July 08, 2007|By Julie Bykowicz | Julie Bykowicz,[Sun reporter]
Sitting behind her desk in the basement of this city courthouse, prosecutor Jessica Paugh all but disappears among the accordion folders and manila files piled on her office chairs, strewn about her desk and stacked all over the floor.
Paugh usually has about 60 open gun and nonfatal shooting cases. On this day, moments after a judge handed down a 30-year prison sentence to a man she prosecuted for attempted murder, she's about to present two indictments to the grand jury before hustling back to her office to prepare for two interviews with shooting victims and two trials slated to start the next day.
All this after spending eight hours on a Saturday trying to catch up. "I always feel like I'm a day late and a dollar short," she says.
The workload isn't likely to slow for Paugh and the other prosecutors in the Baltimore Firearms Investigation Violence Enforcement unit, which is having its busiest year since it was created a decade ago.
The "FIVE unit," a group of 15 assistant state's attorneys who work in Courthouse East, prosecutes nonfatal shootings and gun crimes, making it a crucial player in Baltimore's efforts to stem the tide of violence.
In a city that is on an annual pace of at least 300 homicides - for the first time since the 1990s - nonfatal shootings are rising even faster. They have jumped 35 percent, to nearly 380 by the end of June.
As the head of the unit, Douglas Ludwig, says, such shootings "are homicides, but for the grace of God and good medical treatment. And that's how we treat them in court."
In fact, defendants who escape conviction here sometimes find themselves involved in Baltimore homicides as either suspects or victims, say police and prosecutors.
Between the increase in nonfatal shootings and Mayor Sheila Dixon's efforts to take illegal guns off the streets, the unit's workload is exploding. "It's up, way up, and we all feel it," Ludwig says.
They have already taken more than 105 cases to trial this year, bearing down quickly on last year's annual total of 132. And everyone in the office acknowledges that the strain forces tough choices between pursuing cases to trial or settling for pleas with lesser punishments.
Prosecutors are juggling trials that start one right after another - Paugh recently had four trials in three weeks - and, in some cases, are trying to predict the future.
Last week, for example, a defendant suddenly decided to plead guilty in a case that Assistant State's Attorney Robin Wherley expected to go to trial and last for several days. The plea meant that another trial could start immediately, but Wherley hadn't called that set of witnesses to court. The judge refused to delay the case, so Wherley says she had little choice but to drop it.
She'll fill out paperwork explaining why she dropped the case and pass it along to Ludwig. The FIVE unit began in 1997 with federal grant money and then shifted to about $2 million in state grant funding that requires quarterly progress reports that fill dozens of thick, three-ring binders in Ludwig's office.
Last year, FIVE unit prosecutors dropped charges in about one-third of their 711 Circuit Court cases. Another third ended with guilty pleas. Some cases were indicted federally.
Most of the rest went to trial in Circuit Court - and 65 percent of those trials ended in juries or judges acquitting defendants.
"Even though their conviction rate isn't as high as other units, they do an extraordinary job," says State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy.
Though prosecutors in all parts of Jessamy's office are constantly busy, she says, few face as many complex cases as those in the FIVE unit.
These prosecutors dive into their cases early, even before an arrest is made - only homicides receive the same intense involvement. The same prosecutor stays with a case from the first bail review through trial and sentencing.
Prior to 1997, nonfatal shootings and gun charges were handled by general felony prosecutors who didn't get the cases until shortly before trial.
In those days, says Ludwig, a prosecutor for more than 20 years and a member of FIVE since its inception, about 75 percent of the cases were dropped or placed on the inactive docket. The drop rate fell to 19 percent in FIVE's first year, he says.
Defense attorneys once openly laughed at the FIVE prosecutors for pursuing so many cases and for seeking decades of prison time in nonfatal shootings, Ludwig says. But some of the first FIVE unit convictions resulted in judges slapping down tough sentences: life, 50 years, 65 years.
"A collective gasp went out from the defense bar," Ludwig says. "Then all of the sudden they were willing to plead. It wasn't a joke anymore."
Today, FIVE prosecutors attribute their win-loss rate to problems typical in Baltimore courtrooms. Victims and witnesses change their stories when they testify; witnesses go missing - either because of intimidation or their own hostility toward the criminal justice system; and jurors are skeptical of the police.
