A serial rapist has been arrested for, surprise, surprise, rape. Nelson Bernard Clifford Jr. age 34, was arrested for a series of rapes, including one
where he broke into a woman's house and raped her while her children were nearby. Clifford, a convicted sex offender, had been charged with sex offenses 3 times prior, as well as having been indicted for failure to register as a sex offender multiple times. Clifford beat his last rape charge back in September.
A possible robbery turned into a very definitive shooting in Glen Oak. A man was
shot in the back Friday night at the 5700 block of Chinquapin Parkway.
Police are ISO a perv who
raped a transgendered teen back in November. Though, with his face being plastered everywhere, it should only be a matter of time.
30 years in prison for
the death of a County teen. Jason Gross, 37, was given the 30-year term for the murder of Rochelle Battle, despite the fact that her body has yet to be found.
Finally, several charges were thrown out in the last day of trial in the Skateworks rape case. Several charges were thrown out Friday, including first degree rape and assault charges.
But after deliberating for several hours the jurors were not able to come to a decision. I decided to take a trip to the Circuit Courthouse in Baltimore County Friday, to watch a few cases and just generally get a feel for how the county courts were handling cases. I bore witness to a bevy of cases, some interesting, some not so much. I managed to miss all the cases I had wanted to see, including the sentencing of Jason Gross, and the trial of Jeremiah Edwards, who was facing car theft charges, but more importantly was indicted for a
Dundalk murder late last year. I had completely forgotten that the Skateworks trial was going on, and sure enough, I walked into what I thought was a random jury trial, and instead found out to my surprise, that I had in fact walked into the closing statements of the Skateworks trial. I was both horrified, because I had up until then done a good job of burying my head in the sand about this case, and disappointed, because the state had done a very weak job of presenting their case against Davon Perry, 26. Although I had only been to the final portion of the trial, I got the sense that, had I been in the jury box some 10 feet away, my confidence in giving a conviction would have been sub-par a best.
But my trip to the courts wasn't entirely horrendous. I did catch the sentencing of Andrew Palmer, who if you may recall, was the man who
made headlines for faking seizures at restaurants to avoid paying his tab. Palmer was on trial for... faking seizures! This time, at a local Applebees. Unfortunately for Palmer, his case was heard by the Honorable Judge Sherrie R. Bailey, who is by far my favorite judge now, after her non willingness to let repeat offenders walk. And golly, Andrew Palmer was a repeat offender, with, and I quote the prosecutor: "a 116 page criminal record" Palmer has been around. Around so much, in fact, that he was caught in the act due to the fact that a paramedic who responded to the scene recognized him from a prior fake seizure. The only line of defense Palmer offered before sentencing was the fact that he has been held since June on these charges, and last Friday he had
supposedly "been nearly beaten to death by an inmate serving 127 years without parole." Of course, the great Judge Bailey wasn't interested in his sob story, and gave him the maximum, 18 months.
