Region/state briefs 02/05/03

Area residents attend earthquake seminar

About 60 businessmen, utility workers and emergency personnel attended an earthquake seminar Tuesday at the Osage Centre in Cape Girardeau.

Susie Stonner, public information officer for the Missouri State Emergency Management Agency said four speakers addressed earthquake topics about earthquake risks and hazards, contingency planning, emergency planning and coordination, insurance and basic safety measures, like securing filing cabinets and book cases to walls to protect employees.

The seminar was the first ever held in Cape Girardeau, Stonner said. The first week of February is Earthquake Awareness Week in Missouri.

Stonner said, traditionally, the earthquakes in the New Madrid zone have occurred between December and February with the 1895 quake in Charleston occurring on Feb. 7.

Death row inmate seeks reprieve from high court

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- A lawyer for death row inmate Joseph Amrine told the Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday that his client should receive a new trial because evidence points to his innocence.

Amrine was sentenced to death for the fatal stabbing of fellow prisoner Gary Barber on Oct. 18, 1985, in a recreation room at the Jefferson City state prison.

But three inmates who testified against Amrine now say they lied to win special protection for themselves, said Amrine's lawyer, Sean O'Brien. There also have been inconsistent descriptions of the killing, he said.

"The evidence in this case shows that Joe Amrine is innocent," O'Brien told the state's highest court. "We want a new trial."

Assistant Attorney General Frank Jung said the prisoners' original testimony had been determined credible by jurors.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis last year ruled that the inmates' revised stories were too suspicious to merit a new trial. The U.S. Supreme Court in October declined to take the case.

Jury awards $18 million to mother of dead boy

ST. LOUIS -- A circuit court jury awarded $18 million Tuesday to the mother of a 4-year-old boy who fell 11 stories to his death in a public housing complex in 2000.

The jury awarded $16 million in punitive damages against Seattle-based Pinnacle Realty Management Co., which ran the complex at the time of the boy's death.

It awarded an additional $2 million in compensatory damages, with Pinnacle responsible for $1.2 million and the St. Louis Housing Authority paying the other $800,000.

Terrance Hill died June 12, 2000. The wrongful death lawsuit filed by his mother Carla Hill was against Pinnacle and the St. Louis Housing Authority. Those agencies did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment Tuesday evening.

The incident happened at the Cochran Gardens housing complex. The lawsuit charged Terrance died because Pinnacle and the Housing Authority failed to provide the new window screens and window guards that Carla Hill had been seeking a month before the accident.

-- From staff, wire reports