April 10, 1996

The proposal to build a baseball stadium on the West Side of Manhattan would kill the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's longstanding plan to develop the site and generate millions of dollars for transit improvements. The M.T.A. owns the site, the railyard west of Penn Station. A consultant's report, praised by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, estimated the cost of the stadium at $1 billion, but that figure includes no money for buying the site from the M.T.A.

LIMELIGHT. Heartbreak.

YOU have 30 days to get out of town," hissed the caller, obviously someone who had seen his share of Clint Eastwood movies. Bethany Drucker stayed put. She opened her new store at 10 every morning, closed at 6 every night.

A little-noticed study released last fall by the Pataki administration concluded that black and Hispanic people sentenced for minor felonies or misdemeanors in New York were treated more harshly than whites in similar circumstances. Some experts have hailed the study as ground-breaking, but Gov. George E. Pataki's own aides have now disavowed it. The study found that from 1990 to 1992, one out of every three minority defendants given time in local jails -- where sentences of less than a year are served -- would have received more lenient sentences if they had been white. It estimated that this disparity led to 4,000 extra jail sentences a year for minority defendants in the state.

William L. Cooper, 37, was convicted yesterday of murdering a co-worker at a construction site in Atlantic City in 1994. The victim, Dennis Bartley, 30, died after being assaulted with a sledgehammer, power drill and circular saw.