Conviction

Nathaniel Hicks was killed for making fun of his friend's tennis shoes. A group of people throwing back Hennessy and Coronas in Northeast Baltimore watched the killer fire six shots into a sober Hicks shortly after midnight on Mother's Day 2007. Detectives collected three witnesses. The best of them, a teenager, was murdered before he could testify. Another witness said she was pulled into the back seat of a car and ordered to change her story. The third denied everything. At trial, inconsistent stories and substance abuse histories damaged the testimony of the two remaining witnesses, leaving only one juror convinced that Dominick Harrison shot Hicks.

No need to explain the relief on Elijah Snow's face in September when a jury acquitted him of carrying a deadly weapon - a kitchen knife - through downtown Baltimore. A guilty verdict would have landed the twice-convicted armed carjacker back in prison. Now he appeared to be home free. That may explain his confused expression when he stood in another city courtroom in November, listening as another judge sent him off to prison on the basis of the very same evidence that had failed to convince the jury two months earlier.

U.S. Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, former Gov. Marvin Mandel and the chief judge of the Maryland District Court were among three dozen witnesses who came to Annapolis yesterday to praise the character of Bruce C. Bereano -- attorney, lobbyist and convicted felon.Battling to hang on to his law license despite a 1994 mail-fraud conviction, Bereano mounted an extraordinarily aggressive defense in Anne Arundel Circuit Court.Over eight hours of testimony, his witnesses included four current or former judges, two former county executives, a prosecutor, several prominent lawyers and four of the lobbying clients he was convicted of defrauding.

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Henry J. Hyde, chief House prosecutor in the impeachment trial of President Clinton, solemnly told the Senate yesterday that its duty is to "sit in judgment." Another prosecutor, Rep. Ed Bryant of Tennessee, reminded senators of the obligation to "search for the truth." What, exactly, is the Senate's duty in this trial? Lyle Denniston of The Sun's national staff provides these answers:Do the Constitution or the Senate's rules make the senators' duty clear?In one sense, yes: They give the Senate an ultimate, stark duty -- choosing to acquit or convict.

THERE'S LITTLE to admire about Jack Kevorkian or his antics. There's little, therefore, to mourn about his recent conviction for second-degree murder in the death of Thomas Youk.But the discussion about the concerns and rights of terminally ill patients that Kevorkian's actions over the years has spawned has been healthy -- if not conclusive.Unlike the previous trials in which Kevorkian was acquitted, Mr. Youk did not flip a switch on the doctor's suicide machine. Kevorkian administered a lethal injection to the man, who suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease.

Highlights in Annapolis today:Senate meets. 9 a.m., Senate Chamber.House of Delegates meets. 10 a.m., House Chamber.House Appropriations Committee hears bill to compensate Anthony Gray for his wrongful murder conviction. 1 p.m., Room 131, House Office Building.House Judiciary Committee hears bill to allow police to collect the DNA of convicted violent criminals. 1 p.m., Room 121, House Office Building.

Larry Michael Brown, who recently recanted sworn statements that helped convict an Annapolis man of the beating of a restaurateur in 1990 in a high-profile case, died yesterday.Brown, 44, of Annapolis, told The Sun in April that he had lied to save himself from the prospect of serving up to 20 years in prison in his drug case. He was soon convicted of a probation violation and sentenced to eight years, but served less and was paroled.The cause of Brown's death was not reported. Funeral arrangements were incomplete.

Anne Arundel County prosecutors and the defense lawyers for a man they say was wrongly convicted in a brutal assault agree that any chance of freeing him from prison hinges on whether a key witness who recanted his eyewitness account this week will talk to them.So far, however, Larry Michael "Blackjack" Brown said he will never set foot in a courtroom and does not trust prosecutors enough to talk to them.The Anne Arundel County state's attorney's office said that without questioning Brown themselves, they will not take steps to further investigate the high-profile case Brady G. Spicer has been appealing since his 1992 conviction.

In defense of a man guilty as accessory in trooper's murderInaccuracies in the story about the the arrest-conviction history of Charles Edward Watson ("Slain officer's family keeps 24-year vigil," Feb. 25) and in The Sun's headline on a subsequent letter to the editor ("State should have executed police sergeant's killer," March 4) require a response to correct the record.Unfortunately, Maryland State Police Superintendent David B. Mitchell's letter to the editor ("Courts should help police, crime victims confine criminals," March 9)

I told you you'd be back, LY. They expelled you from the Maryland Senate for ethics violations, but even in that dark hour, I knew you'd be back. Now that a jury has acquitted you of bribery and tax evasion charges, you've won five-star martyrdom. Return to public office is a given.It's something of a tradition around here.Nathaniel "Natty O" Oaks is a member of the General Assembly despite a fall from grace that involved a conviction. He went out in 1989, came back in 1994. The late Dale Anderson, once the Baltimore County executive, was elected to the House of Delegates in 1982, eight years after his conviction on extortion and tax evasion.

For more than half a century, Rabbi Jacob A. Max was a dominant figure in Baltimore's Jewish community, founder of one of its most important synagogues, an influential leader who officiated at countless cycle-of-life rituals of the faith. A man, it seemed from afar, above reproach. But Max's reputation disintegrated earlier this year after he was convicted of sexually molesting a woman half his age in a Reisterstown funeral home. It marked the only time a woman had sought a legal remedy against the rabbi, even though murmurs had long rippled through Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah Hebrew Congregation that his behavior toward some of the females in his flock was anything but appropriate.

An Anne Arundel County judge found a Baltimore man guilty Friday of the rape and robbery of a 62-year-old woman who was attacked as she was ending her workday at a Brooklyn Park laundromat. Christopher Parr, 30, of the 4000 block of Barrington Road, had entered an insanity plea, claiming that he was not able to control his behavior in the July 19, 2006, assault at the Village Laundromat at 617 Church St. However, prosecutors said he understood exactly what he was doing when he entered the laundromat through the back door at 9:45 p.m. as the woman was locking up. In the laundromat, he tried to strangle her, raped her, demanded cash and complained that she had coins, and then stole her car. He then went home and put his hands on his mother's throat, according to police.

Telephone records and eyewitness testimony outweighed physical evidence in the murder conviction of an Owings Mills man late Tuesday by a Howard County jury. Lamont Johnson, 24, was found guilty of first-degree felony murder as well as first-degree attempted robbery and two related gun charges in the shooting death of Jason Batts in the parking lot of a Columbia apartment complex in May 2008. Though Johnson's fingerprints were not found on what was left of a sawed-off shotgun, cell phone records linked Johnson to a cell tower near the murder scene before and immediately after Batts was killed.

A Baltimore man convicted of killing two men was sentenced this week to two terms of life plus 170 years in prison by a judge who questioned why he was allowed to stay in this country after previous convictions. Bagada Dionas, 23, and his father legally immigrated to the U.S. in the 1990s as refugees from Liberia, Baltimore prosecutor Rita Wisthoff-Ito said in court Monday. But in his teen years, the younger Dionas amassed a juvenile record that included armed robberies, drug dealing and car theft, according to court records.

A 22-year-old Baltimore man was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison plus 20 years for a January 2008 murder for which prosecutors were unable to establish a motive. Danny Battle of the 3400 block of Ramona Ave. was convicted by a city jury July 31 of first-degree murder and use of a handgun in the commission of a crime of violence in the Jan. 25, 2008, shooting death of Irvin Lawson, 32, in the 900 block of Pennsylvania Ave. Prosecutors said Battle approached Lawson and another person as they were walking to Lawson's apartment and opened fire, striking Lawson in the back of the head, chest and back.

On Sept. 6, 2006, Mark Lomax, 37, jobless and destitute, a ninth-grade dropout, a string of robbery and drug convictions behind him, was sentenced to 21 years in prison for holding up the same Subway sandwich shop on North Charles Street three times in eight days. After serving less than four years behind bars, he walked out of prison in June. Four weeks later, city police said, Lomax, who is now 39, started another robbery spree. They suspect him of robbing 17 shops and restaurants, all this month and most in Mount Vernon, Fells Point and downtown, including the same Subway shop he had targeted three times in 2005.

WASHINGTON - -Prisoners do not have a constitutional right to DNA testing after their conviction, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday, even though the technology provides an "unparalleled ability both to exonerate the wrongly convicted and to identify the guilty." In the court's first examination of how to treat the rapidly evolving field of biological testing, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a majority that said it is up to the states and Congress to decide who has a right to testing that might prove innocence long after conviction.

Even in the pile of desperation that is Suzanne Drouet's mail - the inmates saying they were wrongfully convicted, the family members begging the Maryland Innocence Project for help - the letter from Jesse Barnes stood out. At 17, he had been accused of killing his 15-year-old girlfriend. He had no prior record. There were no witnesses or physical or scientific evidence connecting him to the crime. There was only a confession. Barnes - who had been classified as "mentally defective" on a school evaluation - signed the confession after 32 hours in police custody and seven hours of interrogation.

An Anne Arundel County man serving a prison sentence for murder is seeking to undo the results of a legal challenge that backfired. A lawyer for Tyrone Craig Williams, who was sentenced last year to 40 years in prison, had asked a three-judge panel to review that decision. But the panel, rather than reducing the sentence, determined that another 20 years were in order. Williams' new lawyer says the order for a new sentence should be voided because the convicted murderer never signed the petition for a three-judge panel review.

Nathaniel Hicks was killed for making fun of his friend's tennis shoes. A group of people throwing back Hennessy and Coronas in Northeast Baltimore watched the killer fire six shots into a sober Hicks shortly after midnight on Mother's Day 2007. Detectives collected three witnesses. The best of them, a teenager, was murdered before he could testify. Another witness said she was pulled into the back seat of a car and ordered to change her story. The third denied everything. At trial, inconsistent stories and substance abuse histories damaged the testimony of the two remaining witnesses, leaving only one juror convinced that Dominick Harrison shot Hicks.