NEWS
By Tricia Bishop, The Baltimore Sun | April 26, 2013
A lawyer for John Joseph Merzbacher, a former Catholic school teacher imprisoned for raping a student decades ago, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case after a federal appeals court rejected an earlier argument that he should be set free. In a 21-page petition, Merzbacher's attorney H. Mark Stichel asks the high court to resolve several legal questions, including whether a defendant's claim that he would have taken a plea deal if offered, even while proclaiming his innocence, demonstrates a "reasonable probability" that he would have followed through.
NEWS
April 10, 2013
Although Dr. Benjamin Carson's same-sex marriage remark was an unfortunate enthymeme, surely well-educated Hopkins students have the intellectual capacity to understand the unstated premise of his argument ("Hopkins chides Carson for gay-marriage remarks," April 6): Once you reduce the qualification for marriage to a single characteristic for the sake of inclusiveness, you can't object to the word being used for any situation that fits that characteristic. Polygamists, for example, argue that they too enter into loving, caring relationships.
NEWS
By Justin Fenton, The Baltimore Sun | April 8, 2013
With blood still streaked on the doorway of a Southwest Baltimore home where a man was shot earlier in the morning, a woman who rented a room there nonchalantly recalled hearing the four shots. "After the first shot, I screamed and dropped to my knees and ran upstairs," said the woman, who identified herself as Cheryl Nancy, 25. Two of her four children stood on the front stoop, near a pack of cigarettes and a flask-sized bottle of vodka. It's not the first such incident of violence she's seen.
NEWS
Staff Reports | April 7, 2013
Baltimore Police say a man was stabbed to death early Sunday morning after apparently getting into an argument with two other people near the Inner Harbor. Police said the incident occurred at about 2:18 a.m. Sunday in the 200 block of East Pratt Street. The victim, identified by police as a 20-year-old black male, was leaving work when two individuals approached him and became engaged in an argument. The argument escalated and the victim was stabbed multiple times in the upper body, police said.
NEWS
By Justin George, The Baltimore Sun | April 3, 2013
The 80-year-old man killed in Northeast Baltimore on Monday - after a punch caused him to fall and hit his head, police said - was the inspiration for the 1990s TV show "Roc. " John Wood formed the basis for the lead character on the Fox show portrayed by Baltimore actor Charles S. Dutton. Dutton grew up in Wood's neighborhood, and in the show portrayed a trash worker who believed in an honest day's work and went beyond his means to help his neighbors. Wood retired as a Baltimore sanitation worker after more than 35 years, his wife said.
NEWS
By Kevin Rector, The Baltimore Sun | April 1, 2013
A 45-year-old man has been charged with stabbing another man who he believed had damaged his motorcycle outside a Glen Burnie tavern late Sunday, Anne Arundel County Police said. The man, who police said was drunk, allegedly drove off and crashed his Harley Davidson at a nearby intersection after the altercation. Brian Scott Smith, of the unit block of Magnolia Avenue, has since been arrested and charged with multiple crimes in the incident, including attempted second-degree murder, police said.