Conviction

Claiming that prosecutors broke a deal not to prosecute her for murder if she cooperated with police, lawyers for Erika Sifrit asked the state's highest court yesterday to overturn her conviction in the killing and dismemberment of two tourists in Ocean City. Within moments, lawyers for Benjamin Sifrit took their turn before the Maryland Court of Appeals in Annapolis, asking that his conviction be erased because, they said, prosecutors gave two theories of the killings. Prosecutors said the couple killed Martha Crutchley, 51, and Joshua Ford, 32, both of Fairfax, Va., for fun over Memorial Day weekend 2002 in the penthouse where the Sifrits were staying.

The motorist who slammed into the back of a Baltimore police car that struck an officer and sent her plunging over the side of elevated Interstate 83 has been convicted of three traffic offenses, closing one chapter of a horrific crash that has ended the officer's career. A District judge fined Robert R. Vanderford $260, assessed three points against his license, ordered him to perform 250 hours of community service at a city police station, and, upon the insistence of the victim, ordered him to spend two days in the city jail.

A man who has been tried three times in the death of a 3-year-old girl has been denied a chance at a fourth trial with a ruling by the state's highest court affirming his latest conviction for involuntary manslaughter and child abuse. The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that 31-year-old Erik Stoddard's conviction and 40-year prison sentence will stand in the 2002 fatal beating of Calen Faith Dirubbo in her Northeast Baltimore home. Police said the suspect was angry because he had been unable to toilet train the girl.

A Baltimore man serving a 60-year murder sentence now faces life without parole in an unrelated homicide in Glen Burnie, after he was convicted Monday of the first-degree murder of Dr. Albert Woonho Ro. Dante Jeter, 25, is scheduled to be sentenced July 24 in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court for his role in the fatal beating, stabbing and robbery on Sept. 26, 2006, of Ro, 51, a dentist well-known in the area's Korean-American community. Prosecutor Anne Colt Leitess said she intends to seek life without parole for the murder, plus another life sentence for Jeter's conviction of conspiring with his cousin, Shontay Joyner Hickman, 37, also of Baltimore, and possibly additional time for a robbery conviction.

A three-judge panel of Maryland's Court of Special Appeals on Monday tossed out the conviction of a man found guilty of murder last year in Baltimore County Circuit Court and ordered that he be tried again. Thomas B. Harris was accused of fatally stabbing another man, Karim Cross, in the parking lot of the Rush Hour Bar in Randallstown in the early hours of Aug. 13, 2006. A jury convicted Harris of second-degree murder and in May 2008 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. In his appeal, Harris, 35, questioned his conviction on various grounds, but the appeals court found cause for reversal in only one of his arguments: that the trial court abused its discretion when it refused to declare a mistrial after it became known that the defense had not been informed of a communication between a juror and the trial judge's secretary.

Authorities in Delaware are convinced that Franklin C. Foraker strangled Margaret Essick and threw her body off a bridge and into the Conowingo Creek back in 1975. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Foraker, however, insists he did not kill the woman. Despite several confessions, he now says Essick ran from his car in a Delaware shopping center after she and his girlfriend argued, and he has no idea how her body ended up in the creek. And he now says there's hidden evidence to prove he's innocent.

Timing is indeed everything. The city cops took too long on a routine traffic stop, so a Baltimore Circuit Court judge ruled that the 9mm semiautomatic handgun found in the car trunk and linked to a murder couldn't be shown at the defendant's trial. But the suspect's jailhouse confession to a fellow arrestee in a recreation room was made so long after his detention that the incriminating statement couldn't be considered coerced or prompted by his illegal arrest. So ruled the judges on the Maryland Court of Special Appeals in upholding the conviction of Ronald Cox of first-degree murder in the 2007 killing of Todd Dargan on North Caroline Street.

The news, after all the shootings and courtroom drama is sorted out, is that Clayton "Coco" Colkley has to be tried again for murder but remains convicted of a handgun charge. And Darnell "Pooh" Fields has to be re-sentenced for his conviction and life plus 45 year year term on conspiracy to commit murder. It's a complicated case stemming from a gang war in 2003 in East Baltimore that left three people dead and four others wounded. The judges ruled that trial errors led to the overturning of the conviction and sentencing.

Combative to the end, a 31-year-old murder defendant stood in court at his sentencing Wednesday and accused the judge, prosecutors and detectives of lying, ganging up on him and ignoring evidence that would have set him free. "You all just wanted to blame me — you all just wanted to set me up," said Frederick A. Christian, looking directly at Baltimore County Circuit Judge Sherrie R. Bailey. Waving documents from his legal file, Christian repeatedly referred to what he said were mistakes and omissions in the state's case against him. He also criticized his attorney.

The state's top court on Wednesday reinstated a sexual offense conviction of a man accused of forcing an Eastern Shore college student into a sex act. The Court of Appeals ruled a Somerset County jury could conclude that the woman telling Jason Mayers "no" and shoving him away to no avail during the earlier parts of a 2003 sexual encounter was enough evidence for a conviction of a second-degree sex offense. The woman had testified that she was frozen with fear and stopped resisting in the latter parts of the sex acts.

The Maryland attorney general's office argued in a lengthy legal brief, filed in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, that a convicted child rapist serving four life terms should not be offered a second chance to take a plea deal years after the fact, despite a U.S. district court ruling demanding just that. "The district court erred," Assistant Attorney General Edward Kelley wrote in the 56-page document. He was referring to a finding that the constitutional rights of John Joseph Merzbacher, an English teacher at the South Baltimore Catholic Community middle school in the 1970s, were violated because his attorneys failed to inform him of a plea deal before his 1995 trial on child rape and sexual abuse charges.

Eliyahu Werdesheim, one of two brothers accused of assaulting a teenager in Northwest Baltimore, was convicted Thursday of false imprisonment and second-degree assault, in a case that has sparked neighborhood tensions and raised questions about a community patrol group. The second brother, Avi Werdesheim, was cleared of all charges. Eliyahu, 24, and Avi, 22, each had been charged with second-degree assault, false imprisonment and carrying a deadly weapon — a walkie-talkie issued by the neighborhood watch group Shomrim — with the intent to injure Corey Ausby, who was 15 at the time.

Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler took a first step Tuesday toward an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in a high-stakes case that blocks police across the state from collecting DNA samples when a person is arrested in connection with a violent crime or burglary. Gansler asked Maryland's highest court to reconsider its recent ruling or allow police to continue to take the samples while the state asks the Supreme Court to step in. At issue is whether taking the samples before a conviction violates an individual's constitutional rights.

The news, after all the shootings and courtroom drama is sorted out, is that Clayton "Coco" Colkley has to be tried again for murder but remains convicted of a handgun charge. And Darnell "Pooh" Fields has to be re-sentenced for his conviction and life plus 45 year year term on conspiracy to commit murder. It's a complicated case stemming from a gang war in 2003 in East Baltimore that left three people dead and four others wounded. The judges ruled that trial errors led to the overturning of the conviction and sentencing.

When a high court ruling came down this week limiting the use of DNA evidence, police in the state were investigating 20 cases based on DNA  collected after they arrested suspects charged with committing a violent crime or burglary. Now, it's unclear whether any of  those cases will lead to prosecutions. The Court of Appeals decision puts in question the constitutionality of collecting the samples before a conviction, and the state is considering whether to appeal the matter to theU.S.

The mother of Yeardley Love, a University of Virginia student murdered in 2010, filed a $30 million civil suit Thursday against the onetime boyfriend and fellow U.Va. lacrosse player convicted of killing her, George Huguely V. Sharon D. Love's suit, filed in Charlottesville Circuit Court, charges that Huguely acted negligently and with "utter disregard" for the safety of Love, who was found dead in her off-campus apartment by a roommate shortly before she and Huguely were scheduled to graduate.

Maryland's highest court on Thursday granted a new manslaughter trial to Ricky Savoy, saying that a jury instruction in his Baltimore trial in the 1993 death of Marvin Watts was improper. In a 5-2 ruling that overturned the conviction, the majority of the Court of Appeals judges wrote that a jury instruction lowered prosecutors' burden of proof from the familiar "beyond a reasonable doubt," which is what is constitutionally required. A judge told them that proof was also to be to a "moral certainty," which was explained as "based upon convincing grounds of probability.

Dajuan Marshall's convictions Monday for murder and gang participation — the first under a 2007 state law — could be thrown out because of juror misconduct, his lawyer said Tuesday. Defense attorney Roland Walker plans to ask for a mistrial during a hearing Thursday in Baltimore Circuit Court. The proceeding was scheduled after a juror told the judge that at least one jury member had Googled Marshall's background during the trial. The woman also said members of the jury lost relatives to homicide, which was never properly disclosed during the selection process, according to Walker.

Maryland's highest court on Tuesday blocked police in most cases from collecting DNA samples when they arrest suspects in violent crimes and burglaries, dealing a blow to one of Gov. Martin O'Malley's signature initiatives. The Court of Appeals ruled 5-2 that the state violated Alonzo Jay King Jr.'s constitutional rights by using DNA evidence taken from him after a 2009 assault arrest. That sample led to his conviction in a six-year-old rape case, but the court said it also ran afoul of protections against unreasonable searches without a warrant.

Pastor Leon W. Jones, who founded the Renewed Hope Christian Church on the 700 block of N. Paca St., was convicted Wednesday of sexually assaulting a teen-age girl, the Baltimore State's Attorney's Office announced. The abuse occurred during a two-year period from April 2000 through March of 2002, prosecutors said. The girl, now 27, was introduced to Jones by her mother, who participated in the abuse and was convicted of five counts of child sexual abuse. A jury convicted Jones of eight counts of second-degree sexual offense, prosecutors said.