Court System

Baltimore's juvenile court system is so inept that arrest warrants go unserved, violence breaks out in courtrooms and teen-agers leave the courthouse without a hearing because no one can figure out why they came.Furthermore, a city bar association committee concludes in a new report that "much of the dramatic street crimes, killings and drug trafficking in Baltimore City are a direct result of the failures of the juvenile justice system and the low priority placed upon it by our state and local officials and citizens."

The following letter was sent regarding the article written by Bryna Zumer and is published with the consent of the writer. I just want to take this opportunity to acknowledge with heartfelt appreciation that I and my family feel for the wonderful article you wrote regarding Joshua's case. So many people have told me that your article touched them so much and brought tears to them. I am so thankful that you took your time to come and sit there and wait as we saw the court system has their own agenda and schedule.

It may be known as the Nation's River, but here where the Potomac carves its way between Maryland and Virginia, ownership is up for grabs. Again. A court battle that pits a group of property owners against two small paddling and tubing companies seeks to establish who controls the river, the banks and the mud below. A Washington County circuit judge has pushed the dispute across the water to Loudoun County, Va., saying he lacks jurisdiction. But it's not clear that Virginia's justice system has standing either.

It may be known as the Nation's River, but here where the Potomac carves its way between Maryland and Virginia, ownership is up for grabs. Again. A court battle that pits a group of property owners against two small paddling and tubing companies seeks to establish who controls the river, the banks and the mud below. A Washington County circuit judge has pushed the dispute across the water to Loudoun County, Va., saying he lacks jurisdiction. But it's not clear that Virginia's justice system has standing either.

IN THE LAST half-century, no one matched the contributions of Robert C. Murphy to Maryland's system of dispensing justice. Judge Murphy, who died Monday at 74, was the father of Maryland's modern judiciary. Key to his success was a love of people. He always returned phone calls, even to irate citizens. The Baltimore native proved popular with politicians, in part because he relished the give-and-take of the legislative process and buttonholing lawmakers. But his real strength came from his direct, honest approach and his likability.

In a sign of continued political pressure on the city courts, state lawmakers have decided to hand over only half of the $17.8 million promised to Baltimore's beleaguered justice system if reforms were made.The leaders of the Senate and House budget committees are sending a letter to Maryland's Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals Robert M. Bell explaining that $8.9 million will be freed up for the justice agencies. The rest will be withheld until a status report on the reform plans is presented to legislators in January.

W ill a recent lawsuit result in Congress' biggest upheaval in almost 100 years? Probably not, but that's the hope of the parties who brought the case. They think that the House of Representatives is unconstitutional in its current form and that the only solution is to drastically increase its size. This effort, while quixotic, is not thoroughly misguided. The House should, in fact be larger - but a lawsuit is the wrong way to reach that goal. The plaintiffs, citizens of Delaware, Mississippi, Montana, South Dakota, and Utah, argue that the House's 435 seats are not fairly distributed among the states.

The scenario was fairly typical: A young woman, her car missing, approaches a District Court commissioner to file criminal charges. As a video crew recorded every movement on a recent morning, the actors, both court employees, followed the process from the application to the information to the swearing to the truth. Similar scenes would play out in various offices in Prince George's County's Upper Marlboro court building throughout the day as videographers moved from commissioner to cashier to clerk to courtroom, filming scenes that will later be condensed into a five-minute explanatory video.

HIS credentials are impressive. First, he went from Harvard Law School to Piper & Marbury. Then he worked his way up through the judicial ranks from District Court to Baltimore Circuit Court to the Court of Special Appeals. Then, in 1996, he became the state's top judicial officer when he was named Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals of Maryland after sitting on the state's highest court for about five years. Meet Robert M. Bell, a civil rights pioneer who in 1960, when he was just 16 years old, struck a blow at segregation by walking into a Baltimore restaurant and asking to be served.

Hundreds of tugboat captains, charter fishermen and other professional mariners face charges of negligence or misconduct every year under the U.S. Coast Guard's administrative court system, a forum established to be fair and impartial, like any other court. The stakes are high for mariners. Even a temporary suspension can often end a career. But a Sun investigation - based on evidence in federal court records, computer data files, internal memos and the sworn testimony of a former agency judge - suggests that the system isn't merely tough on mariners but is stacked against them.

In-patient units at Spring Grove Hospital Center in Catonsville have become troubled environments where serious assaults on hospital staff are common, according to a scathing new report from a consultant for the Maryland health department. The chaos at the state's largest psychiatric hospital, the consultant found, is fueled by a few patients who "prey upon patients and staff with relative impunity" after being ordered by courts to the hospital for psychiatric evaluation - sometimes with dubious symptoms.

A Baltimore County district judge who has been under fire for his handling of a domestic violence case plans to retire next month, a spokesman for the Maryland court system said Tuesday. Judge Bruce S. Lamdin, 64, was removed in August from hearing cases pending an investigation of his remarks to a White Marsh woman during a court hearing last December. On Tuesday, he submitted a letter to Gov. Martin O'Malley saying he plans to step down Oct. 1, according to Terri Bolling, a spokeswoman for the Maryland court system.

Behind the scenes - and several forests' worth of pulp - work is underway to transform Maryland's courts into a system that is nearly paperless. Plans call for the first courts in the state to go electronic in fall of 2013. The guinea pigs are the circuit and district courts in Anne Arundel County. Statewide appeals courts will follow. By the end of 2016, all Maryland courts are to be e-courts. The cost: $45 million, said Ben C. Clyburn, chief judge of the District Court and who heads the project.

The federal government is considering closing dozens of rural court sites across the country, including one that serves Maryland's Eastern Shore — a move that would force people to drive up to 110 miles to the nearest courthouse to have their cases heard. "It would be a grave inconvenience to litigants to have them come to a federal court in either Baltimore or Greenbelt. It makes no sense," said Deborah K. Chasanow, chief judge of Maryland's U.S. District Courts. The potential closures, 60 of them spread throughout 29 states, are being considered as a cost-cutting measure within the federal judiciary.

At 10 a.m. on a recent weekday, roughly a half-dozen District Court commissioners were individually processing 120 arrestees at Baltimore's Central Booking and Intake Center, and making big decisions about whether to set bail or release the accused with instructions to come to court when called. They work out of tiny concrete cells in the detention center, similar to those packed with waiting prisoners. For protection, they have a window partition between them and the defendant, who is locked in during the proceeding.

No justice was served for little Caylee Anthony ("Casey Anthony not guilty," July 6). First of all the judge should have realized he's had a jury in hold for 33 days. It was a holiday weekend, the court system could've arranged for them to go somewhere for a family outing with some kind of security for them so facts would not be talked about. Had the court system done that, maybe this jury, tired of being kept in seclusion all that time, might have come back, looked over all the facts more clearly and come back with a different conclusion.

At 10 a.m. on a recent weekday, roughly a half-dozen District Court commissioners were individually processing 120 arrestees at Baltimore's Central Booking and Intake Center, and making big decisions about whether to set bail or release the accused with instructions to come to court when called. They work out of tiny concrete cells in the detention center, similar to those packed with waiting prisoners. For protection, they have a window partition between them and the defendant, who is locked in during the proceeding.

A Baltimore County district judge who has been under fire for his handling of a domestic violence case plans to retire next month, a spokesman for the Maryland court system said Tuesday. Judge Bruce S. Lamdin, 64, was removed in August from hearing cases pending an investigation of his remarks to a White Marsh woman during a court hearing last December. On Tuesday, he submitted a letter to Gov. Martin O'Malley saying he plans to step down Oct. 1, according to Terri Bolling, a spokeswoman for the Maryland court system.

The victim of a sexual attack about this time last summer said of her attacker this week in a Harford County courtroom: "I hope he rots in jail for the rest of his life. " The he to whom she referred is Anthony Eugene Robinson, 46, of the 1200 block of West Jarrettsville Road in Forest Hill, and he was subsequently sentenced by Circuit Court Judge Emory A. Plitt Jr. to two consecutive life terms, the maximum allowed in this case. Robinson had been convicted most recently in a case that involved him pushing the victim into his car and driving her to a secluded area before attacking her. Robinson also had been convicted of rape in 1996 and was on the sexual offenders registry at the time of the attack last summer.