New Jersey Nightly News; Episode from 03/25/1979

New Jersey Nightly News with Robert Cohen in Trenton Good evening and thank you for joining us and the news tonight. Sunday closings of gasoline stations are beginning to show up in New Jersey we'll have a report. Police are guarding alleged Mafia boss Nikki Risso at a hospital in Trenton. Mayors from across the country are trying to show their strength at a meeting in Newark. And tonight sports report highlights from today's Nets game and Piscataway and Bill Perry will have a report on the clamor over and Donovan the high school basketball star. We'll also look at a new plan aimed at making sure lawyers are qualified. That's our subject on a closer look tonight. Now the news the state's two billion dollar tourism industry is having nightmares over another widespread gas shortage like the one after the 1973 oil embargo which left tourists and gas lines instead of that New Jersey resort areas. Today New Jersey Congressman William Hughes called gasoline rationing and the weekend closing of gas stations. A blueprint for disaster. He was speaking at the annual convention of the New Jersey hotel motel Association in Atlantic City.

That concern is not misplaced since the supply of gas around the state is not keeping up with the increased demand for it. And as a result many gas stations were closed today to ensure adequate gas for the coming work week. Phelps Hawkins has a report. Tony is a fellow who didn't want to close his gas station today. Yesterday he sold fifteen hundred gallons servicing over 150 cars and even closed three hours earlier than usual today. He turned them away. I guess they were out of gas now like Friday night. I got my last load and if I don't close on Sunday or come down in a couple of nights during the week I'm going to be without gas for a week. So why or why wouldn't you just continue to pump the gas and when you run out you're run out. Well I like to keep my customers happy. I'm really concerned about them and feel that they can use the gas more during the working week instead of the weekend. A growing

number of stations are facing the same problem. In an informal check of 65 gas stations around the state New Jersey Nightly News found 16 of them were closed Sundays because of the gas shortage. Six had cut back their operating hours for the same reason. And no said they've always shut down on Sundays. So one third of the stations check are being heard one way or another by the shortage. Many gas stations are currently getting the same amount of gas from distributors as last year. The fact that they're running low indicates that the public is using more gas than a year ago Sunday. Gas is still available although you may have to drive around a little bit to find it. The state's gasoline Retailers Association reports that a gas panic like the one in 1974 is still quite a ways off. But they say that gas station operators will probably continue to cut back on their operating hours mainly in evenings and on weekends. In Trenton I'm Feltz Hawkins.

NICKY RUSCOE The reputed mafia man who was gunned down on a Trenton Street early yesterday has moved out of intensive care and into a private hospital room with a police guard at the door. At the same time Nikki Russell was shot. His 42 year old son Michael was also hit by gunfire and he was killed. NICKY RUSCOE claimed he was attacked several miles away from where her son was shot. But published reports say the police are dubious of that and feel that father and son were together when the shooting started. Here's an update on Friday's triple murder in Fairlawn in which two women and the 6 year old son of one of them had their throat slashed. Investigators say they're working on some new leads although they won't say what kind of leads or whether any arrests are imminent. Autopsy reports were released today showing that all three victims bled to death. Mayors from the nation's three major cities all of them are meeting in Newark tonight to stake out a strategy to get back some of the federal money that Congress took away last year. President Carter is proposing a $400 dollar anti-recession bill.

Raj Wells reports the mayor's drive to get it passed all the mayors meeting here in Newark tonight have the same problem. They need more money to run their cities and the host of this strategy meeting tonight is Newark Mayor Ken Gibson. We have a number of mayors coming in to Newark from around the country to discuss strategy really to deal with the president's approach to the budget the national budget and also the bill that deals with anti-recession the anti-recession the bill as you know did not pass the last session of Congress that affected most of the cities in this country. It affected Newark to the tune of about 141 people who were laid off. The mayor's major strategy is to put pressure on Congress to resume the federal cash flow to the cities. SEE. Freshman Senator Bill Bradley will be holding a finance subcommittee hearing in Newark tomorrow. And the mayors that are here to meet with Gibson tonight will give Bradley an earful tomorrow. But Bradley says he's on their side. What we have here is a real question of whether we

shouldn't have targeted fiscal assistance to areas of great need which are older urban industrial areas of this country. I think that we should. We are also having hearings in Newark to demonstrate the real need for these aids in a city that was very hard hit by the loss of such aid. When Congress failed to pass the anti-recession bill last fall the effects in Newark were clearly visible. Recreational programs were cut. Policemen were laid off and there were severe cutbacks in the school system because of these kinds of problems. Mayor Gibson says urban centers need more help than ever. Well the cities are going to survive. The problem is going to be really how we fund them. It is unfortunate that we have to each year go back to talk about ways in which we provide basic financing of services and cities. One of these days in this country we are going to face the fact that most of the people in this country live in the cities and we have to develop a measure by which we can plan each year to make sure that those funds are there.

The question of federal help for the cities is now in the hands of Congress where it faces an uncertain future. But the mayors meeting here in Newark say they vividly remember President Carter's pledges to help the cities and the mayors say they're going to keep the pressure on in Newark I'm Wells several New Jersey congressmen and their aides have been spending the weekend poring over a confidential Army Department report that recommends major cutbacks at Fort Dix. On Tuesday they'll present their rebuttal to that report and try one last time to save basic training there. And on Thursday the Army Department will show whether that rebuttal has had any impact at the Pentagon and plans to consolidate Army basic training at one base will be officially announced. Fort Jackson South Carolina has been the expected winner. Fort Dix the loser in Borden town they called it the day it was victory over Earth line. A company that wanted to dump toxic waste into the Borden town landfill. Last week the opponents of the plan won as the case says. We dumped the dump

about 50 environmentalists today gathered to celebrate their victory at Bordon town's old city hall. It was a tame but happy group like refreshments. A lot of smiling over the occasion. Well we're all happy we're all happy because it means that there's something not coming into the community that we didn't want. So we were certain that the environmental group called Hope got its wish on Friday when the state turned down the application for the dumping. Virtually every police officer a judge and prosecutor in the state of New Jersey is expected to go back to school this spring and summer more than 29000 of them will be run through crash courses in the states new criminal code which goes into effect this September. There are a lot of changes in the laws specially those parts dealing with sex fraud corruption and kidnapping. The state has already spent half a million dollars training cops and judges on the new criminal code and that won't cover the full tuition bill. But state officials say it'll be money well spent since there's no point in catching crooks low end up getting off the hook on technicalities.

Some clouds some sunshine that's partly cloudy in weather lingo. Actually we did see a ray or two of sunshine in between the gray skies that were left over from yesterday. Those clouds still hover over the area carrying the threat of rain right into tonight. The forecast calls for mostly cloudy skies with a 30 percent chance of showers. Temperatures ranging from the mid 30s to around 40. Tomorrow will have partly sunny skies with light breezes keeping things on the cool side. High should range in the upper 40s in the north a bit warmer in the southern part of the state. Tuesday partly sunny once again with continued cool temperatures in that manner and possibly starting Sunday March 25th at 8:00. We'll bring you the New Jersey Low Sunday March 25th we'll be with you twice as often every other week. So join us Sunday March 25th for the first of our brand new season. You'll meet the world's most public nature photographer who live

right here in New Jersey. A very large archaeologist out to capture our very recent past kind of shocking surprising I'm finding a bit of mine the new New Jersey local Sunday night March 25th. And join us and find out why all the flowers a New Jersey school played for a national basketball championship last night and as Bill Perry tells us Mercer County fell just short. All right Robert thank you. Mercer County Community College lost last night in the championship game of the National Junior college tournament three rivers of Missouri won and it was this this close the final three rivers six the Mercer 59 in overtime Mercer is due back from Hutchinson Kansas today and Paul Butler will attempt to bring you more tomorrow hoping to interview Murcer coach arch Freeman in Piscataway. Today the Nets beat the Chicago Bulls 99 to 88. A rare easy win for the Nets they never trailed 35 16 after 57 44 at the half empty pitch 60 after three. Bernard King 26

points and John Williamson had 28 points to lead the nets Ralph Simpson came on for Eddie Jordan in the second period. Added 17. Bad news here. Eddie was injured in that second period hurting a rest. X-rays tonight Freddy Dan Noonan talked with Simpson after the ball game. I feel pretty good with the fact that we won also in Bethlehem and plan at will. It's really to me not to embarrass But of course you know come in with a bunch of guys really screw up because the contribution we have in the last week or two and a half ago was able to do something today even feel a little embarrassed because they played the best we can to you know. No kidding. So give me a chance. Isn't it a garden that I could come through to help this team. You just made me get my head right get in better shape which I think I'm a pretty good shape now. And I think on the to of the NCAA championship game will be played tomorrow night. What a match up magic against the bird Earvin Johnson and Larry

Bird. Michigan State against Indiana State yesterday DePaul lost the undefeated Indiana state but the All New Jersey back except for the blue demons both Gary Gharlane number 24 and Claude Bradshaw number 15 are from East Orange. Bradshaw scored eight points and had four assists Garland with a long range jumper that is really something to see at all DePaul scorers with 19. Gary is a senior Bradshaw just a sophomore. The final score is yesterday Indiana State 76 DePaul 74 and Michigan State 101 Penn. Ouch 67 DePaul and Penn will play tomorrow night in Salt Lake City in a consolation game before Michigan State and Indiana state meet for the NCAA title. Recruiting is the name of the game in college basketball. The coaches and the NCAA Final Four are there because of their players X's and O's only go so far you gotta have the horses. Which brings us to an Donovan women's college basketball is on the rise and an out of Paramus Catholic has been heavily recruited.

She's the top high school prospect in the country. Rutgers 28 and for this past season feels they could win a National Championship next season and Teresa grunt's of course is recruiting and Donovan Teresa on the far left also has to convince Ann's parents and a lot of other coaches are playing the same game. I have about 100 letters on record that my coach has turned down a lot of schools that call her first. So how many would you say seriously recruited you. I would say two hundred. They are the reason and Donovan is the most heavily recruited player in women's basketball. It's simple. She's 6 8 and she's the all time New Jersey high school scoring leader. She will be a dominant force in college. Rutgers coach Teresa grunt's believes in this motto The sign is obvious in her office it doesn't matter if you win or lose until you lose. And Teresa doesn't want to lose the recruiting battle for and Donovan Driessen your five years of recruiting and one of the most important player that you've recruited. Filleul very important for this particular time and one is without a doubt

the most sought after high school player in the country right now. Rutgers University would very much like having a rookie uniform next year. Have you ever wanted a player more than you going on and on. One of the twins bandish and showed up and I went the Juno Caskie was well prepared and played on. HANNITY I think each year in each Things become more sophisticated more intense. All right now Rutgers University you really would like to have Donovan if she doesn't choose to come directors will then we'll have to go to Plan B. When will you make that decision. I don't know. I'm not looking for a date. Would you consider going to a school that hasn't had a rich tradition of the sort of a franchise. No no I don't want that. Because right now I'm not ready to go. I know I'm not good enough as a player to go on and be a star team. So if I'm going to be the star and the other players can't be that good. I don't want that. I think it's going to be big and stands. Teresa Grenze is hoping Rutgers fits those and Donovan categories.

They seem to but Ann will only say Rutgers is one of six to eight finalists and repeating our lead tonight and Mercer County College came one point short last night the National Junior college tournament now put the pressure on Paul Butler and he said I'll have more tomorrow. No try. OK Robert that's for us. Thank you very much Bill. They say politics is the art of the possible. But our commentator on women's issues says it's all too impossible for women to take a leading role in the political life in New Jersey. Here's the Yotam Elaine with an opinion. Politics in 1979 remains a manly art. Currently only one woman is a member of the New Jersey congressional delegation only one serves in the 40 member New Jersey Senate and 11 in the 80 member assembly studies last year by the Center for American Women and Politics that Eagleton Institute and other groups indicate that the main barrier to women achieving state and national office is the recruitment and nomination processes of political parties too often

male dominated parties encourage women to run in throwaway districts destined to produce losers. Exclusion from the informal political old boys network and lack of campaign funding also seriously impair women's opportunities for higher elective office. Additionally women's aspirations for other than local office are limited by family demands. Families PR-STV office holding at the municipal level as an acceptable community service activity. However holding state or national office is viewed negatively as a career which can effect with being a wife and mother. If New Jersey is to have additional women elected to the state legislature this year our women must overcome funding limitations political party barriers and family resistance to their candidacies. A real challenge indeed to be successful in politics. It appears that a woman must dress like a Lady Think Like A Man. Have the constitution of a horse work like a dog at the height of a rhinoceros

and the wisdom of Athena. I'm Theo time for the state police diving teams search the murky waters of the Hackensack River today. The body of a truck driver who was believed trapped in the cab of his vehicle when it crashed into the river at Ridgefield the accident happened on the western spur of the turnpike. The Vince Lombardi service area if you've ever been along the Hudson River shoreline between the George Washington Bridge and Bayonne you know it's not the prettiest part of the Garden State. Not hardly. There are abandoned railroad yards and piers. Twelve years ago the Regional Plan Association proposed developing a new residential and recreational area there. Now we're one step closer to that with Governor Byrne appointing a new 34 member commission to carry forward the idea most of the commission members or local officials and state legislators. The Federal Aviation Administration has been somewhat inconsistent in its explanation of what caused several loud booms over New Jersey in recent months.

The supersonic jet Concordes have been linked to the booms but not definitively. Now the FAA and the people who build the Concorde reportedly will meet this week to exchange technical information on sonic booms. FAA officials are said to claim that the meeting had been set up long before the most recent incidents of New Jersey booms. Two nights in early February there's been a lot of publicity lately about what are called circle of gold chain letters. The publicity indicating that a lot of people are making a lot of money with them but a lot of people may also be setting themselves and their friends up for a lot of legal problems. State Consumer Affairs officials reportedly believe that the chain letters are illegal in New Jersey. Fines of 2000 to $5000 can be levied. And if you sell a chain letter to someone that person could then sue you for a lot of money. So if someone tries to sell you or a circle of gold letter remember what happened to King Midas in Issue case presents distant thunder directed by something. Right

now my look. What I'm going to show. Go get a good read or you will really watch distant thunder. Wednesday at 8:00 on New Jersey public television. If you ever have to go to trial you're going to need a lawyer. You hope a good one. But it's like looking for a good doctor. You're never sure until after it's too late. New Jersey is in the process of certifying some lawyers as trial attorneys so that before you go to trial you'll know whether or not your lawyer has been judged competent. The certification is supposed to ensure that the lawyer has the necessary talent and experience to be a certified trial attorney. The state Supreme Court will decide who will be certified that will not stop non-certified attorneys from appearing in court.

But the plan may raise the general competency level of the men and women who represent you in court. Clayton Vaughn takes a closer look at the idea why it's needed and where it may lead. For openers this is a courtroom. It happens to be a superior court room in Newark but it's similar to any courtroom used as a trial court anywhere in the state. The judge sits there the jury here the witness here and the opposing attorneys at those tables there. I'm going through all of that because chances are you've never been in a courtroom before as a principle. You may not even have been in one as an observer. The scary thing is that if you get in some kind of lawsuit suing someone or being sued or charged with a crime and hire a lawyer right out of the Yellow Pages chances are pretty good that your lawyer won't be that familiar with this kind of room either. Some lawyers don't even practice law. Those who do many practice only in corporate offices or they labor in the libraries of large law firms or do research or client relations of some sort. Leave all this Perry Mason courtroom business to somebody else criminal law and

domestic law are notorious within the profession as being the least rewarding from the lawyer's monetary standpoint although they do remain the two areas in which a once in a lifetime visitor to a courtroom is most likely to be involved. So it's to meet that need to bring a citizen who needs a trial attorney together with an experienced and competent trial lawyer that the New Jersey supreme court led by Chief Justice Richard J. Hughes has adopted an admittedly experimental program to certify trial lawyers very much and as physicians are classified to the knowledge of the consuming public that is to say people who are ill as cardiologists orthopedic surgeons psychiatrists and whatnot all these specialties are known or can be known to the patient coming to a physician. And we think that the same sense of concern for the

consumer should pertain to the legal profession. Now this has been sharpened probably by the opinions expressed publicly by Chief Justice Berger as to the low degree of trial advocacy excellence in the country. U.S. chief justice Bergers findings are that somewhere between a fourth to a third of the lawyers who appear in court across the country and all judicial levels are incompetent. Hughes says the surveys here in New Jersey show a much lower figure. Fewer than 10 percent use is obviously pleased that it is not higher. He is obviously concerned that there are any incompetence at all. Hughes and his fellow justices certainly don't see many incompetence. The state Supreme Court is an appellate court not a trial court. And by the time the case gets here the lawyers are usually well prepared or at least they'd better be if this particular Supreme Court scene looks familiar that's because it occurred during that one day experiment last December on cameras in the courtroom in

order to try to isolate any possible effect of photography. The court purposely chose routine cases. But the fact is that few cases reach this level only a fraction of those are ever argued in open court and there is never a jury for the attorneys to worry about. So how does a lawyer get through trial experience maybe here in law school. At what law students call moot court moot means having no legal significance. So what sounds like this amount to is practice for attorneys to be on what to do in real life however because law professors no trial work is usually a minor part of the average lawyer's job. There is little emphasis on most lost meals on this type of instruction. There has been more interest in it recently because of us Chief Justice Berger's complaints and many law schools are responding with more trial skill courses and more moot court work. But there is still a big difference in a long time between this and this. And there is always more than just the lawyers fee involved.

There is the outcome of a case in which real people like yourself or resolution of real issues like your problem are involved. So assuming that this certification thing works what's next. Again Chief Justice is there is a wide range now of the constitutional and legal problems being addressed to the courts which were hitherto unknown constitutional rights of course have always been litigated. But consumers problems have come into focus environmental litigations students rage all kinds of civil rights ramifications and many other specific specialized problems product liability. But you get it right down to where the consumer lives though. If I were involved in a divorce action if I wanted to buy a piece of real estate if I had a small claim going on a criminal charge against me the fact is that right now I couldn't go to the nearest phonebook and look in the Yellow Pages and find a lawyer who specialized in any of those areas.

That's true and that's the very gap we perceive. Your reference to this rule not extending now to specialized fields workman's compensation industrial accidents and various matrimonial cases the things you've described is what we consider to be our second stage of this experiment. If the first is doable and if it's successful we would then extend into that breakdown of specialization to which you refer Now however we are obliged to sit back and wait to see how certification of trial attorneys comes out. It's possible certainly that the day will come when choosing a lawyer will be simpler less traumatic less chancy thing. So this case is far from closed. I can't even say that the jury is still out because the jury doesn't even have the case yet. But we'll be watching to see how this goes.

And if you think there's a chance that someday part of your future might be decided in a room like this. So should you. Once again our top stories Sunday gasoline station closings have hit New Jersey. Officials are afraid that's going to hurt the state's tourist industry. Reputed Trenton Mafia chief Nicky Ruscoe is under police guard at a Trenton hospital after being shot yesterday. And mayors from around the country are meeting in Newark to try to get more federal money from Congress. And that's New Jersey Nightly News The Sunday Edition. I'm Robert Cohen. Good night. Good. Night. Here.

In. New Jersey Nightly News is a joint presentation of New Jersey Public Television and W 2013. During the week the program is broadcast at 6:30 on Channel 13 and at 7:30 a new jersey public television. And updated version is broadcast at 10:00 p.m. on New Jersey public television and at 7:00 the following morning on Channel 13.

Portions pre recorded. Or