City Court

The chairman of a powerful legislative committee has threatened to halt state funding of Baltimore's "early disposition" court unless the city's top criminal justice officials can show the 15-month-old program is worthy of further investment. "As chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, I have a responsibility to make sure we're not just throwing good money after bad," Del. Howard P. Rawlings, a Baltimore Democrat, said. "If it's not working, either fix it or we're not going to fund it."

The Baltimore maker of Mary Sue Easter eggs and of gourmet chocolate, Chesapeake Candy Inc., will be sold at auction next month as a way to pay off debt and keep the struggling company going. The public auction of Chesapeake Candy, which runs Mary Sue Candies Inc. and Naron Candy Co., was approved Tuesday by Baltimore Circuit Court. The candy maker filed Aug. 31 for state court insolvency, which is similar to a Chapter 7 bankruptcy in federal court. The company has struggled since a 1996 merger between Mary Sue and Naron left it burdened with debt - now at $1.2 million - and unable to turn a profit, Mark Berman, president of the combined companies, said yesterday.

FORGET ABOUT further studies! How much investigation is necessary to discover that the piles of pigeon dung that blanket the roof and windowsills at Baltimore's Circuit Court headquarters are a potential health problem? With employees mysteriously falling ill and a judge dying, emergency action is needed at the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse. Even if there weren't a health concern at stake, simple cleanliness ought to force the city to take better care of the building. Last year, the courthouse celebrated a century of service.

In Baltimore City Three-alarm fire destroys vacant store at east-side mall A three-alarm fire that broke out early yesterday destroyed a vacant store at Old Town Mall, a long-struggling strip of retail outlets in East Baltimore that is about to be renovated by the city. The cause of the 3:30 a.m. fire was under investigation yesterday. Officials said it took 80 firefighters two hours to contain the blaze at the vacant three-story brick building in the 400 block of Old Town Mall. The main entrance to the building was blocked by a metal gate, which forced firefighters to spray water from the outside -- an inefficient way to douse the flames, said Inspector Michael Maybin, a Fire Department spokesman.

IT'S a Shakespearean moment when Judge David B. Mitchell takes the bench. His black robe blends with the dark leather of his elevated chair, making it seem as if he is sitting on a custom-made throne. Clerks and lawyers hover in front of the bench as he considers requests for trial delays. At times, the light above the bench hits the metal rim of his glasses, sending a flash into the courtroom. When he scolds errant lawyers, it looks like lightning. "You don't get it, do you?" Mitchell boomed recently at a prosecutor who had failed to disclose evidence in a high-profile multiple-victim murder case.

Having just lost two highly publicized murder cases in the past week, Baltimore prosecutors risk losing another after a judge ordered a long delay yesterday in the trial of suspects in one of the city's worst mass killings. The case against four men charged in the killing of five women in Northeast Baltimore in December 1999 will be postponed eight months, which could result in its dismissal, the judge said. He acted after prosecutors failed to promptly disclose evidence to defense attorneys.

A year after Calvin Smith told police who shot him, he took the witness stand in Baltimore Circuit Court, swore to tell the truth - then told the jury he had lied. Yes, he told police that David Carter, a neighborhood teen known as "Little David," shot him on Christmas Day 1998 after an argument about a car accident. But, he testified, he told police it was Carter only because he was upset that Carter had clipped him with his car. "I wasn't sure who really shot me," Smith, 34, testified as Carter, on trial for the attempted murder charge, looked on. More recanting witnesses followed, including one who disavowed a statement that identified Carter, 19, as the gunman who sprayed bullets down the 3400 block of St. Ambrose Ave., leaving pockmarked cars and terrified residents.

A month before members are to vote again for a new leader, the president of the Baltimore Teachers Union teacher chapter has filed a lawsuit in Baltimore Circuit Court, asking that her two-vote victory over the incumbent stand. The lawsuit, filed by Sharon Blake and 15 members of the BTU's executive board, calls the decision by the American Federation of Teachers to hold new balloting "arbitrary" and "capricious" and asks the court to uphold the original results. The lawsuit does not seek an injunction to stop the rerun election from taking place.

A Baltimore lawyer who was a former assistant federal prosecutor and one-time deputy director of the Legal Aid Bureau had his law license suspended yesterday by the Court of Appeals. Michael G. Middleton, in private practice since 1988, received a suspension of at least three years. In a 16-page opinion, the state's top judges said he was incompetent in representing several criminal defendants and he had been found in criminal contempt last November for lying to a Baltimore County judge to win a delay for a trial.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening appointed an assistant state attorney general and a family-law specialist yesterday to seats on the Baltimore District Court. Appointed were Nathan Braverman, 44, an assistant attorney general with the state's insurance fraud division, and Miriam B. Hutchins, 47, who adjudicates child-custody cases and other domestic matters for the city Circuit Court. Braverman, who has worked in the attorney general's office for nine years, and Hutchins, a domestic equity master since 1990, are both Baltimore residents.