"Assuming she was not notified, the failure really rests on the assistant state's attorney or the trial court," said Assistant Public Defender Brian L. Zavin, who represented Hoile. "My client certainly wasn't responsible for notifying her, and he didn't do anything to exclude her from the proceeding."
But Palmer, 41, said yesterday that Hoile, 45, still scares her and that she should be guaranteed a role in any proceedings to reduce his sentence.
"I am afraid as I will be once again entering into the unknown, not knowing what he is going to do and when he is going to do it," she wrote in an e-mail yesterday. "At his parole hearing two years ago, he was still blaming me for his incarceration, and that is very scary for me."
Hoile pleaded guilty in 1997 to choking Palmer and threatening her with a knife. Smith sentenced Hoile to a suspended 15-year prison sentence and put him on probation, which he violated after contacting Palmer and being convicted of a third-degree burglary of her Calvert County home.
Smith then imposed the entire 15-year sentence. About mid-way through it, Hoile asked Smith to reduce the sentence.
Without Palmer's knowledge, Smith put Hoile on probation. At about this time, Palmer said in an interview yesterday, she thought she saw him on the street and panicked. She began conducting research on his whereabouts and found out that he was in a pre-release program and about to be a free man.
"Who is to be held accountable if a victim's rights are violated?" Palmer wrote in an e-mail yesterday. "It should be the person who caused the person to become a victim in the first place ... The General Assembly needs to make more defined laws that truly protect the victims and not allow the perpetrators to squeak through the system on technicalities."
The only consolation the court provided Palmer was to order Prince George's County to pay her legal bills. She shouldn't be "burdened with the costs in this appeal, where her rights were violated through no fault of her own," Harrell wrote.
Zavin said that under the appellate ruling, Smith should free Hoile soon and put him on probation.
melissa.harris@baltsun.com
