On the ball

Long festering, well documented: "Maryland officials on Wednesday approved a $40,000 settlement with a former inmate who alleged that he was repeatedly assaulted after trying to back out of a smuggling operation with a prison gang that included a corrections officer." Wonder if said officer is still working there? Last week the Daily Beast interviewed Gary Maynard. "His golf partner rang at one point, too, wondering, Maynard guessed, if their golf game was still on. It was. 'I will be hitting the ball with great intensity,' he says."

 Sgt. William Hawkins

Well, at least one corrections officer is on leave: Sgt. William Hawkins, who met a man online for sex and then pointed a gun at him when the man asked him to pay for it. Surely despicable, but what kind of gigolo doesn't ask for the money first?

A Mt. Vernon man was pepper-sprayed and mugged by cross-dressing teenagers, and local property-management company says there have been four similar attacks.

WJZ's got a video of a man getting the living shit beat out of him at the Windsor Inn in Windsor Mill last Saturday.

O'Malley is expected to sign the bill repealing the death penalty today. The fate of the five men currently on death row-- Jody Lee Miles, John Booth-El, Anthony Grandison, Vernon Lee Evans Jr., and Heath William Burch--  is not clear.

Speaking of O'Malley, here's a relief! A national poll shows support for his presidential candidacy at one percent. Hillary's in first, of course, and in second place? "DK/NA."

The Ink recaps murders 64-67

Retired city cop Mark Heygood soothes his nerves by building robots.

Don't date, don't drive, and never, ever buy tickets

Monte Carter

Another online-dating murder?! Jennifer Conyers, 32, was murdered and her house set on fire allegedly by a guy she met online.* She was murdered Friday and Monte Delano Carter, 38, was arrested Saturday, driving her car and with blood *still* on his pants and shoes. FWIW he (allegedly) used her ATM card to get cash and buy stuff he traded for heroin. How about instead of doing a background check on someone before dating them, just never dating anyone ever.

Inside: Delightful Chinese New Year party. Outside: Stabbing on Charles Street. Metro Gallery hemmed by crime scene tape. #Baltimore
— Julie Bykowicz (@bykowicz) February 10, 2013

Also on Friday, a shooting on Homestead St.


Really, Daily Record?! "Capital Punishment Already Dead in Maryland" ... just because a crass headline comes over the wire it doesn't mean you have to publish it, geeze

"Just give us the cash, yo." Nice-guy Medfield robbers let a victim keep his wallet, reports the Patch.

Haha, winning. The Sun obtains the Mayor's office's bitchy emails about speed camera coverage.* Also, Larry Young of WOLB apparently helped provide the Mayor's office with "talking points." Shady.

Carl Stokes wants to vacate the never-enforced law that bars high event-ticket surcharges.

Not Baltimore, but worth a mention: MSN claims that Christopher Dorner, a guy allegedly stalking and targeting members of the LAPD, is the "first drone target on U.S. soil." Not true, that honor goes to one Rodney Brossart of North Dakota. Also unless the drone is equipped with Hellfire missiles, not sure how it is any different than using a helicopter.

Meet the two old white guys who will be head of the Tribune Co. .. apparently the CEO sees the news audience as old and male, so which came first? Does the news reflect old male perspectives because old males are the primary consumer, or are old males the primary consumer because the news is from an old male perspective?

Street life, corporate life, life sentences

"Urban terrorist"/Grand Am driving career stick-up brothers Evan and Christopher Foreman started out robbing drug dealers and illegal immigrants, likely mentored in the robbing arts by brothers Michael, 45, and Brian, 39. The fraternal team went on to stage some very thought-out robberies of check-cashing stores, cash-for-gold stores and banks. Evan was sentenced to 24 years and 6 months* in the federal system, Michael got 12 years, Brian 4 1/4 years.
  For his part, Judge James Brednar called Christopher Foreman "depraved," and quipped, "you don't dip your toe in the water of bank robbery."
  "I don't think the court knows the street life," remarked his mother Darraux Horton, 59, who started her parenting career at age 14.

One Marcus Troy Evans, left, was arrested for a Christmas-day beating of a gay man on North Milton Avenue. Apparently Evans was arrested two days after the beating on drug charges but was released on bail six days ago, in spite of the new drug charges, recent domestic violence charges and a rap sheet that includes numerous assaults, gun charges and burglaries. What dingdong of a judge made that call, I wonder? His trial will be at 8:30 a.m. on Jan 29th at 1400 N. Avenue room 3. As an aside, I see Evans' bail bondsman was Lee Dixon was an agent for Milton Tillman's Four Aces bail bonds. Now that Tillman and son are in the federal pen I see Lee Dixon's working for what's been renamed* as Global Surety and Services, but is still a subsidiary of FCS of Houston, TX. It looks like they're hiring new "agents" if you're ISO a career change. It sounds like it's pretty much like being an insurance agent, only your client is the court and gay-bashing, drug-dealing burglars are your beachfront real estate.

Speaking of gay-bashing, outspoken homohater Don Dwyer says he "sought help" following the wreck of The Legislator; he's attended AA meetings and an alcohol intervention class (like, the same class every person arrested on alcohol-related charges has to go to?).  Happiest of all, he also says he's not planning to run for re-election.

Fenton leafs through the Dead Man Inc. corporate handbook* following an evening trailing the police and a BPD-TV camera crew en route to a shooting on Mannasota Avenue, where victims were transported to the hospital by "private car." (Meaning someone didn't want to wait for the ambalance and drove them to the hospital?)

One man turned himself in and two more were arrested* on charges related to a Thanksgiving road rage incident in Owings Mills.

In PGC you can trade Tide® for crack.

O'Malley says that the DP in MD is two votes close to repeal.

Jody Lee Miles and Euro Death Row Groupies

The death sentence of Jody Lee Miles has been upheld, reports the local news and Jody Lee Miles himself. (How do you get a Tumblr account on death row?) Miles has a Facebook account too, maintained by his wife. (Not his first wife, Jona, who helped him hide the evidence, but another wife, Michaela, who lives in the UK and apparently never met him in person before they were married until a TV station arranged it.) ... More about Miles' case here.
.... European death row groupies, who knew?

Death penalty moratorium extended

"Gov. Martin O'Malley's administration announced Thursday that it is withdrawing regulations that are needed for executions to resume in Maryland, effectively extending a four-year moratorium on the death penalty" and Del. Sandy Rosenberg, a Democrat repping the 41st, said he submitted a DP repeal bill today.

And 10 years for Zachary D. Watson, the final defendant accused of beating and robbing septuagenarian fisherman James Privott, and the one who admitted to driving Privott's stolen, LoJack'd truck.

Book Learnin

John Paul Stevens reviews David Garland's Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition in the NY Review of Books (adding it to the liebary)

.. and Justice Thomas halts an execution?! Marking the first time since his confirmation hearings that the justice has ever said, done anything

Meanwhile, the police union is not at all happy about SRB's plan for an independent review of the Select Lounge fracas. Imagine how PO'd they'd be if the citizen review board was actually empowered & functional?

Are all murderers mentally ill?

... and if so, does that make the death penalty unconstitutional?

An arrest in Anne Arundel's 11th homicide: Clayton Avila Battle allegedly shot and killed Kelly Fisher at Dietrich's Tavern.

News of the Weird

Utah executes man by firing squad (& Tweets about it)

Judge: Underpaid Lawyer is No Excuse

"Maryland pays private defense lawyers assigned to capital cases far too little, but that’s no reason to prevent prosecutors from seeking the death penalty, an Anne Arundel County judge has ruled" in the case of one of the men accused of murdering correctional officer David W. McGuinn.

Terry Love's lawyer plans to sue prosecutors for defamation

CP: Live Entertainment Bill Gutted

East Side Badness

A man was stabbed by three people in the 2400 block of East Baltimore St. on the north side of Patterson Park.

Shooting victim on Rutland and Oliver subject of BPD's first Twittered incident.

Police have officially ended their investigation into Annie McCann's death

"The House Judiciary Committee voted 14-7 Friday to support a bill that restricts the use of the death penalty to murder cases with biological or conclusive videotaped evidence."

Fabulosity! The City That Breeds has mapped Baltimore neighborhoods on Google!

Sounds like...

... we're keeping the death penalty but making it harder to apply.
Hassan Giordano: Dems dropped the ball

32, 33

James Flannery, 23, was stabbed to death in the 3900 block of S. Hanover St., and a young man was shot to death in the 5600 block of Sagra Road.

"Narrow majority of Md. senators oppose repeal of death penalty, survey reveals"
... reader support for the big D appears to have eroded over time, most recently only 40% of BCrime's readers agreed it should hang around. In 2006, readers seemed to be more conflicted (or maybe our readership has shifted). Poll results from October and December of '06.

A 54-year-old school therapist was arrested for the sexual abuse of a 13-year-old boy after a police officer saw the pair in a parked car together.

Van Smith on the darkening days of the Baltimore enterprising news story.

Meister visits the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, muses, "It would literally take about ten determined intelligent people to bring down the current regime that controls Baltimore City."
... the Examiner is gone, with the Baltimore site redirecting to DC, but the Examiners remain. Examiner.com is apparently a separate business entity, with quite a different business model.

Web finds: the Newseum has today's front pages from around the U.S. and the world. Fascinating to see what makes it above the fold from town to town!
(thanks, Mom!)

need a job? The Feds are hiring.

197, 198

In the Ink, Anna Ditkoff reports that two murders from earlier this year have been added to the toll, including Eunice Taylor, a 69-year-old woman allegedly pushed to death by her granddaughter.
More on the legal issues from P. Hermann

"Bad Trip: Fells Point Mushroom Bust Snares a Guns-and-Drugs Convict"

A lot of people have asked for updates on the Annie McCann story.
PP sent this article from the Mt. Vernon Gazette, which answers nothing

Pellet-Arm Girl and the Southern district BJ tax on the John Watch.

QTD: "an expungement is a lot like wearing an Armani suit without taking a shower — your outer appearance is flawless but, just beneath the surface, is a smelly little secret you hope no one will discover."

"What do you do when your client opts for death?"

July 10

A 14- or possibly 15-year-old girl named Christine was found dead in a house in the 300 block of S. Fulton Ave. in "hardscrabble" Southwest Baltimore, shortly after 2 a.m. this morning.

A Randallstown male counselor at a home for troubled boys was shot in the stomach and isn't doing too well. More details

Death penalty supporters are annoyed by the governor's "de facto moratorium" ass-draggage.

How flaccid is Team Dixon? She tried to have a felon released for his son's funeral, but wasn't able to use her Mayorial pull to get him out of the state-run Central Booking. Now she says she never should have tried in the first place, because the guy's got a scary criminal record (well he is in jail!). Someone teach that woman to use the "JIS"!

Olesker reports on that great Baltimore pastime, stoopin and watching the shit go down.

"Heroin County" is turning to coke.

Christopher Gary, accused of fatally shooting his mother in Prince George's County, committed suicide by cop in PGC.

I wonder how much the Annapolis Mast Thieves would charge to get rid of the blight in front of the train station?

Evening

Maurice A. Johnson, 29, was shot to death in Randallstown.

Lawyers for the killer of correctional officer Jeffery A. Wroten plan to argue that the death penalty isn't legal because of MD's effed-up execution instructions.

What the?! Two Morgan State University students persuaded a friend to shoot them with a .38 "because they hoped to avoid pledging a fraternity this summer," even though they didn't have the GPA to pledge anyway. Huh? Wha? And it gets weirder: they're from out of state and "wanted to stay in Baltimore for the summer." (They must be from Camden!)

More than 12 years for PGC coke dealer Richard D. Briscoe, and RJR's got plenty of time for his gun-toting crack-dealing pals as well.

County police are ISO two homeless sex offenders, Ronald Ellison, 28, and Thomas Gauthier, 27.
If you're wondering what the degrees of sex offense are, here's a handy chart.

More school threats: this time a letter threatening to harm students was sent to C. Milton Wright High School in Harford County.

AAC: Greg Karanzalis, an assistant coach for the Broadneck High School lacrosse team, was caught on tape buying alcohol for several students who got so soused after school that they needed to be hospitalized.

White-Collar Corner
Perps 12 and 13, Stephen Weissenberger of Towson and Ashita Patel of Columbia, were indicted on theft and bribery charges for defrauding our school system.

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition has filed a lawsuit against NovaStar Mortgage, accusing them of discrimination for refusing to offer mortgages on rowhouses in downtown Baltimore (among other places).

Mark Kaiser of U.S. Foodservice got seven federal years for an $800-million accounting fraud.

Patrick McDevitt of Timonium is headed to the can for 2 1/2 years after submitting false expense claims to his employer. He bought at least a dozen Rolex watches (and no doubt other tacky crap), but the jig was up after he commited eBay fraud.

Ellicott City art-gallery owner Thomas Hugh Akins, 52, pled guilty to wire fraud for an art-based investment scheme that screwed some more-money-than-brains "affluent acquaintances" out of $1.2 million.