tenn., and shook up his campaign staff, also closed the gap on Bush, the poll showed. Gore narrowed a head-to-head matchup from 16 points behind Bush earlier this month to 9 points down — 52 percent to 43 percent. Bush was 15 points ahead of Bradley, 54 percent to 39 percent. If Pat Buchanan is included in the mix as a Reform Party candidate, Gore trails Bush by 6 percentage points, 48 percent to 42 percent. Buchanan would get 5 percent of the vote in that hypothetical race. Buchanan made his switch to the Reform Par ty official Monday. .T.T-T.T.1 i By a 3-1 maigin, Republicans and those lean ing Republican said his Reform candidacy would hurt the GOP rather than help them, 37 percent to 12 percent. The poll asked whether people would prefer to see Pat Buchanan or businessman Donald Trump win the Reform Party nomination and, by a wide maigin, Americans want Buchanan to get the nod, 48 percent to 29 percent. When the question is asked only of Reform Party supporters, Buchanan gets an even wider maigin of support. Bush had a wide lead over his Republican rivals for the nomination, 66 percent to 11 per cent for Sen. John McCain of Arizona and 7 per cent for businessman Steve Forbes. The remaining candidates were in the low single digits. The telephone survey of 1,005 Americans was taken Oct. 21 -24 and has an error maigin of plus or minus 3 percentage points, higher for sub groups. Nation Briefs ■ Explosive device injures three at MIT Cambridge, Mass. (AP)—An explo sive device blew up in the hand of a stu dent dressed as the Grim Reaper in a lec ture hall at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Tuesday, injuring him and two other people. The explosion apparently was a prank gone awry, MIT spokesman Bob Sales said. The student was part of a group from the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity who had been promoting a Halloween party. As they walked through the aisle of the lecture hall during an engineering class, the device exploded in the 18-year old student’s hand. It was intended to have been simply a flash of light, school offi cials said. The student, whose name wasn’t released, was hospitalized in fair condi tion. Two others were treated at the MIT infirmary. The building was evacuated and the police bomb squad called in. ■ Seventy hurt in school bus accident Sullivan, I no, (AP)—A semi-trailer rig slammed into a school bus at a railroad crossing today, shoving it into the bus in front of it and seriously injuring at least three people. Dozens of others had bumps and bruises. The accident happened about 8 a.m. about 25 miles south of Terre Haute in the southern part of the state. Two buses were carrying about 60 Vincennes Lincoln High School students, most of them special education students in grades 9 to 12, said Tom Mandon, busi ness manager for Vincennes schools. There were also two teachers and as many as 10 chaperones on board, as well as the bus es’ drivers, he said. The buses were stopped, one be hind the other at a railroad crossing, when the truck struck the rear of the second bus, driving it into the first bus, Man don said. All of the people involved in the accident were taken to hospitals, Lt Mark Hartman of the Indiana State Police said. He said at least three of roughly 70 peo ple were seriously hurt and the others on board suffered bumps and bruises. The buses were carrying the students on an outing at the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis. ■ Two dead in San Jose police helicopter crash San Jose, Caur (AP) — A police man was hailed as a hero after he appar ently steered his spinning helicopter to the only vacant spot in a heavily con gested area, dying in the crash along with his passenger, an aircraft mechanic. “The pilot purposely pushed the [he licopter] into the ground because it was his only choice to avoid the inhabitants,” said Police Chief Bill Lansdowne. The copter came to rest Monday near on ramps to busy 1-880. Neither the pilot nor the mechanic were identified by police, pending noti fication of their relatives. Witnesses said the police heli copter, which was grounded over the weekend, was spinning before it crashed. Others said it appeared to be smoking at the back as people on the ground ran for cover. “We heard a noise, a popping sound. It looked like it lost its rear ro tor,” witness Robert Mannia said. Lansdowne said he didn’t know why the 5-year-old helicopter had been ground ed over the weekend. rfl ■* Mitsubishi Motors to cut more than 9,000 jobs by Yuri Kageya m a Associated Press TOKYO—Its profits slashed by slumping sales, Mit subishi Motors Corp. said Tuesday it will cut 9,900 more jobs in the next five years, trimming its work force by 11 percent from last year. The announcement from the ailing Japanese automaker comes amid restructuring among other top Japanese companies, including Nissan Motor Co., now 37 percent owned by France’s Renault SA. Mitsubishi’s announcement didn’t specify what -m--* m m types of workers will be cut or ffonj where. Analysts said the job reductions were neces sary to ensure Mitsubishi’s comeback. “Mitsubishi is undergoing restructuring at home and in the unprofitable operations abroad, so job cuts were definitely inevitable,” said Noriyuki Mat sushima, auto analyst for Nikko Salomon Smith Barney in Tokyo. Faced with poor sales in Japan and the rest of Asia, Mitsubishi posted its first-ever earnings loss in the fiscal year ending March 31,1998. The com pany then began restructuring, and Mitsubishi re bounded to a slight profit the following fiscal year. The job cuts are part of that restructuring plan. By March 2004, Mitsubishi Motors’ total work force will be reduced to 78,900 employees from 88,800 last year. In fiscal 1998, the company cut 2,500jobs. The reductions will be achieved main ly through attrition, including hiring fewer peo ple and encouraging early retirement. Earlier this month, Mitsubishi Motors announced it was forging an alliance with Sweden’s Volvo AB in an effort to strengthen its truck business. In that agreement, Volvo will buy a 5 percent stake in Mitsubishi, while Mitsubishi will buy up to 5 percent of Volvo by the end of 2002. The deal is part of a wave of increasing foreign involvement in Japan’s auto sector, which is striving to become more globally competitive. Nissan has said it will trim 21,000 employees worldwide, or 14 percent of its work force, although it has also promised not to resort to massive lay offs. ^ Mass layoffs, typical in Western-style corpo rate restructuring, are extremely rare in Japan. -t •* Illinois governor says Luban embargo snould go by Anita Snow Associated Press Havana — Illinois Gov. George Ryan says he favors an end to U.S. economic sanctions against communist Cuba, but that doesn’t mean he supports Fidel Cas tro’s government. . “Forty years of communist rule has left its mark,” Ryan said after meeting Monday with Cuban dissidents. He said opposition leaders told him that “the problem with Cuba is Fidel Cas tro.” Just as the Cuban government sure ly welcomed Ryan’s call for an end to the embargo, his meeting with Cuba’s bet ter-known dissidents and public criticism of the communist system were certain to sting. Cuba’s state-controlled media de picted Ryan’s five-day trip — the first by a U.S. governor since the 1959 revolu tion — as a reflection of growing U.S. opposition to the trade embaigo. Cuban officials have increasingly reached out to American officials who have no con nection to Miami and Washington — the two U.S. places where resistance to end ing the sanctions is strongest. “The dissidents we met with told us that lifting the embaigo was the right way to go,” Ryan said. The governor said that four ambas sadors told him during a separate meet ing that “the embaigo should be lifted, not only for the harm it does to the Cuban people but because it gives an excuse for Fidel Castro.” Critics of the sanctions have long said Castro uses the embaigo as a scapegoat to deflect blame for Cuba’s economic ills. However, the embaigo, imposed in 1962 to punish Castro’s government, has strong support in the United States from a politically influential faction of Miami’s Cuban exile community. Ryan received criticism from some Cuban Americans for making the trip to Cuba. Ryan, a first-term Republican, stressed that his visit was simply to “build bridges” with the Cuban people. The Cuban government has placed much importance on the visit. As of Thesday, Ryan hadn’t met with the Cuban president, but it was expect ed that he would before returning home today. Ryan on Monday met with the am bassadors from Canada, Switzerland, Cos ta Rica and Germany at the gated home of the new chief of the U.S. mission to Cuba, Vicki Huddleston. Also at the residence, he met sepa rately with some of Cuba’s most promi nent dissidents, including Hizando Sanchez, Jesus Yanez and Osvaldo Paya. “We want change with or without the embargo/’ Sanchez said later during a rare public meeting of dissidents with foreign reporters at a Havana restau rant. Sanchez, a longtime human rights ac tivist, welcomed Ryan’s trip because it promoted the idea of “a normal rela tion between the two countries instead of this Cold War mentality.” Ryan also visited a children’s hospi tal Monday, where he presented a do nation of medical supplies. His delegation was delivering more than $1 million in humanitarian aid dur ing its five-day visit. Today’s schedule called for a visit to an agricultural cooperative. v Ryan described the children’s hospi tal as “pretty stark, pretty bad.” “They cannot do the surgeries they need to do because they don’t have the equipment they need, the drugs,” the gov ernor said. “We are here to help the children and people of Cuba. They should not be used as a diplomatic weapon.” Special to The Gamecock Left to right, Illinois Gov. George Ryan, Illinois Agriculture Secretary Joe Hampton and Cuban Agriculture Minister Alfredo Jordan Morales tour the countryside near Havana on Tuesday. Ending the trade embargo against Cuba would benefit Americans as much as it would benefit Cubans, Ryan said.