Defense Lawyers

Robert Jarrett Jr. was convicted Tuesday of murdering his wife, following a trial in which prosecutors described him as a "cold-blooded killer" who allowed his sons to walk over her body buried beneath their backyard shed for two decades. Howard County jurors handed down a guilty verdict on one count of second-degree murder after deliberating into the night, bringing an end to a years-long investigation. Prosecutors, who had pushed for a first-degree murder conviction, said they would seek the maximum penalty of 30 years in prison at Jarrett's sentencing, scheduled in August.

Baltimore prosecutors said Friday that a sexually charged video depicting teenager Phylicia Barnes and the man accused of killing her shows a turning point in the relationship that ultimately led to her death. Assistant State's Attorney Lisa Goldberg also said in opening statements that a witness will testify that defendant Michael Maurice Johnson showed him Barnes' body after she died, in a plea for help. Defense lawyers said that witness is unreliable and shows that the state has a weak case.

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.

I have been reading with great interest the recent articles on the Baltimore City Detention Center and Central Booking ("City jail oversight said to be lacking," Aug. 6). Conspicuous by its absence is any mention of the abhorrent conditions defense lawyers face when attempting to have meaningful interviews with clients. In the BCDC, we are forced to conduct interviews in filthy, cramped booths equipped with equally filthy backless iron stools. More often than not, there is no real privacy or ability to go over audio tapes, etc. These conditions are deplorable, along with the loud yelling of inmates as well as the officers.

BOSTON -- It is the stuff that courtroom dramas are made of: the gotcha moment when a lawyer confronts a witness on the stand with evidence that the witness is lying. Maybe the lawyer discovered that the witness had been out of town the day he supposedly saw the crime or learned that the witness had told different stories. "I do it in almost every case," said James L. Sultan, who has represented several high-profile defendants in Boston. "That's what we do as criminal defense lawyers."

Defense lawyers for Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon reinforced their arguments Monday that the 12 criminal offenses against the mayor should be dropped, with her lawyers insisting that four perjury charges are based on "a fundamental misreading" of the city's ethics code. The arguments contained in court filings offered a preview of what defense lawyers could spend time discussing Thursday, when they are scheduled to make an oral presentation in Baltimore Circuit Court on their motion to dismiss all charges.

Neither prosecutors nor defense lawyers expect to ask lawmakers next year to change a new state court rule that for the first time restricts the power of judges to reduce sentences. The Maryland Court of Appeals decided Monday to bar judges from cutting sentences more than five years after they were imposed. Until July 1, when the rule takes effect, judges can reduce a sentence that was meted out decades ago. Prosecutors, who lobbied for a decade for a time limit on sentence modifications, wanted a one-year cutoff, but backed the five-year proposal.

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.

George Huguely V, the former University of Virginia lacrosse player convicted last year of drunkenly beating to death his girlfriend Yeardley Love, has asked the Virginia Court of Appeals to review his case. Huguely's attorneys argued in a petition filed Tuesday that the court violated Huguely's constitutional rights. Love, the victim, was from Cockeysville. "The circuit court's response to the intense media interest was to rush through the trial, rather than to ensure that the accused received a fair trial," Craig S. Cooley and Paul D. Clement, the attorneys, wrote in the petition.

A Pasadena teenager pleaded guilty Thursday to two murders after prosecutors and defense lawyers belatedly learned that he admitted several months ago to a deputy sheriff that he had shot one of the victims. The plea by Vincent Ethan Bunner, now 18, ended his trial on first-degree murder and related counts in the Nov. 12, 2010 fatal shooting of Misael Flores during a botched robbery. Prosecutors said Bunner's disclosure to an Anne Arundel County deputy sheriff came as he was being transported within the courthouse for a pretrial hearing.