Court In Baltimore

Maryland: Inauguration O'Malley plans series of events Gov.-elect Martin O'Malley plans a week of inaugural events, including a parade and a performance by Kool and the Gang, according to a schedule his transition team released yesterday. Before being sworn in Jan. 17, O'Malley plans a seven-day tour of the state, including stops in suburban Washington, Southern Maryland, Western Maryland and the Eastern Shore. He plans to attend prayer breakfasts, hold town hall meetings and eat lunch with Annapolis Mayor Ellen O. Moyer at Chick and Ruth's Deli.

In traditional court systems, it is easy for a family in crisis to get lost in the shuffle. Start with a troubled teen bound for juvenile court, where a judge focusing on a minor crime may entirely miss other family troubles. The parents' marriage might be cracking up, leading them to divorce court in front of another judge. In extreme situations - say, if the parents are drug addicts - the children might be sent to foster care, involving yet another judge. Such a fragmented approach often undermines the best interests of families and of society.

The Baltimore Oriole Bird is lawsuit-filing mad.John J. Krownapple, one of the three men that work as the Oriole mascot, filed suit Tuesday in Baltimore Circuit Court alleging Louis G. Vitagliano of Philadelphia pushed him and caused him to fall about 10 feet from a right-field bleacher at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.Krownapple, confined to a wheelchair for 40 days after the incident May 4, said he suffered a broken and severely sprained left ankle, a bruised right ankle, soft tissue damage and torn ligaments and tendons.

A computer analyst pleaded guilty in federal court yesterday to devising a plan to steal $16.8 million from his employer and vanish with the fortune, intending to live the rest of his life under a new identity.Scott Michael Posnanski, 30, of Lake-in-the-Hills, Ill., hatched some of the ideas for the scheme at a downtown Baltimore pub where he and an accomplice met to iron out details, according to court papers. They planned to wire the stolen millions to a bank in Eastern Europe.Posnanski pleaded guilty to bank fraud in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

An attorney for a Howard County teen-ager who was removed from school for wearing an African-style head-wrap filed suit yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.The attorney, Lawrence S. Greenwald, requested a temporary restraining order to allow the student to return to class. A judge could issue the order as early as today, Greenwald said.Shermia Isaacs, 14, was asked to leave class late last month when officials at Columbia's Harper's Choice Middle School said her cloth head covering is forbidden under a no-hats policy.

A Texas man charged with owing $38,000 in child support pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Baltimore yesterday to violating federal child support recovery laws.Walter Alan Morgan of Emory, Texas, was arrested in Emory by federal agents Dec. 18 for failing to pay child support ordered by a Howard County Circuit Court judge in 1984.Federal officials said that Morgan failed to make $250 per month payments and owes more than $38,000. Morgan, who could be sentenced to six months in jail and fined $5,000, disputed the amount yesterday.

The friend of a former Housing Authority of Baltimore City employee pleaded guilty yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore to conspiring to embezzle nearly $142,000 in federal funds from the agency, said Maryland U.S. Attorney Lynne A. Battaglia.Willie Joe Spann, 39, of Baltimore pleaded guilty before Judge Frederic N. Smalkin, who set sentencing for Feb. 20, Battaglia said.She said Spann's friend, Doretha McFadden, 46, also of Baltimore, pleaded guilty to the same charge Dec. 4. Smalkin set sentencing for Feb. 25.Battaglia said McFadden, who worked as HABC's chief of disbursements in the accounts payable division, obtained 62 blank HABC checks and issued them to herself or Spann in various amounts between May 1994 and October 1996 and used the proceeds for personal expenses.

Plans for a New York-style "community court" in Baltimore received a boost with a $275,000 private grant that will be used to purchase a downtown building for the project, coordinators announced yesterday.The Greater Baltimore Community (GBC), an organization of more than 600 businesses and civic leaders that is leading the effort to establish the court, is scheduled to settle on the four-story National Marine Building at 33 S. Gay St. on Oct. 15.The Abell Foundation gave the grant for the building, now owned by NationsBank, and the GBC will raise the funds for its renovation.

MANHATTAN, N.Y. -- In the grueling afternoon heat, Robert Moore is in a blue jumpsuit, cleaning trash, soot and weeds from around trees on 48th Street. And he's talking about how he ended up with this job.Less than 24 hours before, the 46-year-old Moore was begging change around Manhattan. Then New York City police arrested and charged him with panhandling, one of the many "nuisance crimes" on which the city has been cracking down through its four-year-old Midtown Community Court."This was sort of the misdemeanor crime capital of the area -- panhandling, illegal vending, prostitution -- which clearly had an impact on businesses," said John Feinblatt, who helped organize the court.

Tens of thousands of students are arriving on campuses this fall with a little college knowledge they would have preferred to avoid -- they were defrauded by companies that promised to help them find scholarships for a fee.Prompted by the growing number of victims, the Federal Trade Commission yesterday announced lawsuits nationwide against operators of suspect companies, including one in Baltimore."

Thousands of Marylanders who are sued over unpaid bills show up in court without a lawyer. Many of them try to negotiate the legal system on their own and end up agreeing to settlements that may not be in their best interest. The system may help resolve small-claims cases faster, but it isn't always fair or just. Officials of the District Court of Maryland have rightly recognized that and are trying to do something about it. The problems surrounding these debt collection cases were documented by a University of Maryland study last fall and a Baltimore Sun investigative series that focused on hospitals' tactics to reclaim unpaid bills, including for treatment of poor people for which they were reimbursed by the state.

Baltimore police identified yesterday a pizza deliveryman who was fatally shot Sunday night, one of three unrelated killings in the city. Adama Diara, 22, of the first block of Swan Bridge Court in Baltimore County was found unconscious in his car, which had crashed into a tree in the 2200 block of Tucker Lane in Wakefield in West Baltimore, about 7:45 p.m. Sunday. Diara worked for Royal Pizza in the 1700 block of Woodlawn Drive, police said. Police also reported that Richard A. Green, 39, was the man who was found fatally shot about 5 p.m. Sunday in the 1300 block of W. North Ave. near Etting Street in West Baltimore.

Experienced Baltimore defense attorneys are increasingly requesting jury trials in minor cases, flooding the city's already overwhelmed courts and frequently securing more lenient plea deals from prosecutors. Between 35 and 65 misdemeanor cases are transferred daily from District Court to Circuit Court at the request of defendants or their attorneys. The requests consume three of the 11 courtrooms reserved for all criminal jury trials in the city, forcing delays - sometimes for months - in more serious cases.

A 29-year-old man who appeared numerous times in the first Stop Snitching video pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Baltimore yesterday to conspiracy to distribute cocaine, gun possession and other charges, according to the Maryland U.S. attorney's office. Sherman Kemp of Baltimore could face life in prison without parole. The video, a rambling, profanity-laced ode to street life, became a local political prop and a national emblem of Baltimore's crime problems. Between March and May of last year, Kemp purchased at least 5 kilograms of cocaine in New York and supplied the drugs to lower-level dealers in Baltimore, federal prosecutors said.

Three Baltimore-area men have pleaded guilty in separate cases to child pornography charges, Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein announced yesterday. Roy Edward Hoover Jr., 37, of Baltimore was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Baltimore to 10 years in prison for sexual exploitation of a minor to produce child pornography. According to his guilty plea, Hoover sexually assaulted a girl in his care for nearly three years, beginning in September 2004, when she was 14. Hoover took digital photographs of the assaults and downloaded them to his computer, according to Rosenstein's office.

Larsen leaving as PSC chief Steven B. Larsen, who took over the Maryland Public Service Commission with a mandate to lower utility bills, is leaving the panel before finishing a yearlong quest to reregulate the industry. He will be replaced by Douglas R.M. Nazarian, a former litigator who joined the PSC as a general counsel last June. Nazarian said he would continue the strategy set by his predecessor. Wal-Mart to pay settlement Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will pay $250,000 to a pharmacy technician who suffered a disability resulting from a gunshot wound and was subsequently fired from one of the company's Harford County stores, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced.

Two women and one man connected to the religious group 1 Mind Ministries in Baltimore have been arrested in New York City on a warrant charging them with failing to appear in court in Baltimore, according to court records and authorities. Sterling Clifford, a Baltimore police spokesman, would not comment on whether the arrests are connected to a homicide investigation into the remains of an infant found in South Philadelphia. Police are trying to determine whether the remains are those of Javon Thompson, an infant who lived with his mother and other members of the 1 Mind Ministries when it was in Baltimore.

Baltimore : Northeast Man, 26, charged in two street attacks A 26-year-old man has been charged with attacking and robbing a man and a woman seven days apart in the same block of The Alameda in Northeast Baltimore in January and February, city police and prosecutors said. Ronald Calhoun of the 1300 block of Silver Thorne Road was being held at the Baltimore City Detention Center in lieu of $500,000 bail, authorities said yesterday. The first attack, on Holton F. Brown, 66, an editorial assistant at The Sun, occurred about 4:50 a.m. Jan. 29 in the 5600 block of The Alameda.

When the Rev. Harvey Johnson graduated from Wayland Seminary in 1872, he came to Baltimore as pastor of the Union Baptist Church, which had been established in 1852. And during the next 50 years, he would become a towering figure and outspoken advocate for civil rights. When he arrived at Union, there were about 270 members; during his ministry, the church grew to 3,028 members and moved in 1905 to its present location at 1219 Druid Hill Ave. A visionary, Johnson rebelled against the discriminatory practices of the Maryland Baptist Union Association, which had denominational authority over Baptist churches in the state, and stood firm against the actions of prejudiced white Baptists.

A 24-year-old Baltimore man has been convicted of carjacking and handgun charges in U.S. District Court in Baltimore and faces a mandatory life sentence under the "three strikes" law, federal prosecutors said. A federal jury convicted Collin Hawkins on Wednesday of using a gun during a carjacking in the city on Nov. 22, 2006. Sentencing is scheduled for April 25. Hawkins has previous convictions in state court on five drug-related charges in five years, which made him eligible for sentencing under the three-strikes law. "Collin Hawkins will never again carry a gun, carjack or shoot anyone in Baltimore," U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said in a statement.