The Maryland U.S. attorney's office is pursuing a new drug case against a Baltimore man, despite having recently sent him to prison for life.
The move is raising questions about the government's motivation and the strength of the earlier convictions, which the defendant, David "Chicken" Ellerby, has appealed to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Some say it simply emphasizes how dangerous the agency believes Ellerby to be. The 36-year-old has beaten dozens of state charges, including murder and attempted murder, and law enforcement agents consider him one of the city's most dangerous residents. Others - Ellerby included - say it proves that the first conviction is ripe to be overturned.
"It certainly shows that they think he's a very, very significant offender that they're doing the second trial," said former federal prosecutor David B. Irwin, who's now in private practice and not associated with this case.
Ellerby pleaded not guilty to the drug charges Friday during his initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Baltimore and requested a speedy jury trial, which will likely last a week, the prosecution said.
In the new case, the government claims he possessed and planned to distribute mixtures or substances containing crack cocaine and heroin in March 2004. He has already been acquitted on the same charges in Baltimore Circuit Court. But the U.S. attorney's office chose to follow up with its own indictment in July last year after securing the required U.S. Department of Justice approval.
Ellerby, who's temporarily in Baltimore's Supermax prison until he can be transferred to a federal facility, could face a maximum of life in prison in the case and a fine of up to $4 million.
"The government is showing that they made mistakes in my first trial, so they're bringing back a case that I had in 2004 with no new evidence or anything," Ellerby said in a phone call to The Baltimore Sun on Thursday night. Why is the government "wasting taxpayer money by having me go to another trial?" he asked.
The government originally planned to fold these charges in with the first case, but U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake "indicated that she did not want to try both cases in one trial," U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said in an e-mail yesterday.
Rosenstein didn't address the specifics of this case but said his office generally pursues charges against defendants already serving lengthy sentences "in case the first conviction is overturned on appeal." If there were no appeal pending, his office probably would not follow up with a successive prosecution, he said.
