Federal officer convicted in brother's death
A city jury found a 38-year-old federal officer guilty of voluntary manslaughter in the April 2009 killing of his half-brother in a shooting the officer maintained was accidental.
Prosecutors said Curtis Anthony Warren, an Iraq war veteran who worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs, deliberately shot Curtis Anthony Pounds during an argument in the basement of Warren’s Northeast Baltimore property where Pounds rented a room.
Another tenant, Damon Dorsey, testified at trial that he and Pounds had ventured into the basement to investigate a blown fuse. Dorsey said he heard the brothers arguing, then gunshots.
Warren maintained that he was asleep when he heard a noise and saw two shadowy figures in the basement. He said he fired into the darkness with his personal weapon in self-defense, then flipped on the lights and saw Pounds in a pool of blood.
Warren was charged with first-degree murder. After deliberating for 11 hours, the jury returned a guilty verdict Monday afternoon on charges of voluntary manslaughter and use of a handgun in a crime of violence.
He faces a maximum of 30 years in prison and a minimum of five years without parole at sentencing March 8.
“For someone with no [criminal] record who served his country, I think five years is enough,” said attorney Gary Proctor.
Warren and Pounds had grown up in the same community in Pittsburgh but had different mothers and did not know they were related until a chance encounter as youths. Years later, Warren, a military veteran and former youth counselor, invited his troubled brother to Baltimore to help him settle his life, according to testimony.
Warren had been free on bail since the killing, with supervisors at the veterans affairs agency speaking on his behalf.
Proctor said his client “honestly believed his life was in danger.” Proctor said he believes that the jury concluded his actions were “unreasonable, but no one doubted the sincerity of his actions.”
Prosecutors did not respond to a request for comment.
Categories: Courts and the justice system, Northeast Baltimore
