ABCDE
METRO
monday, april 19, 2010
LOCAL HOME PAGE
51, 9 a.m. 61, noon 64, 5 p.m. 57, 9 p.m.
Obituaries Film editor Dede Allen, 86, brought a startling new approach to imagery, sound and pace in American movies. B5
A storied history
Reporter J. Freedom du Lac chats about the 9:30 club, a legendary music venue in the District, at noon. Go to
washingtonpost.com/local.
REGION
Frostburg student slain
Tyrone B. Hall of Glen Burnie was being held in the death Sunday of fellow student Brendan M. Carroll of Waldorf after an off-campus party. Another student, Ellis E. Hartridge Jr. of the District, was injured. B4
JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON
Off-off-off-Broadway
Rosslyn’s promoters compare it to Manhattan, but it doesn’t quite melt away those little-town blues. B3
U.S. ATTORNEY SEEKS VISIBILITY
Machen’s D.C. office full of high-profile cases
by Keith L. Alexander
Then-U.S. Attorney Eric H.
EVY MAGES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Among the features of the new St. Elizabeths: courtyards to give patients easy access to fresh air without the need for a chaperone from the staff. Director Patrick J. Canavan says the hospital, in Southeast Washington, is designed to increase patients’ autonomy.
A healthy new start for St. E’s
With modern building, mental hospital seeks to rebuild reputation
by Henri E. Cauvin
From a single structure in 1855, it grew into a campus of more than 130 buildings in Southeast Washington. It was, by the early 20th century, known as St. Elizabeths, for the colonial land grant on which it was built, and it had become, in the words of an admirer, one of the “great, grand” dames of American psychiatric hospitals. Today, at St. Elizabeths, that
tradition is not what comes to mind. Not while wandering among the buildings, where it is difficult to tell which are aban- doned and which only seem that way. Not while looking at press and government accounts of pa- tients who endured neglect, abuse and too often a prema- ture end to life. And certainly not while standing in front of the sleek, angular facade of the hospital’s newly constructed home. It is
FILE PHOTO
Patients undergo hydrotherapy in 1948. For a timeline of St. Elizabeths’ history, visit www.washingtonpost.com/local.
this new building, more than a decade in the works and set to open officially this week, that the District hopes will restore a little of the prestige the hospital knew and help end three dec- ades of court oversight brought on by chronic dysfunction in the District’s mental health system.
“The tradition of this place is not what we’ve heard about in the last 20 years,” Patrick J. Ca- navan, the hospital’s chief exec- utive, said as he led a tour of the new building, which sits on the eastern edge of the campus, near the Congress Heights Met- ro station. “The tradition of this
place is the forefront of psychia- try in the world.” Set up to serve residents of the District and members of the armed forces, St. Elizabeths had 7,450 patients in 1945, a year be- fore the military stopped send- ing service members there. To- day, it is home to 317 — 172 of them committed through the criminal justice system and liv- ing in the John Howard Pavil- ion, and 145 committed through the civil system and living in the Rehabilitation Medical Build- ing.
When the patients begin moving into the new building this month, many will, for the first time, have single rooms. Bathrooms in the 448,190- square-foot hospital will be for use by only one person at a time, affording a measure of privacy and safety unknown in the com- munal facilities of the old hospi- tal. And the heating and cooling systems, officials promise, will work.
But the new building, con-
structed over three years at a cost of $161 million, isn’t just about creating a more comfort-
hospital continued on B4
Holder sat on the sofa of his fifth- floor office 13 years ago and lis- tened to the young lawyer tell him what needed to change: Prosecutors spent too much time in their offices and the court- house, and not enough time in the community. Ronald C. Machen told his fu- ture boss in a job interview that they needed to have a regular presence throughout the District by attending community forums, meetings in church basements, youth summits and the like. Wait- ing until a crime is committed, Holder recalled Machen telling him, was too late to develop rela- tionships. “He had such fully formed
ideas,” said Holder, now the coun- try’s attorney general. “He knew that it wasn’t enough to just show up at a crime scene, but to be
B
DC MD VA S
One foot in court, one in the streets
there to explain what the office was about in non-stressful times. He had a vision then, and now his time has come.” Machen, 40, has returned to
the U.S. attorney’s office as its chief after being sworn in as the District’s top prosecutor in Feb- ruary. The District’s U.S. attorney job is one of the most coveted in fed- eral law enforcement. As the city’s top law enforcement offi- cial, the U.S. attorney overseas the largest federal prosecutor’s office in the nation, with about 340 lawyers handling local and federal criminal cases. Most U.S. attorneys handle only federal cases. In the District, the office handles local crimes as well. It also gets some of the country’s highest-profile cases because of its status as the na- tion’s capital. Machen’s staff, for example, is handling the prosecu- tion of Blackwater security guards accused of shooting civil- ians in Iraq as well as the in- vestigation into whether star pitcher Roger Clemens lied to Congress about steroid use. Each year, the office handles about 20,000 local cases in Supe- rior Court and about 475 in feder- al court.
machen continued on B4
NIKKI KAHN/THE WASHINGTON POST
“I’m comfortable in all environments. . . . My goal is to represent all people,” says Ronald C. Machen, the District’s new U.S. attorney.
D.C. area schools vie
for Race to Top funds
D.C., Md. are contenders; Va. mulls dropping out
After Pulitzer win,
the saga continues
Bristol reporter weighs career change; series’ subject seeks resolution
OHIO KY.
Detail
S.C.
by Ian Shapira
bristol, va. — The scrappy re-
porter just a few years out of col- lege got a tip from a reader: Thousands of property owners who controlled the rights to the natural gas beneath their land were being stiffed out of millions of dollars in royalties. For months, Daniel Gilbert, a
staff writer at the Bristol Herald Courier, dug into an injustice, guided by sources such as Jamie Hale, a laid-off power plant work- er who owns 40 acres of woods and figured he was owed $200,000 in royalties. Last week, Gilbert’s investiga- tion won the nation’s highest journalism honor, the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, and Vir- ginia — impelled by Gilbert’s re-
KENTUCKY
TENNESSEE Knoxville
58 81
Kingsport
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Bristol
N.C.
LARIS KARKLIS/THE WASHINGTON POST
porting — has passed a law that’s designed to make it easier to get royalties to the landowners. In a rural area where jobs are scarce and the use of food stamps has shot up by nearly a third in the past three years, Gilbert’s story about gas royalties created a rare burst of optimism. But in this time of economic distress, even good news can be fleeting: A Pulitzer gold medal was once a near-guarantee of a vastly better job, but Gilbert is talking about
leaving the industry, having re- cently considered law school or joining the Foreign Service. And Hale, saddled with $20,000 in debt, is skeptical that he will ever see a dollar from the gas under the land where his an- cestors are buried. “It’s hard to be positive until you see something — some money,” Hale said. After the initial tip, Gilbert, 28, who grew up in Prince William County, scoured Virginia’s bu- reaucracy and banged up against government stonewalling as he
MICHAEL S. WILLIAMSON/THE WASHINGTON POST
Jamie Hale said he was being stiffed out of royalties for natural gas.
sought to find out why the pay- ments remained trapped in a state escrow account. Gilbert profiled Hale as part of an eight-part Herald Courier se- ries in December, an extraordi- nary commitment of time and re- sources for a struggling news- paper that, like so many across the country, has seen its circula- tion plummet in the face of swift technological change. Hale would eventually bring
pulitzer continued on B3
PA. W.VA.
D.C.
VA.
N.C.
KY.
VIRGINIA
19
0 MILES
W. VA.
50
by Nick Anderson
With a proposed teacher con-
tract that includes performance pay, the District aims to strength- en its case for a share of $4 bil- lion in President Obama’s Race to the Top school reform pro- gram. Maryland hopes to become
competitive through a plan to link student achievement growth to teacher evaluations. But Vir- ginia is considering whether to pull out after a weak showing in the first round.
Obama launched Race to the
Top last year to encourage states to take steps toward perform- ance pay, expand public charter schools and improve low-achiev- ing schools. The funding, provid- ed through the stimulus law, is being distributed through a com- petition that the Education De- partment designed. Most states, officials say, will not get any money. The Washington region’s com-
petitors, like states elsewhere, are poring over contest entries, voluminous written comments from judges, videotaped inter- views and other records com- piled in the round won last month by Delaware and Tennes- see. The District finished 16th and Virginia 31st out of 41 initial
“D.C. has a fairly good chance. Maryland got a bit of a wake-up call. Virginia’s application
wasn’t strong.”
— Andrew J. Rotherham, an
education policy analyst.
competitors. Maryland sat out the first round. Bids for the sec- ond round are due June 1. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Dun- can said there might be 10 to 15 winners this time.
Will one of them be local? “On the merits, D.C. has the best case of the three,” said An- drew J. Rotherham, an education policy analyst and former mem- ber of the Virginia Board of Edu- cation. “D.C. has a fairly good chance. Maryland got a bit of a wake-up call. Virginia’s applica- tion wasn’t strong, and so its fin- ish wasn’t surprising.” The contest puts a premium, Obama administration officials say, on bold innovation as well as buy-in from teachers unions and local school boards. Analysts say
education continued on B2
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