Black woman named to US Appeals Court

A former executive of a Cambridge biotechnology company has been sentenced to three years in prison for falsely telling a federal judge he was gravely ill with colon cancer in order to derail a government lawsuit against him over an experimental synthetic blood product. Howard Richman, 57, of Pearland, Texas, who was formerly senior vice president of regulatory affairs for Biopure Corp., was also sentenced late Monday in US District Court in Boston to three years of supervised release and a $50,000 fine. Richman had pleaded guilty earlier to a count of obstruction of justice, averting a criminal trial. He admitted he forged a letter and an affidavit from a doctor saying he had cancer.

A new coalition of business leaders and education advocates will be unveiled today at the State House to push for more charter schools and federal education dollars. The coalition will be named after President Obama’s education initiative, Race to the Top, which will dole out more than $4 billion to states pursuing innovation in public education. The group will lobby the Legislature to pass a bill that would either allow Massachusetts to open more independently run public charter schools or allow districts to open their own. The Race to the Top Coalition includes the Boston Foundation, Black Leaders for Excellence in Education, Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, Massachusetts High Tech Council, and MassInsight.

The Supreme Judicial Court yesterday denied the appeal of a man who shot a Roxbury supermarket owner to death in 2001, according to Jake Wark, spokesman for the Suffolk County district attorney’s office. The court upheld the 2005 first-degree murder conviction of Danilo Lopes, 36, for the fatal shooting of Jorge Fidalgo, 45, the owner of Davey’s Supermarket in Roxbury. Lopes claimed on appeal that certain evidence should not have been eligible for use during his trial, Wark said. On April 23, 2001, Lopes shot Fidalgo in the head during a robbery. Lopes and an accomplice fled to Brockton with $4,000 in cash receipts before they both were caught, Wark said.

A 24-year-old Illinois man was ordered held on $20,000 cash bail at his arraignment in a West Roxbury court yesterday for vandalizing MBTA subway trains in 2005, said Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley. Jim Clay Harper, of Wilmette, Ill., spray-painted the word “ETHER’’ on Orange Line trains at the Forest Hills Station four years ago and has also been linked to similar acts on the Red and Blue lines, according to the statement from Conley’s office. The cost of the damage was estimated at over $20,000.

A large construction vehicle overturned near the Wellesley Hills Commuter Rail station yesterday, but no one was injured, police reported. The excavator overturned at about 2:43 p.m. on a construction site off Kimlo Road and fell onto an access road built for the construction of two houses. No trains had been delayed by early last night, Wellesley police said. “We believe it’s stable enough right now,’’ said Sergeant Scott Whittemore, adding that the trains are running without delay. Police said efforts to remove the fallen construction excavator were expected to last throughout the night and into today.