NEWS
By Jennifer McMenamin | October 28, 2008
At court hearing after court hearing, Nicholas W. Browning has sat stoically as lawyers argued about his bail status, the doctors who would evaluate him and whether he would be tried in adult court or the juvenile system on charges that he killed his family. But yesterday, as Baltimore County prosecutor S. Ann Brobst read the gruesome details of the night that Browning methodically shot his parents and two younger brothers as they slept in their Cockeysville home, the 16-year-old removed his wire-rimmed glasses and wept.
NEWS
By Gus G. Sentementes and Brent Jones | December 6, 2007
The woman and her boyfriend boarded the No. 27 bus and tried to find a seat as it traveled through North Baltimore. But a fight quickly broke out between the pair and a group of nine students heading home from their Hampden middle school, police said. By the time Maryland Transit Administration police officers reached the bus along East 33rd in Waverly on Tuesday afternoon, the teens had punched and kicked the woman, dragging her out of the vehicle's rear door and leaving her with broken bones around her eye. The nine students from Robert Poole Middle School, who are all 14 or 15, are charged as juveniles with aggravated assault and destruction of property.
NEWS
By Larry Carson | December 3, 2007
Kwaku Atta Poku, the Columbia cab owner who lost his family's townhouse to foreclosure after a refinancing, despite having made every mortgage payment, is to get another chance to present his case today in Maryland's highest court. In arguments that could change how lower courts handle foreclosure cases, attorneys for the immigrant from Ghana are fighting to overturn rulings in favor of Washington Mutual Inc., the national mortgage company that took and resold his Howard County house in 2005.
NEWS
By Josh Mitchell | August 1, 2007
A Baltimore County judge denied bail yesterday for a 22-year-old man accused of fatally shooting the mother of his 3-year-old son in her rowhouse this week. Ryan Joseph Butler is being held on a first-degree murder charge in the death of Anna Marie Bergman, 20, who lived in the 300 block of Westshire Road in a neighborhood just west of Baltimore City. During a brief hearing in Towson District Court, a lawyer for Butler requested bail so the defendant could stay at his parents' Southwest Baltimore home.
NEWS
By Julie Bykowicz | December 16, 2006
The 26-year-old nurse was heading for a night shift Jan. 27, 1985, at a downtown Baltimore hospital when she was raped and stabbed - slashed so brutally that she was nearly decapitated. Now, almost 22 years later, city police believe they have identified her killer - a man who has been in prison all along. Orrell Youmans, 50, was arrested June 30, 1985, and charged in another city rape case, court records show. He is serving a 40-year sentence at Eastern Correctional Institute and, according to a court document, has a release date of 2015.
NEWS
By ANDREA F. SIEGEL | March 30, 2006
rockville -- Despite claims from his defense lawyers that he is mentally ill, convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad is competent to stand trial and will be allowed to act as his own lawyer at his Montgomery County murder trial that begins May 1, a county judge ruled yesterday. Muhammad, 45, who is on death row in Virginia for another sniper killing and is facing trial in Montgomery County in six slayings during the fall 2002 sniper rampage that terrorized the Washington area, sought yesterday to fire his lawyers.
NEWS
By TAMARA LYTLE AND JOHN KENNEDY | January 26, 2006
WASHINGTON -- A last-minute decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the execution of a Florida inmate could temporarily halt lethal injections throughout the country until April. The high court decided yesterday to hear an argument by convicted killer Clarence Hill that his civil rights would be violated by Florida's lethal-injection method because it causes inmates to suffer pain during the procedure. "This is a stunning and very welcome development that puts on hold all Florida executions and may well put a timeout on all lethal-injection executions in the United States," said Abe Bonowitz, director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
NEWS
By GUS G. SENTEMENTES | December 14, 2005
Taking up the cause of public access to government information, Baltimore officials filed a lawsuit yesterday against the state prison system, demanding an uncensored version of a consultant's report about problems at the Central Booking and Intake Center. The city solicitor's office filed the unusual challenge in Circuit Court in Baltimore, citing the state's Public Information Act. The city argues that state prison officials, who operate the center, have "improperly and unlawfully withheld a public document by redacting so much of a report as to be tantamount to withholding it."
NEWS
By JULIE BYKOWICZ | October 18, 2005
For years, William Nicholson supplied cocaine to three major drug dealers in Southeast Baltimore, and when he was arrested, the Highlandtown native had more than a pound of the drug hidden in his Yukon Denali. Last week, Nicholson entered a guilty plea that resulted in a prison term of no more than three years, a fraction of the 40 years he could have received if convicted of two charges of violating the drug kingpin statute. It appeared to be an unexpectedly generous plea deal. But Nicholson's short sentence brings to an end a case that, according to judges and court documents, involved either carelessness or wrongdoing on the part of prosecutors.
NEWS
By Ryan Davis | June 30, 2005
The city sought to join a lawsuit yesterday against Baltimore's booking center, accusing the state of mismanaging the crowded facility and hampering police efforts to reduce crime. In the past three months, more than 80 suspects have been released without charges from Central Booking and Intake Center because they failed to receive a hearing within 24 hours of arrest. In a court motion filed yesterday, city lawyers blame the state for the long-standing problems. "If the state can't figure out how to follow the law that dictates that they should operate the city centralized booking facility ... then we're all in danger," said Kristen Mahoney, chief of technical services for the city Police Department.