For four months after being pulled out of a college classroom in New York, Nicholas Dudley Pinderhughes Weaver sat in jail, charged with a murder that he said he knew nothing about.
Then, the aspiring attorney from Baltimore spent four months out on bail, awaiting trial and his chance to prove his innocence.
Yesterday, Baltimore County prosecutors said that a lack of evidence has led them to drop all charges in the case. Although State's Attorney Scott D. Shellenberger would not go into more detail, Weaver's lawyer said the lone witness changed his story and said he lied about even being in the Woodlawn neighborhood on the night of the fatal shooting in 2002.
"Thank God that finally the prosecutors looked at everything," said Margaret A. Mead, the 23-year-old's defense attorney. "I try to maintain the philosophy that everything happens for a reason, even though sometimes we can't see the reason. But I think it will make Nicholas one fantastic attorney."
Shellenberger said prosecutors dropped the charges Friday after reviewing the evidence.
"When you're getting ready for trial, you're looking at the evidence in a little different way than when you're making an arrest," he said. "We believe the evidence would be insufficient to convict Nick Weaver of murder."
Weaver - the grandson of the late Alice G. Pinderhughes, who was the first female superintendent of Baltimore City schools - was arrested at Adelphi University on Long Island on Feb. 14.
Accused of being the shooter, Weaver was one of two young men charged in the death of David L. Baskin Jr., an aspiring rap musician who was shot in July 2002 near his Woodlawn home, just a day after his 18th birthday. Baskin's mother has said that police told her he was the unintended victim of a group of West Baltimore boys who were feuding with a group from Woodlawn over a girl.
Both Weaver and the other man were 16 at the time of the killing on July 3, 2002.
Charges against the other man, Charles H. Davis, were dismissed in March. Ten days later, Weaver was indicted on charges of first-degree murder, assault, burglary, handgun offenses and being an accessory to the killing after the fact.
A witness linked both Weaver and Davis to the fatal shooting.
Facing attempted armed robbery, assault and gun charges of his own in Baltimore city, the witness told a Baltimore County detective in January that Weaver drove some friends to Woodlawn and parked near the home of a girl who was at the center of a simmering dispute between the boys in West Baltimore and Woodlawn.
