Defense Attorneys

Until last month, 29-year-old Jamar Simmons was living a double life, police say. He fought fires for Baltimore out of a decades-old brick firehouse in Hampden, earning close to $60,000 annually. He also managed a prostitution ring out of a renovated apartment in Carrollton Ridge in Southwest Baltimore, court documents say, pocketing a percentage of the cash earned by a group of women selling sex. On July 9, police raided the apartment and arrested Simmons and his alleged partner in the operation.

The Crofton man who police have said called himself "a joker" while threatening a workplace shooting has been charged with a single misdemeanor count of misusing the telephone, authorities said Wednesday. Police drew national headlines when they announced that Neil Edwin Prescott was in custody, saying they had thwarted a "violent episode" with links to a mass shooting in Aurora, Colo. But on Wednesday, prosecutors found themselves explaining the relatively minor charge as Prescott's friends criticized the handling of the case.

For the second time this summer, a local family has been awarded a huge sum of money by a Baltimore jury after claiming that negligent care by a local hospital caused their child to be born with a disability. A jury Tuesday awarded $21 million to a Glen Burnie couple whose son was born prematurely with cerebral palsy at Harbor Hospital in 2002, and is now, at age 9, "literally trapped inside his body" with a fully functioning mind but a severely disabled body, according to a family attorney.

Calling DNA collection from those arrested for certain felonies a "valuable tool for investigating unsolved crimes," Chief Justice John G. Roberts on Monday said there was a "fair prospect" that the nation's high court would overturn a Maryland ruling striking down the practice as unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court has not yet agreed to take on the issue, but statements made by Roberts in a four-page opinion signaled that was likely. The Maryland attorney general's office plans to file a petition asking for the court's review by mid-August.

Before the other boys jumped Tyrone, they asked if he wanted to fight. That was a mere formality. Fights are a regular occurrence among juveniles being held in Baltimore's adult jail - where the 16-year-old was held for six months on attempted-robbery charges - and he had no say in the matter. A corrections officer sat just feet away, but his indifference created a gulf of miles, Tyrone said. When it was over, Tyrone was missing a tooth. He ripped off a piece of bedsheet to stanch the bleeding above his eye and quietly climbed back into bed. "I guess that's what happens when you get" sent to jail, said the teen, who was being held at the adult facility on Eager Street because he was charged as an adult with a serious crime.

Defense attorneys for Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold, who is fighting accusations that he used his police security detail for personal and political gain, clashed with prosecutors Wednesday, as the defense asked a judge to dismiss the criminal charges or split them for multiple trials. Lawyer Bruce L. Marcus told Judge Dennis M. Sweeney the charges are unconstitutionally vague or do not say what rules or laws Leopold is charged with violating. He also argued that a charge of misappropriation of funds is "simply the wrong offense" because Leopold neither holds nor disburses funds.

Alexander Kinyua, the 21-year-old accused of killing a man and eating his organs, has been formally indicted on charges of first-degree murder and assault and has been sent to a Maryland state mental hospital. Harford County State's Attorney Joseph I. Cassilly said in a statement Tuesday that the indictment follows a hearing Monday in District Court in which a judge ordered that Kinyua be transferred to Clifton T. Perkins Hospital for a competency evaluation, following a request from his attorneys.

The mother of a young girl hit with a stray bullet fired by a juvenile offender who was under GPS tracking is seeking millions of dollars from the state vendor that provides the monitoring, claiming in a lawsuit that the company knew its product was flawed. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court this week by Danielle Brooks, whose daughter, Raven Wyatt, was 5 years old when she was struck by a bullet and suffered catastrophic injuries. The girl is now 8, and the family's attorney estimates her care could cost more than $7 million over her lifetime.

Jurors are scheduled to resume deliberations Tuesday in the trial of Tiffany Alston, a Prince George's County delegate charged with using General Assembly funds to pay an employee at her private law practice. Prosecutors and defense attorneys wrapped up arguments Monday in the case of the freshman Democrat, who is charged with theft and misconduct in office, and jurors deliberated for more than two hours. Prosecutor Shelly S. Glenn said in closing arguments that Alston dipped into legislative funds for $800 in January 2011 "because she was broke, because her law firm was broke.

Prosecutors fought claims Friday that George Huguely V — convicted of second-degree murder in the beating death of Yeardley Love, his University of Virginia girlfriend — received an unfair trial, filing a pointed response to a recent request for a new proceeding that said the defense "misses the mark. " The 37-page document, filed in the Charlottesville, Va., Circuit Court by Commonwealth Attorney Warner "Dave" Chapman, also addressed new allegations made by Huguely's attorneys earlier this week, claiming that Love's Cockeysville-based family considers her murder two years ago an accident.