Defense Lawyers

The 285 court-appointed criminal defense lawyers who represent clients in U.S. District Court in Baltimore will have to wait until fall before their next pay from the federal government.The government suspended their pay last month when budgeted money ran out. The lawyers now must wait until the 1993 fiscal year arrives on Oct. 1."It's really an untenable position for lawyers to be in," complained Judith R. Catterton, president of the Maryland Criminal Defense Attorneys Association. "We're fundamentally being asked for a lengthy delay, and that's very burdensome for practitioners."

The defense attorney for 28-year-old Michael Johnson, charged with first-degree murder in the killing of Phylicia Barnes, told reporters on Thursday that his client had been struck and kicked during his arrest. He disputed a statement from the city's top prosecutor that the arrest went down "without incident. " But trying to track down what actually happened has been a frustrating ordeal, not just on the allegations of mistreatment, but the aura of secrecy surrounding this high-profile case.

Two well-known Baltimore criminal defense lawyers were reprimanded by the state's highest court for letting an unsupervised secretary take charge of their personal injury cases and not giving a client her money, which resulted in the client's getting sued for a debt. The sanction against Warren Anthony Brown and Lawrence Barry Rosenberg, who were law partners from 1990 to 1993, is the mildest that the Court of Appeals can impose. The Attorney Grievance Commission had asked that their law licenses be suspended for a year.

Avi and Eliyahu Werdesheim, Jewish brothers accused of beating a black teen while guarding their Park Heights neighborhood, withdrew a request to change the court venue Tuesday and elected to move forward with a Baltimore trial by judge, waiving their right to be heard by a jury of their peers. They had previously complained that media coverage of their case, coupled with comparisons to the Florida shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was gunned down by a zealous neighborhood watch captain, made it impossible to impanel a fair jury in the city.

After three days of pretrial motions, jury selection is set to begin Thursday in the trial of three men accused of killing former Baltimore City Council member Kenneth N. Harris. Charles McGaney and Gary Collins, both 22, and Jerome Williams, 17, face charges of first-degree murder, first-degree assault and various robbery and weapons counts in connection with the death of Harris outside a Northeast Baltimore jazz club Sept. 20, 2008. The pretrial motions did not go well for the defense.

John M. Rusnak, the former Allfirst Financial Inc. currency trader who lost $691.2 million, could face a tough battle in winning a light sentence if convicted, legal experts said yesterday. Rusnak, 37, who is at the center of one of the largest bank scandals in history, was indicted on seven counts of bank fraud Wednesday. If convicted on all counts, he faces a maximum of 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine for each count. None of the legal experts thinks Rusnak would receive the maximum sentence.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers rested their cases Tuesday in the retrial of two brothers accused of dousing a pit bull with an accelerant and lighting her on fire, with jurors poised to begin deliberating Wednesday afternoon. Prosecutors called their last of eight witnesses before lunch Tuesday, questioning a state Department of Juvenile Services staff member who said in brief testimony that one of the defendants, Travers Johnson, was not on house arrest at the time the dog was burned.

Baltimore City Circuit Judge Emanuel Brown will decide whether a jury can see a police surveillance video that prosecutors say ties twin brothers Travers and Tremayne Johnson to a pit bull that was set on fire in 2009. The second trial in the animal cruelty case opened Friday with a series of requests by the brothers' defense attorneys for Brown to throw out key pieces of the prosecution's evidence, including the video and a gas can. Brown held off ruling on the motions until at least Monday, when the trial continues.

Maryland U.S. Attorney Thomas M. DiBiagio wanted a political corruption case when he started investigating investment manager Nathan A. Chapman Jr. and used embarrassing personal information, false promises and the threat of a related criminal investigation to try to reach that goal, Chapman's attorneys said in a court document filed yesterday. The trial of Chapman - who is accused of defrauding the state pension system and stealing from his own companies - has "lifted a veil of secrecy that had kept the United States Attorney's pattern of questionable behavior hidden from the defendant and the public," the lawyers wrote.

Even as prosecutors weigh an appeal of a Howard County judge's decision to throw out drunken-driving charges and rule that they were tied to illegal citation quotas, defense lawyers are considering whether the same defense might apply to past or current cases. District Court Judge Sue-Ellen Hantman's ruling in a case against an Ellicott City woman has raised questions on both sides - as well as eyebrows around the legal community. Leonard Stamm, a Prince George's County lawyer who wrote a legal handbook called "Maryland DUI Law," said the case puts lawyers who defend people charged with drunken driving on notice for a potential avenue for defense.

Attorneys for two Jewish brothers, who are accused of beating a black teen while patrolling their Northwest Baltimore neighborhood, argued Monday that their trial should be delayed or transferred because African-American leaders and the news media have inextricably linked it to the Florida killing of Trayvon Martin. The similarities between the cases "are conspicuous," defense lawyers for Avi and Eliyahu Werdesheim wrote in an eight-page motion filed in Baltimore Circuit Court, shortly before the brothers' trial was set to begin after six postponements.

Baltimore prosecutors lost two tough cases this week - the animal cruelty trial of twin brothers charged with setting a pit bull on fire, and the trial of a man accused of killing two girls in a hit-and-run on Martin Luther King Boulevard.  Sun reporter Scott Dance covered both cases. First, today's verdict in the hit-and-run case , where prosecutors had secured a guilty plea from a co-defendant in exchange for her testimony against the alleged driver:  "Two jurors said after the trial they doubted who was driving - Dunn or his girlfriend, key witness Kendra Myles - when two teenage girls were struck and tossed more than 100 feet.

The father of twins acquitted of animal cruelty charges Wednesday criticized the investigation that left the young men behind bars for nearly three years, but the state's attorney's office said there were no regrets in retrying the dog-burning case. "The police are supposed to be protecting," Charles Johnson said Thursday. He reiterated arguments from defense lawyers that the brothers were wrongfully identified as suspects. But a spokesman for State's Attorney Gregg L. Bernstein said the decision was made to retry the case in part because all but one juror agreed to convict the brothers in the first trial.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers rested their cases Tuesday in the retrial of two brothers accused of dousing a pit bull with an accelerant and lighting her on fire, with jurors poised to begin deliberating Wednesday afternoon. Prosecutors called their last of eight witnesses before lunch Tuesday, questioning a state Department of Juvenile Services staff member who said in brief testimony that one of the defendants, Travers Johnson, was not on house arrest at the time the dog was burned.

Jurors in the retrial of two brothers accused of setting a pit bull ablaze heard testimony from two key witnesses Wednesday, one revealing new details in a police surveillance video while the other raised questions about what he saw the day of the crime. Police Sgt. Jarron Jackson identified Travers and Tremayne Johnson in the video, which shows parts of the May 27, 2009, incident. He pointed them out walking the dog and leading her to an alley close to where the dog was found in flames.

Jurors got a closer look Friday at Phoenix, a pit bull set aflame in West Baltimore in 2009, in the retrial of the twin brothers accused of the crime. Panel members looked ahead without reaction as they were shown images of the dog almost entirely wrapped in bandages at an animal hospital. One showed the dog lying on its side, with a catheter tube leading to a bag of blood-red urine. Another showed her badly burned face — what would normally be a shiny black nose and pair of lips turned raw and red. Jurors also got a second look at a police surveillance video showing parts of the burning, guided through this time by the police officer who discovered the dog in flames at the mouth of an alley in Sandtown-Winchester.

The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that the state must provide lawyers to indigent defendants during bail hearings, overturning a long-standing practice under which newly arrested individuals face court commissioners alone — often in private, unrecorded proceedings — to argue for freedom. "Whenever a commissioner determines to set bail, the defendant stands a good chance of losing his or her liberty, even if only for a brief time," the judges wrote. "Furthermore, the likelihood that the commissioner will give full and fair consideration to all facts relevant to the bail determination can only be enhanced by the presence of counsel.

The state would have to hire 284 new public defenders to comply with a recent Court of Appeals ruling requiring lawyers for indigent defendants at thousands of annual bail hearings, according to an affidavit filed Thursday by Maryland Public Defender Paul DeWolfe. "I have determined that the Office is unable to comply with the court's mandate at this time in light of its current resource constraints," DeWolfe wrote in the eight-page, sworn document, filed in the state's highest court.

The trial of Avi and Eliyahu Werdesheim, Baltimore brothers charged with assault and false imprisonment for allegedly beating a black teenager in 2010 while members of Shomrim, a Jewish patrol group, was postponed for a sixth time Wednesday, the Baltimore State's Attorney's Office announced. The trial was set to begin Thursday, but is now scheduled for April 23. One of the defendants is ill, according to the city prosecutor's office. All of the delays have been at the request of the defense, a spokesman said.

A police surveillance video that was key evidence in the 2011 mistrial of Travers and Tremayne Johnson, accused of setting a pit bull on fire, will be presented to jurors in the brothers' retrial, a judge ruled Monday. Defense attorneys had sought to have the tape thrown out. An expert witness brought in by prosecutors said the video is of higher quality than many other surveillance tapes used in court, with twice as many frames per second as similar tapes. Distortions in the video that defense lawyers attacked are common and can be the result of many factors, Douglas Lacey, a forensic video analyst, said in court.