Here's a preview of an editorial we're working on. Let us know what you think. The best comments will appear alongside it in the print edition.

Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian federal court in New York raises many potential pitfalls, such as whether interrogators' use of waterboarding will taint too much evidence and whether trying the case in open court will reveal too much classified material. But the argument that emerged over the weekend from former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and others that trial would put New York at too great a risk from retaliatory terrorist attacks is the worst possible reason not to seek justice in court. The moment we allow an imagined threat to dictate how our criminal justice system operates is the moment we surrender to terrorism.

Our precedent in handling terrorism cases, such as the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, is that we try them in federal court. In particular, the U.S. Attorney's office in the Southern District of New York has the most experience in such matters, making New York a natural choice for this trial. The move during the Bush years to treat terrorism cases as military matters, to be handled off U.S. soil and in secret, was part of a dangerous miscalculation that we could trade away a portion of our civil guarantees to justice and the rule of law in exchange for security. Proponents of that point of view tended to argue that Islamic extremists wanted to destroy our values -- and then immediately to bargain them away, through everything from torture at Guantanamo Bay to warrantless wiretaps.

Mr. Holder's decision is a crucial step in restoring our credibility in the world. There is no greater blow we can strike against extremists than to demonstrate the power of our open, fair and transparent criminal justice system.

Posted by Andy Green at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

Student journalists at the Dalton School, a tony private college prep academy on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, got a less than encouraging lesson about jounalistic independence last week when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy gave a talk at their school. Writers and editors planned to cover the event in The Daltonian, the school newspaper, but when Justice Kennedy insisted on vetting anything they wrote before it appeared in print, the school ignominiously caved to his demands.

No  serious journalist worth his or her salt would agree to such terms, which amounts to giving the subject of an article veto power over its content. That's one of the first lessons aspiring journalists are supposed to learn: In a democracy, people in the news don't get to pick and choose who writes about them or to decide what makes it into print. Responsible journalism is about getting the facts straight and everyone's name spelled correctly, not about letting the people you cover tell you what you can and can't say.

We're saddened Dalton's aspiring journalists let themselves be cowed by the arrogance of power. Some of them are old enough to serve in the military defending this country's democratic values; surely they're old enough to write an account of Justice Kennedy's visit that doesn't require his approval.

We're disappointed, too, with Justice Kennedy, who on bench has been a champion of the First Amendment. Why in this case he seems not to have known better than to have made such an ill-conceived request is a mystery. True, Supreme Court justices need to pay close attention to how they are perceived by the public, and Mr. Kennedy may have felt he needed to correct any  inaccurracies in the students' account due to their inexperience. But it would have been better to have suffered a minor factual slip -- and later written a letter to the editor to correct it -- than to have trashed the nation's centuries-old tradition of a free press.

Finally, we're genuinely appalled that Dalton school officials apparently found nothing wrong with encouraging students to surrender their journalistic independence and integrity by ceding control of their story to the person they were writing about. (Neither Dalton head of school Ellen Stein nor The Daltonian's faculty advisor, Kevin Slick, returned phone calls on Wednesday requesting comment). If those are the lessons working on Dalton's student newspaper is supposed to impart, the school would probably be better off without it.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 7:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

Justin Fenton's report this morning that police are investigating a series of rapes, many concentrated in East Baltimore and others near bus stops, has many in the city on edge, both because of the danger and because of questions about how quickly the department has been able to inform people about the risk. In the wake of the department's slow warning about a series of rapes in the Mount Vernon area a year ago, there was reason for concern. As Fenton pointed out, the department did not initially seek to spread the word through the media or through its Twitter and Facebook pages.

Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told me today that the department, as a rule, doesn't tweet rapes because of the sensitive nature of the crime. That's reasonable in the case of an individual rape, but maybe not once police start to think there's a pattern going on. Guglielmi said the department wanted first to disseminate information to community leaders and later did decide to send an alert through the media and its various means of electronic communication.

In the end, the department got to the right place, but it might want to be quicker to turn to social media in the future. Certainly the department should continue to work directly with community leaders, who often have close working relationships with the police and can help turn up leads in addition to spreading the word. But the police now have tools at their disposal to directly reach a group of people who connect to their community in a different way. In this kind of situation, it's crucial to get information out as widely as possible so that potential victims can take precautions. When it comes to deciding which medium to use to communicate that message, it shouldn't be either-or, or one then the other. It should be all of the above, right away.

Posted by Andy Green at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

We were as shocked as anyone by a New York Times editorial Wednesday describing the injuries suffered by a pregnant prison inmate who was shackled hand and foot to her hospital bed while doctors delivered her baby. We were even more dismayed to learn that, despite its patent barbarity, shackling female inmates during labor and delivery is allowed under the laws of 40 states.

Naturally our next thought was to wonder whether Maryland was among those states. A quick call to the state Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services confirmed our worst fears: Maryland has no law barring the practice and leaves it entirely up to corrections officials to decide whether to shackle a pregnant inmate in the throes of labor and delivery.

Raquel Guillory, the public information officer for the Maryland Attorney General's Office, sent us a copy of the relevant statute. It states that the managing official of the correctional facility shall "[at] a reasonable time before the anticipated birth . . . have the inmate transferred from the correctional facility to another facility that provides comfortable accommodations, maintenance, and medical care under supervision and safeguards that the managing official determines necessary to prevent the inmate's escape from custody."

That may sound relatively benign until you realize that the "safeguards" used to prevent an inmate from fleeing can include chaining a pregnant woman to her hospital bed so tightly that she can't even move her body enough to push the baby out. In the case of the Arkansas woman described in the Times editorial, the restraints led to "a permanent hip injury, torn stomach muscles, an umbilical hernia that required an operation and extreme mental anguish."

The woman, a 29-year-old nonviolent offender, later sued prison officials under the Constitution's Eighth Amendment barring "cruel and unusual punishment," and a U.S. appeals court recently upheld her claim. But that ruling doesn't directly affect Maryland because the Arkansas court has no jurisdiction here.

 Corrections officials certainly have a duty to do whatever is necessary to guard against the possibility of dangerous felons escaping to commit more crimes during hospital visits. But the idea that a woman in labor and delivery poses a flight risk so severe that she must be shackled throughout the procedure seems inhumane at best, and deliberately cruel at worst.

At minimum, corrections officials need to clarify the guidelines for when such extreme measures are warranted, not leave it up to the whim of prison guards who may or may not understand the risks shackling poses to the health of both mother and child. A much better solution would be to abolish this medically dubious and morally repugnant practice outright.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

Roman Polanski is one of the foremost film directors of our time. He is also a child rapist and fugitive from justice. For more than three decades, he has been on the lam from the law. But the law has caught up with Polanski, who was arrested in Switzerland at the behest of authorities in Los Angeles, who are seeking his extradition.

The story is familiar by now. Polanski, director of the nouveau-noir classic "Chinatown" and other cinematic gems, drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl in L.A. 30 years ago. He had agreed to plead guilty and accept time served (42 days in jail) as his only punishment -- itself something of an abomination. When Polanski learned that the judge was considering rejecting the plea deal in favor of a long sentence, he fled to France, which has refused to extradite him and where he holds citizenship.

Like a Roman Polanski movie, this is a tale in which there are few good guys. The crime itself was monstrous and can in no way be excused as a byproduct of the tragedies in Polanski's personal life (his mother was killed by the Nazis, and his wife, Sharon Tate, was a victim of the Charles Manson cult). The judge, by most accounts, was a publicity hound eager to further his career by making an example of Polanski.

Continue reading "Justice must be served in Polanski case" »

Posted by Michael Cross-Barnet at 3:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

"Sheena Blandford knew her husband was dangerous," reports Lisa Beisel in Monday's edition of the The Capital newspaper of Annapolis, "but the legal steps she took to protect herself were not enough." One step Ms. Blandford took a few days before she and her sister, Cheryl Timmons, were murdered by Theodore Nathaniel Blandford, Ms. Blandford's estranged husband, was to get a restraining order against her abusive spouse.

But she failed to follow through on what potentially may have been her most important  protection: Making sure authorities confiscated her husband's guns. Under a law recently passed in Maryland, judges can confiscate the firearms of abusive spouses against whom restraining orders have been issued. But for some reason Ms. Blandford didn't check the box indicating she wanted authorities to take away her husband's guns -- even though she indicated elsewhere on the document that she was aware he owned firearms and that he had threatened her life before.

Whether failing to check that box was a result of carelessness or the emotional stress of an abusive relationship, the burden of confiscating an abusive spouse's firearm shouldn't have fallen on Ms. Blandford alone. In fact, it should have been automatic, as Maryland law provides. The judge who issued the order could have demanded Mr. Blandford surrender his gun whether his wife requested it or not, especially in light of Mr. Blandford's long criminal history.

As it turned out, Theodore Blandford used that gun to kill his wife and her sister, then fire on the police chasing him until he was fatally wounded by an officer. Had his gun been taken away there's at least a chance that none of the deaths that followed, including Mr. Blandford's, would have happened. Part of the tragedy, of course, is that now we can never know.  

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (21)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

The honorable Robert C. Nalley, former chief administrative judge and tire deflator of the Charles County court, has been suspended pending an investigation into allegations he let the air out the tire of a cleaning worker's car that was parked in a restricted zone near his courthouse in La Plata. Last week, Judge Nalley told a local newspaper that he deflated the tire when notes left for the car's driver failed to produce results.

By the end of the week, Mr. Nalley had submitted his resignation as chief administrative judge, though the letter made no mention of the tire incident and did not affect his position as a trial judge. But on Friday his supervisor suspended him from hearing criminal cases anyway, at least until the police investigation is resolved, saying that was standard procedure for judges accused of crimes.

Deflating someone else's tire in what appears to have been a fit of pique was clearly a violation of the judge's solemn oath to uphold the law, but we're not sure it constitutes a firing offense unless it can be shown it was part of a broader pattern of flagrantly unlawful conduct. A state judicial review board will likely review the case and it has the power to recommend sanctions ranging from a reprimand or fine to dismissal. Meanwhile, Judge Robert Bell of the Maryland Court of Appeals will decide whether to accept Mr. Nalley's resignation as an administrative judge.

In any case, on Friday, in a meeting with his supervisor, Judge Nalley reportedly said he didn't think taking the law into his own hands by deflating the offending' car's tire was a "big deal." We hope that in light of his subsequent suspension he will now rethink that position. His actions may have been merely thoughtless, but they nevertheless did real damage to the courts' reputation for impartiality and fairness. Even if local prosecutors decline to press charges and the review board lets him off with a warning, some show of contrition on his part -- including an apology to the woman whose car he vandalized -- would still seem to be very much in order.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

Charles County Judge Robert C. Nalley may have had a legitimate gripe about the car parked in a restricted area a few steps from his courthouse, but that didn't give him the right to take the law into his own hands by letting the air out of one of its tires -- then boast to a newspaper he had nothing to apologize for.

Vandalize someone's car, then claim you were just doing a good deed?

Judge Nalley told the Maryland Independent that he was irked by the person who repeatedly parked in the restricted zone, and that he had left notes for its driver to cease and desist. When that didn't work, he said, he flattened the tire.

That sounds like Mr. Nalley took upon himself the role of judge, jury and executioner. Why couldn't he have just alerted police to have the car ticketed or towed?

Turned out the vehicle belonged to Jean Washington, 51, a part-time cleaning worker at the court. Ms.Washington said she didn't realize the space was restricted and used it because her shift ends after dark, and other lots were further away. And she claimed she never saw the judge's note. 

A supervisor told Ms. Washington to report the incident, which was witnessed by at least one sheriff's deputy. Police are investigating the matter and William D. Missouri, chief administrative judge for Maryland's 7th Circuit, which includes Charles, said Judge Nalley could be sanctioned.

Too often, the wheels of justice grind slowly, but in this case the perp himself may have speeded things up. On Thursday, Judge Nalley submitted his resignation as chief administrative officer of the court in La Plata, where he manages budgets, planning, personnel and other matters. But he could still remain on the bench as a trial judge.

In the letter to Robert M. Bell, chief judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals, Judge Nalley never mentioned the tire incident, which was probably just as well. He's already embarrassed himself and the court enough. His superior, Judge Missouri, may have put the best possible spin on the whole imbroglio when he told the Washington Post on Thursday, "I suspect [Bell] will accept the resignation, and make it effective immediately."

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 1:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

When you get caught red-handed by Baltimore's top cop, you'd think some time in the slammer was a pretty sure bet.

 But that's not what happened to two brothers, Devin and Davon Rogers, who were arrested New Year's Day by none other than city Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, who chased the men down and slapped the cuffs on them after spotting them firing shotguns into the air while he was on patrol in the Shipley Hill neighborhood. On Monday, a city judge accepted a plea deal putting  both men on probation but allowing them to avoid prison time.

Mr. Bealefeld declined to comment on the disposition of the case other than to say police would continue to focus on getting illegal guns off the streets. But it was pretty clear he was irked by the judge's apparent leniency. Who wouldn't be, after risking your life to make an arrest, only to have a court refuse to back you up?

On the other hand, a spokeswoman for City State's Attorney Patricia Jessamy said she was satisfied with how things turned out. She said prison should be reserved for violent repeat offenders; neither brother had a serious criminal record.

With all due respect to Commissioner Bealefeld, we think Ms. Jessamy is right. Celebrating New Year's with firearms is dangerous and against the law, but it doesn't necessarily make you a serious bad guy; and unfortunately, it's not that uncommon in Baltimore. We hope the brothers learned their lesson and stay in line from now on. If they don't, you can bet Mr. Bealefeld will be ready to cuff 'em again -- and next time make sure they end up in the pokey.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

For all the chatter in the legal community over the last few years about whether State Prosecutor Robert Rohrbaugh is over his head in his sprawling investigation of City Hall corruption, today's indictments of developer John Paterakis and City Councilwoman Helen Holton show he's at least picked up a few things along the way.

Mr. Rohrbaugh suffered a major setback early this summer when his initial charges against Ms. Holton and some of those against Mayor Sheila Dixon were thrown out because they relied on the women's actions on the council as evidence, which a judge declared to be in violation of long-standing legal protections of elected officeholders' official acts. So this time, instead of going after Ms. Holton for bribery -- which would require him to prove a quid pro quo using some evidence other than her votes on the council -- Mr. Rohrbaugh is trying to get her on a campaign finance law violation. He's taking the same tack with Mr. Paterakis. He alleges that Mr. Paterakis, along with developer Ronald Lipscomb, paid for an election poll for Ms. Holton but didn't go through her campaign finance entity.

At the time in question, Mssrs. Paterakis and Lipscomb were trying to get city tax breaks for part of the Harbor East development, and Ms. Holton's committee had jurisdiction. But you don't see that mentioned in this indictment. It's strictly a case about whether they violated campaign finance laws. That may not be as sexy -- or serious -- as charging someone with bribing an elected official, but it's sure a lot easier to prove one way or the other.

Posted by Andy Green at 5:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

Justin Fenton reports this morning that the mass shooting at an East Baltimore cookout Sunday night may have been related to last summer's kidnapping of two teens from a home in Catonsville, an act that set off a wave of retaliatory violence between the city's drug gangs. The cookout itself was a commemoration of the one-year anniversary of one of those killings, and the older brother of the two kidnapped youths was in attendance and was one of those who was shot.

It's easy to say that the police should be anticipating and stopping these acts of retaliation, but the truth is, they need the help and cooperation of the neighborhoods where this violence is taking place. Fear and the "stop snitching" code may keep people from talking. But think about this: Someone just walked into a backyard cookout and opened fire indiscriminately, wounding a pregnant woman and a 2-year-old girl. No code of honor applies to a person who would do something like that, and no amount of silence guarantees safety when that kind of violence is allowed to take place.

But will this incident serve as any kind of wake-up call? It's hard to be hopeful. Remember, eight years ago, perhaps a mile away from this mass shooting, gunmen opened fire at a Memorial Day party -- that one, too, a "gone but not forgotten" celebration for someone murdered in the drug trade -- killing one and injuring 12. Since then, mayors, police commissioners and crime fighting strategies have come and gone, but on the streets, has anything changed?

Posted by Andy Green at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (46)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions' questioning of Judge Sonia Sotomayor brought us to the crux of the ideological divide at work in her confirmation hearing: Should diversity in the court provide a diversity of points of view? 

Judge Sotomayor has clearly worked to soften or outright change the meaning of some of her more controversial statements, suggesting that what she meant when talking about the impact of a judge's experiences and background on a case was that a judge must be aware of these potential biases in order to stamp them out. Republicans aren't buying it, and they shouldn't. But the problem is, they're trying to establish a ridiculous and undesireable standard for judicial conduct.

The Republican position here seems to be that judges should be applying the law dispassionately, objectively and, in Judge Sotomayor's word, robotically. The presumption is that the law is a simple thing and that any disagreement about what it means is the result of a fault in the judge, a result of some prejudice or weakness of reasoning. By this logic, one wonders why we have nine justices on the Supreme Court. Why not just one? If the law can be read so easily, why do we have so many appeals courts, and why do we have so many 5-4 decisions, with shifting coalitions forming on the high court all the time? Is Justice Anthony Kennedy wise half the time and foolish the other half?

Continue reading "Sotomayor hearing hinges on value of diversity" »

Posted by Andy Green at 1:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

After a day of speechifying, the Senate got down to the questions we've all been waiting for right off the bat in Judge Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearing. But they're coming from Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat and ally. He asked about the Ricci case out of New Haven, in which Judge Sotomayor's decision on a race-related case was just overturned by the Supreme Court, and then about the now famous "wise Latina woman" comment. Her answers in a nutshell:

• On Ricci, she was following precedent. Had the standard established by the Supreme Court in overturning the decision been in place, she would have ruled differently.
• On "wise Latina" she said she made the remarks while speaking to young Latino lawyers. She said, "I was trying to inspire them to believe their life experiences would enrich the legal system because different backgrounds and beliefs always do. I don't think there's a question about that in society. ... I want to state up front, unequivocally and without a doubt, I do not believe any ethnic, racial or gender group has any advantage in sound judgment. I believe every person has the opportunity to be a wise and sound judge, regardless of background."

So that's it, right? Questions answered, we can all go home now? Doubtful. Republican senators yesterday suggested that there is, in fact, debate over whether different backgrounds and beliefs enrich the legal system. Then there's the question of whether Judge Sotomayor should have provided a more thorough opinion in the Ricci case, rather than the perfunctory one she and other judges on the panel signed. And we haven't even gotten into the dreaded e-word, the formerly desireable trait of empathy.

What we're witnessing so far has little to do with law and lots to do with PR. Judge Sotomayor has not made any public statements heretofore explaining the "wise Latina" comment or the Ricci decision. It was smart to allow her a chance to answer the question first in a friendly setting. Now, when she's grilled about it from hostile questioners, she can reach back to her initial statement, and she at least got it all out for the TV cameras.

Now the Republicans get a turn, and things will start to get interesting.

Posted by Andy Green at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

Marion Barry, Washington's embattled city council member and former mayor, dodged another bullet last week when a District prosecutor declined to prosecute him on charges of stalking his ex-girlfriend. Barry was arrested and briefly detained by U.S. Park Service police July 4th after the woman, 40-year-old Donna Watts-Brighthaupt, complained that he was "bothering" her.

 But Mr. Barry may not be completely out of the woods yet. The controversy kicked up by his arrest led reporters to dig out the fact that Mr. Barry had put Ms. Watts-Brighthaupt on his payroll by awarding her a $60,000 contract to study "poverty reduction," to be paid out of taxpayer dollars. That proved too much for current D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and others, who demanded the city council open an ethics probe of Mr. Barry. On Friday, D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray announced the council would hire an independent law firm to look into the matter.

Mr. Barry meanwhile spent the day denouncing his arrest by the Park Police while studiously avoiding any discussion of his relationship with Ms. Watts-Brighthaupt or her lucrative contract -- a pretty neat trick. In any case, it's unlikely the council will do much about its errant member no matter how the investigation turns out. Nobody wants to take Mr. Barry on because he's a local icon with a still large and devoted following despite his well-publicized shortcomings. Of course, the council could surprise everyone by taking away Mr. Barry's committee chairmanship or seniorty or at the very least by reprimanding him. But any of those actions would require a show of far more political courage than that august body has ever evinced in the past, so don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 6:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

Baltimore has been riveted for the last week to the story of Raven Wyatt, a 5-year-old who was struck in the head by a stray bullet. But the concern for her has been matched by questions about the state's handling of Lamont Davis, the 17-year-old who has been charged as an adult in her shooting. Davis, The Sun's Justin Fenton reported this week, has been arrested 15 times since he turned 10. He had been in the custody of the state Department of Juvenile Services since February 2008, but since then had been arrested four more times, not including the most recent arrest for the shooting. He was on a GPS monitoring bracelet at the time of the July 2 shooting but had cut it off.

A spokeswoman for DJS said the department had put him on "the highest level of sanction" possible. But is that enough for someone who has had so many brushes with the law at such a young age? What should the state do with such youths?

(Baltimore Police photo)

Posted by Andy Green at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

Marion Barry, Washington's embattled former mayor and current city councilman representing one of the District's poorest neighborhoods, is back in the news again, this time for allegedly stalking a former girlfriend over the July 4th weekend.

Mr. Barry, 73, and Donna Watts-Brighthaupt, a 40-year-old campaign worker he began dating last summer, reportedly quarreled over lunch on Saturday at a restaurant near Annapolis while on their way to Rehoboth Beach, Del. The spat led Watts-Brighthaupt to cancel the planned trip and return home; where she apparently had left her ex-husband baby-sitting the family dog. Mr. Barry reportedly followed her there and refused to leave. Later that evening, when the Brighthaupt's went out to watch the fireworks, Mr. Barry followed them. Police say he was arrested shortly afterwards Watts-Brighthaupt complained to an officer that someone was "bothering" her.

In the comedy of political errors this month that included South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's skipping off to Argentina to see his mistress, Nevada Sen. John Ensign's confession of marital infidelity and Alaska Gov. Sarrah Palin's odd announcement that she was stepping down for the good of her state, Mr. Barry's antics would seem almost unremarkable except for the depressing regularity with which he manages to get himself into such jams. He seems to have a self-destructive streak that compells him to commit acts of unfathomable folly just to stay in the public eye, fame and infamy being all the same to him.

Still, one can readily predict how this latest episode will play out. Mr. Barry will claim police are harassing him, as he did in 2002 when park police claimed to have found traces of marijuana and crack cocaine in his car, and in 2006, when he was pulled over and cited for driving on a suspended license.

(That's on top of Mr. Barry's most famous run-in with the law: his arrest in 1990, when he was still mayor, after being videotaped smoking crack in a hotel room with a woman who was not his wife. A Washington jury acquitted him of all but a misdemeanor drug charge, for which he served six months in prison. On release, he was promptly re-elected, first to a council seat, then to a fourth term as mayor.)

All of which suggests the people of Washington, or at least Mr. Barry's legions of ardent supporters, are willing to forgive him almost anything. He's currently on probation for failing to file income taxes, and technically his arrest last weekend constitutes a violation that could return him to prison. But virtually nobody believes that's likely. As has happened so often in the past, the charges will be dropped, Mr. Barry will claim vindication and his career as a once esteemed leader now sadly reduced to cartoonish bufoonery will continue apace toward its predictably calamitous end.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 6:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

If a parent makes a foolish mistake and a child is killed as a result, what should the consequence be?

This is the question facing authorities in Howard County, where a 23-month-old girl died after spending nine hours alone in a hot car. Every summer -- tragically and predictably -- a spate of such horrifying incidents is reported around the country.

Such cases are deeply vexing because they stir conflicting responses. On the one hand, most people feel strongly that the death of an innocent child ought to be punished. And yet, the parent who is guilty not of cruel behavior but of a horrendous error has already suffered the worst kind of punishment imaginable, by causing the death or his or her own child.

The response of Howard County officials to the case at hand is a bit curious. The mother who left the child in the car has not been charged, and a police spokeswoman said charges likely wouldn't be filed if the incident is "determined to be accidental." The state's attorney, Dario J. Broccolino, said his office would review the police findings, adding, "There are a million variables in these kinds of cases."

"Determined to be accidental"? What other explanation could there for what happened here? Only a monstrous psychopath would intentionally leave a child to bake in a hot car. As for the "million variables," that just isn't the case. Rather, these kinds of incidents (15 children have died in locked cars this year, according to Safe Kids USA) are all depressingly similar: A distracted parent or guardian simply forgets that he or she has a small child in the back seat, parks the car and leaves.

Continue reading "Death in the back seat: accident or a crime?" »

Posted by Michael Cross-Barnet at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

After years of dragging its feet, the O'Malley administration has proposed regulations to implement Maryland's death penalty, a necessary step tor resume capital punishment after the Court of Appeals ruled in 2006 that the previous regulations had not been properly adopted. The main changes are restrictions on corrections personnel performing a "cut down" procedure to get access to a condemned inmate's vein to administer lethal drugs, more time for the inmate to spend with his or her family and a provision for a last meal.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, we can expect ... more foot dragging? The rules now go before a joint committee of the Senate and House of Delegates that is led by staunch death penalty opponents. They say they're in no hurry to see these rules get implemented.

Don't get me wrong, I'm in no hurry to see Maryland resume executions. I wish the legislature had voted for the ban on capital punishment that Gov. Martin O'Malley has proposed for the last few years. What we're left with instead is the most restrictive capital punishment statute in the nation in terms of the level of proof required to support a death sentence. But those restrictions don't apply to the five people now on death row. The state's death penalty foes could take their time moving forward with the regulations, but that would do no good either for the people on death row or for the families of their victims.

(Sun photo)

Continue reading "Let's be honest about the death penalty" »

Posted by Andy Green at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

The shooting of a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was a shocking and senseless act of violence in a place where one of mankind's most shocking and senseless acts of violence is movingly recalled. For Marylanders, it is particularly disturbing to hear that not only was the victim, Stephen T. Johns, a resident of this state but so is the alleged perpetrator, James von Brunn, a once-successful artist turned criminally-delusional or worse who appears to have spent a good part of his senior years spewing hatred against Jews and blacks.

Mr. Johns died a hero, and he and others on the museum's staff deserve credit for being so well prepared for just such an event. Mr. von Brunn appears to have acted alone but clearly shared many of his beliefs with white supremicist groups and the Holocaust denial fringe.

This begs the question: Was this a random act of a lunatic or evidence of the rising threat of anti-semitism in this country?

It's impossible to know for sure -- the museum attack may invite copycat behavior as well-publicized crimes often do -- but a recent report by the Anti-Defamation League found the trend  running in the opposite direction. According to ADL statistics, the number of anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. declined for the fourth consecutive year with a total of 1,352 incidents of vandalism, harrassment and assaults against Jews, their property and institutions last year. That was about 7 percent less than was reported in 2007.

Continue reading "An indicator of creeping U.S. anti-semitism?" »

Posted by Peter Jensen at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

Because speeding is one of those sins of which almost everyone is guilty from time to time, it has a tendency not to be taken too seriously. It's something people tend not to think about much -- until a speeding-related crash affects someone they love.

What matters is the degree of the problem. Just as there's a difference between being an occasional imbiber and a falling-down drunk, it's important to distinguish between someone who "speeds" at 60 mph in a 55 zone and a truly dangerous leadfoot who chronically and recklessly endangers his fellow citizens.

As Michael Dresser chronicled this week, super-lobbyist Bruce Bereano, with 18 speeding tickets in the last 13 years (he was found not guilty on three of those tickets), would seem to fall squarely into the latter camp.

Anyone can make a mistake or two, but 22 moving violation citations in Maryland since 1996 seems like enough to qualify someone as a menace. The fact that Bereano's latest infraction stands to cost him no more than $290 and 5 points on his record suggests that more needs to be done to deter chronic violators. Why not double the fine for each successive ticket, until a scofflaw can demonstrate a clean record for a few years?

Continue reading "Slow 'em down" »

Posted by Michael Cross-Barnet at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

Baltimore has too many murders. This is undeniably true and it's a longstanding problem. For years, this city has pursued various strategies to address this with mixed results -- although, thankfully, the numbers appear to be going in a better direction of late, with last year marking the lowest number of killings in two decades.

But please spare us any hand-wringing over whether Baltimore was the most murderous big city in the nation or merely the third worst last year. Such statistical comparisons are nonsensical. Why not account for the most murderous neighborhood, or state, or region of the country? It's all rather arbitrary. A big chunk of Baltimore's misfortune is simply a matter of political boundaries; it's not as sprawling as other U.S. cities which get to include tranquil and affluent suburban tracts in their accounting.

The real problem is that Baltimore is awash in drugs and drug trafficking. Most of these murders are linked to this violent enterprise. Add severe poverty and unemployment to the mix and the results are disastrous -- and predictably so.

Continue reading "We're number one" »

Posted by Peter Jensen at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

A prominent U.S. citizen is threatened, shot, his office bombed and he is ultimately murdered in his Kansas church to the horror of his fellow parishioners. Little is immediately revealed about the suspect in police custody but he's most likely someone harboring beliefs most of us would regard as fanatical.

If that is not the definition of terrorism, what is? Yet you can bet that the murder of George Tiller in Wichita on Sunday morning will be treated strictly as a crime. Oh, the FBI may feel compelled to keep closer watch on anti-abortion rights groups for a time, but don't expect Congress or the White House to declare war on this particular brand of terrorism or make this a priority for homeland security.

Yet if terrorism is defined as the use of force or threats as a political weapon, what's the difference between a car bomb exploding on the streets of Baghdad and a gun fired in the foyer on the Reformation Lutheran Church?

Continue reading "Terrorism, American style" »

Posted by Peter Jensen at 1:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

State Prosecutor Robert Rohrbaugh looks to have made a colossal error in how he pursued his case against Mayor Sheila Dixon. Thursday, Judge Dennis M. Sweeney threw out all perjury counts against her on the grounds that Rohrbaugh violated a protection against prosecuting an elected official for "speech and debate" conducted in his or her official capacity.

That protection completely torpedoed Rohrbaugh's bribery case against Councilwoman Helen Holton -- he had no evidence that a poll developer Ron Lipscomb paid for constituted a bribe, other than her votes in favor of his projects. Realistically, without a wiretap or some other evidence, it's hard to see how he could have made that charge stick.

But the Dixon perjury counts are a different story. Mr. Rohrbaugh alleges that she accepted thousands of dollars of gifts and travel from Mr. Lipscomb and failed to report it on her ethics forms. If he was trying to prove that those gifts constituted a bribe, the evidence that she supported various legislation that benefited Lipscomb might have been useful, but as far as showing that she received a gift from someone doing business with the city and failed to report it is concerned, such information was totally unnecessary. Same with information Rohrbaugh brought before the grand jury (and put in the indictment) that Dixon helped draft the ethics code.

That's all a shame, because in another memorandum, Mr. Sweeney shows the total hollowness of the defense proffered by Dixon attorney Arnold Weiner (pictured with the mayor above).

Continue reading "State prosecutor screwed up in Dixon case" »

Posted by Andy Green at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

The Baltimore Police Department is doing the right thing in dropping internal affairs charges against officers whose cases were tainted by sloppy or fraudulent handling by the internal affairs division. But it needs to go much further in cleaning house to give the public confidence that the department is effectively policing itself. 

Tuesday's news that the department dropped charges against 12 officers is just the latest sign that the internal affairs division is deeply troubled. These cases were dropped because of problems with the way they were handled by the department, problems that were discovered in a review conducted after the firing of JoAnn C. Woodson-Branche as chief of trial boards. The department hasn't said what those procedural problems were, but union officials charge her with backdating documents to get around deadlines for filing charges, and she has been accused in a lawsuit of arbitrary and capricious conduct in deciding which cases to pursue and which to let go. Dozens more cases of discipline against cops could be at risk.

She's not the only person in that division to face questions about her conduct. The head of internal investigations resigned under pressure in the fall, and the attorney who handles race discrimination complaints for the department has, The Baltimore Sun's Justin Fenton reported, been engaged in an active private law practice, including at least one Baltimore criminal case.

Mayor Sheila Dixon called internal affairs a "weak link." Apparently she has a gift for understatement.

Continue reading "Who's policing the police?" »

Posted by Andy Green at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

The California Supreme Court did about the only thing it could Tuesday in upholding a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages but allowing to stand the marriages performed while the practice was briefly legal there.

The hopes of gay marriage proponents to overturn the referendum, known as Proposition 8, rested on a question about the process by which the equal protection clause of the state's constitution could be altered, but it would be hard to imagine judges overturning a clear vote of the citizens -- however misguided the majority might have been in seeking to strip rights from a group of people. At the same time, the amendment did not specifically say it was to be applied retroactively, and the judges salvaged some humanity in this episode by declaring it should not be read that way.

Now California gay rights advocates should focus their attention on the legislative process and seek to change their constitution back to one that does not discriminate based on sexual orientation, or any other characteristic. Although overturning a recently enacted constitutional amendment may seem daunting, California voters have certainly been known to change their minds when it comes to ballot initiatives before.

Continue reading "A setback for gay marriage, but a win for gay couples" »

Posted by Andy Green at 2:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

Four men arrested in New York this week on charges of conspiracy to commit terrorist acts seem like the proverbial gang that couldn't shoot straight. Not only did they spill their plans to a federal informant who everybody else in their Newburgh, N.Y., mosque suspected was a government agent, their ambitions extended to the grandiose despite their utter lack of experience in the jihadist business -- let's get some Stinger missiles to shoot down military jets and, oh by the way, how about bombing a couple of synagogues too?

The arrests were announced around the same time President Barack Obama was outlining U.S. strategy for dealing with foreign terrorist suspects after the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba closes. Democrats are giving the president grief over his plan to imprison terror suspects in maximum security prisons in the U.S. They don't want hardened terrorists in their midst, even if they're locked away in supermax cells. (Of course, those same Dems were among the loudest voices calling on Obama to shut down Guantanamo a few months ago; where did they think the inmates would go when it closed?)

Still, the New York arrests are a reminder that foreign terrorists aren't the only threat. The worst terrorist attack before 9/11 was the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, and that was carried out by two home-grown anarchists, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, whose deadly plot went completely undetected largely because they seemed so ordinary. Similarly, the would-be Jihadists in New York were your average petty criminals and lowlifes, not the ideological fanatics you'd expect to perpetrate spectacular acts of domestic terrorism. That's  what's so chilling about them, because if anything it makes them more rather than less dangerous than the foreign militants they modeled themselves on.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

Ultimately, it looks like no harm will come from what could have been a tragic mistake by the U.S. Marshal's office. Tricia Bishop reports Friday that marshals accidentally left a witness in the same holding cell with three defendants he was to testify against in a case that involved the killing of another witness. The three men tried to beat up the witness -- who himself once starred in the "Stop Snitching" video -- but he held his own and testified anyway.

That comes on the heels of a case in Baltimore Circuit Court in which a defendant sitting in a courtroom threatened a witness on the stand, spooking a jury into sending a note to the judge saying they were worried for their safety.

It looks like this week's incident was an aberration. The marshal's office, and the Baltimore federal courthouse in general, have a good track record in this regard, and they have the facilities and manpower to keep potentially hostile parties separated. Not so in city Circuit Court. There, defendants, witnesses, jurors, lawyers and others are frequently in close contact, in elevators, hallways and other areas. The fact that three men would beat up a witness while being videotaped in a federal courthouse holding cell shows just how brazen the anti-snitching culture is and serves as a reminder that authorities should make the investments necessary to ensure incidents like this can't happen in any of our courthouses.

Posted by Andy Green at 9:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III sounded off Tuesday on Clarence Mitchell IV's radio show on WBAL, chastising judges, juries, parents, liquor inspectors and all manner of people other than the police for the city's crime problems. Is he passing the buck for Baltimore's challenges? Hardly.

What got him in a lather was Circuit Court Judge John Addison Howard's decision Monday to sentence two men to two years in prison after they were convicted in the kidnapping and torture of two teenagers. The assailants apparently believed the teens had stolen a PlayStation console.

"Those guys got fairly nominal sentences for some heinous stuff that they did to these kids, and if it happened in a white neighborhood in any other community in this state, we'd still be talking about it, and people would be talking about life sentences," Bealefeld said. "And these people get out essentially with a slap on the wrist. People need to be speaking out about this."

Continue reading "Baltimore's top cop is fired up" »

Posted by Andy Green at 6:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

Remember those old black-and-white Hollywood prison flicks where the inmates lined up to use the one pay telephone in the joint, then invariably fell to arguing and fighting among themselves? That's so old school: Today they dial up in comfort from behind bars on wireless phones smuggled in by visitors and corrupt guards, whose numbers apparently are legion. The practice is giving new meaning to the phrase "cell phone."

No wonder Gov. Martin O'Malley, recognizing that metal detectors and searches of inmates' cells haven't dented the trade in illicit phones, wants to try jamming them electronically. But in order to do so, he'll have to lobby for a special waiver from the Federal Communications Commission: Under a 1934 FCC law, passed long before cell phones were invented, states and counties can't jam wireless signals. And the prospects don't look good even for the hour-long test of the system O'Malley is proposing: The feds already have turned down similar requests from Louisiana and the District of Columbia.

Continue reading "Dial "M" for Murder" »

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

Maryland's public records law is laughably weak, as the case of continuing racial profiling complaints against the Maryland State Police makes plain.

As Andrea Siegel reported in The Baltimore Sun on Tuesday, motorists have lodged about 100 accusations of racial profiling since the police agency agreed, five years ago, to change its procedures related to that controversial practice. Here's a shocker: Not a single one of those allegations was upheld after investigations by ... the Maryland State Police. 

Smelling a rat, lawyers for two civil rights groups demanded to see the documents showing how those probes were handled. They were turned down because such records are deemed "personnel" matters and thus are exempt from disclosure under the Maryland Public Information Act.

Continue reading "Not a profile in courage" »

Posted by Michael Cross-Barnet at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

This week The Sun's Laura Vozzella caught wind of allegations by a state employee that Anne Arundel County Executive John Leopold had made "unwarranted, unauthorized advances" to her in a public place. The story led the Friday Washington Post's Metro section, which added the account of a second woman who also claimed harassment. Leopold has dismissed the charges as baseless, but coming in the wake of an incident earlier this year in which police responding to a complaint of sexual activity in a parking lot found the county executive sitting alone in the back seat of his car, Mr. Leopold owes the public a fuller explanation of his behavior, and his claims that the charges are nothing but a political smear campaign don't cut it.

It's become commonplace for officials accused of any sort of wrongdoing to first deny culpability, then clam up on the advice of attorney. That may be acceptable for ordinary citizens but officeholders should expect to be scrutinized more closely. In the earlier incident, Mr. Leopold also insisted nothing was amiss and that people were spreading malicious rumors about him. He stonewalled the press and county police didn't file an official report so most voters were willing to let it go. But the current charges of harassment are more serious, and reportedly there are also witnesses to the alleged misconduct. This is no longer something the public or Mr. Leopold can pretend to ignore. If he's done nothing wrong he should say so and be forthright enough to offer a complete and public accounting of his actions.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 4:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

Roughly 10 years after Columbine and two years after the Virginia Tech massacre, the families of shooting victims were back on Capitol Hill Tuesday pleading for Congress to close the gun show loophole. All they seek is for all gun purchasers to be required to pass background checks that help keep guns out of the hands of criminals, terrorists, and the mentally ill.

Is that really so much to ask?

Too many states continue to allow individuals without a dealers license to sell firearms at gunshows and thereby skirt the 16-year-old federal background check requirement. Authorities estimate that between 25 and 50 percent of vendors at gun shows are unlicensed.

Continue reading "The gun show loophole revisited" »

Posted by Peter Jensen at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

A reprimand? For illegally dumping material along a shoreline and fouling a protected wetland? Baltimore District Court Judge Askew W. Gatewood Jr. got off easy from the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities, the group that reviews complaints about judicial and ethical conduct. A reprimand is the equivalent of a note in your file. Someone who dons a robe every day and passes judgment on hundreds of citizens should be held to a higher standard -- and the punishment doesn't fit the crime. 

The judge did pay a $10,000 fine last year in the criminal case in which he entered a not guilty plea as part of a deal in which he acknolwedged that the state had the evidence to convict him on a misdemeanor charge of illegally filling in a wetlands areas without a permit. He received probation in that case, which may make it possible for him to escape a criminal record. Judge Gatewood also had to pay $6,500 to Anne Arundel County, the location of his waterfront home, where the illegal dumping occurred in 2006.

But when a panel charged with reviewing his fitness for duty takes a look at the case, it issues a reprimand. If the charge had been more serious, such as a felony, would that have brought a stiffer penalty? The judicial disabilities commission required that its finding be made public (that was big of them). And while public shame can have an effect on behavior, a reprimand should have Baltimore citizens asking why the judge whose duty is to uphold the law ended up with a proverbial slap on the wrist.   

Continue reading "Tell it to the judge" »

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 5:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

Maryland Public Defender Nancy S. Forster thinks the state’s drug treatment courts violate defendants' right to due process and has asked the state's highest court to declare them unconstitutional. But if she succeeds in persuading the courts to close down these avenues to treatment for drug-addicted offenders, her efforts will have done many of her clients a real disservice. Across the country, states are looking for ways to reduce the number of low-level, nonviolent drug offenders in prisons because they recognize the high cost to society of locking up addicts rather treating their addictions. Isn't that where Maryland should also be headed?

Maryland's first drug court was established in Baltimore in 1994 as an alternative to sending addicts to prisons already overflowing with violent felons. Instead, the courts divert them into substance abuse programs aimed at helping them get off drugs so they won't have to commit crimes to support their habits. There are 33 drug courts across the state; defendants volunteer to have their cases heard in drug court and agree to follow the rules of the treatment programs they're sent to.

But Foster argues that her client, Robert Calvin Brown III, was denied due process when a judge revoked his probation and sentenced him to eight years in prison for not complying with the terms of his agreement. Brown had been kicked out of several treatment programs and didn't shape up even after a couple of stints in jail. Forster says even so, he was still entitled to a full hearing of his case before being ordered to prison, according to a report in The Washington Post.

It's obvious courts need a certain amount of flexibility in handling such cases. And because drug courts are relatively new and operate in a legal context that is not yet well-defined, judges should be very careful about overstepping their authority.

At the same time, a defendant who volunteers to have his case heard in drug court and agrees to abide by its rules shouldn't be able to claim his rights were violated if he fails to obey the judge's orders. Drug court isn't a license to break the law.

The irony in Brown's case is that he was originally sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to heroin charges. The drug court had suspended most of that and gave him just three years' probation on condition he got treatment. He had a perfect opportunity to stay out of the slammer and kick his habit, but chose not to. Seems to me that's his fault, not the court's.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 5:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Law and criminal justice