* The State Bureau of Investigation has agreed to a $3.9 million settlement with former death row inmate Alan Gell to end his lawsuit accusing the SBI of fabricating evidence and obstructing justice, according to documents made public Thursday.

Officials at the SBI could not cite a bigger settlement made on behalf of the agency. The state also spent $731,062.40 to defend the lawsuit.

Gell, who spent nine years behind bars, said the settlement amount is a concession of his innocence and the SBI's wrongdoing. He was in jail on a car theft charge when the murder for which he was wrongly convicted occurred.

"I see it as an admission of guilt" from the SBI, Gell said in a recent interview.

The settlement was made on behalf of SBI special agent Dwight Ransome. He was the lead investigator into the 1995 killing of Allen Ray Jenkins, a retired truck driver in Aulander, about 120 miles east of Raleigh.

According to a case summary by the agent's own lawyer, Ransome had decided that Gell was guilty early on, despite having statements from 17 independent witnesses who saw Jenkins alive after Gell was jailed on unrelated charges. (N&O)

* Wake County school board elections are officially nonpartisan, but campaign-finance reports on Tuesday's election show much of the cash flowing into the closely watched races breaks along partisan lines.