Mugged, hit with a metal pole and bleeding onto his coat, Holton F. Brown decided to go to work instead of going to the hospital.

That might have endeared him to his bosses and provided a good tale to share with his colleagues, but it apparently did nothing to help send his attacker to jail. A jury acquitted the man police arrested in the beating, and both prosecutors and the suspect's attorney said a central question was how badly Brown could've been hurt if he could still go to the office.

Brown retired a few months ago as a long-time editorial assistant at the Baltimore Sun. Affectionately known as Brownie, he was a faithful servent to this newspaper, full of life and stories, and willing to share them with anybody and everybody.

He loved his job, and so it was no surprise that he showed up on Jan. 29, his worn coat splashed with blood, sorting the mail and distributing papers to offices a few short hours after being attacked at a bus stop in Northeast Baltimore shortly before 5 that morning.

In March, police arrested a suspect, identified as Ronald Calhoun, 26, and charged him not only in connection with the attack on Brownie, but also of a woman on Feb. 6 who was robbed at an automated teller machine on the same block of The Alameda.

In September, a jury acquitted Calhoun of four charges in the attack on Brownie, including armed robbery and assault. Prosecutors dismissed the case from Feb 6 because, according to Calhoun's attorney Warren A. Brown, the victim couldn't identify him. Brown, who is not related to the victim, said his client also was charged in a third attack in the area, which also got dismissed because Calhoun proved he was at work at the time.

The case, as all do in the city, had problems. There was no weapon, so no physical evidence to link the attack to the suspect. Brown's stolen credit cards were used, but prosecutors said there was no evidence that Calhoun was the one who had used them. And Brownie's description differed from what he told the officer the morning of the attack and when he picked Calhoun's photo out of a photo-lineup.

"There was enough there for a jury to say not guilty," the attorney Brown said. "The description he gave at the time of his attack was as generic as could be. The case came down solely to the victim picking a photo out of the photo array and saying, 'That's him.' The pole that was allegedly used wasn't found. There were no fingerprints, no blood and no pole."

And, the defense attorney said, Brownie, instead of "going to the hospital, went on to work. It was almost like the jury could have easily said, 'He's a tough old fogie, he's ok.'"

It's well known that it's tough to get convictions in Baltimore Circuit Court. Cases that rely on witness identifications can easily be torn apart, and without physical evidence, they're even more difficult.

According to Margaret T. Burns, a spokeswoman for the city State's Attorney's Office, Brownie "made an excellent witness" but was the only one. "It wasn't enough for a jury," she said in an e-mail, after a conversation with the prosecutor, Dana Middleton. "Some jurors told her they didn't understand why there wasn't 'more' such as DNA or fingerprints. Brown was bleeding, Dana said, but he refused medical attention and went to work instead and she said that didn't help the case."

Brownie, in an e-mail, said, "I positively IDed him from a photo array but the jury swallows the ... shows like CSI. The prosecutor said the jury BELIEVED ME but they wanted forensics to positively confirm. They think that the police department has a bottomless pit of personel to put out sweeping the border between the Northern and the Northeastern district at 5 in the morning to look for a piece of  tubing that one perp used to beat up an old man!!"
 

Brown, the defense attorney, said his client was on probation for a marijuana conviction at the time of the attack, and that he had been charged with rape a few years ago. That charge, too, was dismissed.