Guilty Plea

Sentencing for a convicted killer who was once on death row was postponed yesterday after the man said that his lawyers had coerced him to plead guilty in a prior plea agreement. John A. Miller IV, 35, was allowed to proceed with a motion to withdraw his guilty plea, effectively firing the public defenders who have represented him. Relatives of Shen Poehlman, the 17-year-old girl whom Miller was convicted of killing nearly a decade ago, were visibly upset when they learned that the sentencing process would be prolonged.

Nearly eight years in prison apparently did little to change David McDowell Robinson. Robinson, an Ivy League graduate whose sterling academic resume belied his penchant for financial schemes, pleaded guilty in federal court in Baltimore yesterday to devising a large Ponzi scheme that lured more than 850 investors, including victims of Hurricane Katrina. Prosecutors said Robinson's scheme attracted get-rich-quick investors who lost more than $1.2 million. It was almost identical to the operation Robinson was convicted of running more than a decade ago, government lawyers said.

A Westminster man pleaded guilty yesterday to auto manslaughter and, in return for his promise to testify against two co-defendants, will serve no more than three years in jail.Mark E. Eppig, 22, of Westminster was found guilty by Carroll Circuit Judge Francis M. Arnold. The judge set sentencing for Nov. 20.In a statement of facts, prosecutor David P. Daggett said witnesses, including a Baltimore County police officer, would have testified that Eppig and two men were racing east on Route 140 near Finksburg when the fatal accident occurred June 1.He said the officer was not able to keep up with Eppig's Nissan and two sports cars -- driven by Frederick H. Hensen Jr., 21, of Westminster and Scott D. Broadfoot Sr., 25, of Parkville -- along the divided highway, but came upon the crash scene seconds later.

A 20-year-old Severn man pleaded guilty yesterday to a charge of possessing a firearm during drug trafficking and was sentenced to five years in prison without the possibility of parole. Howard County police found 54 bags of crack cocaine, a bag of marijuana and a loaded .40-caliber pistol in Charles A. Pigford's car during a traffic stop just hours after he was released from police custody on a charge of driving with a suspended license, prosecutors said. Pigford, of the 1800 block of Graybird Court, first caught the attention of a Howard officer when he crossed the double yellow line on eastbound Columbia 100 Parkway on Aug. 20, said State's Attorney Timothy J. McCrone, who prosecuted the case.

Throughout a career that took him from hardscrabble wildcatter to wealthy oil tycoon, Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. hasn't been the type to back down from a fight. So Monday's guilty plea to a federal conspiracy charge by the 83-year-old founder and former chairman of Coastal Corp. surprised those familiar with his tenacity. "I am shocked by his decision to plead guilty," said David H. Berg, who represented Wyatt's brother-in-law, Houston clothier Robert T. Sakowitz, when the oilman sued him in the 1980s over some business deals.

A man who says he flipped about 120 Baltimore houses over a four-year period pleaded guilty yesterday to federal fraud charges. Carl Schulz of Baltimore pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud in a 21-count indictment and admitted that his scheme cost lenders as much as $1.5 million. Schulz's plea is the first conviction in the second major illegal property flipping case brought by federal prosecutors in Baltimore. Robert L. Beeman of Wilmington, Del., who flipped more than 100 Baltimore houses, and four people who worked with him pleaded guilty last year while a fifth was convicted at a trial.

EASTON -- The scrawled sentence -- "I am pleading guilty because I am guilty" -- has made Ivan Fitzherbert Lovell only the second person in Maryland's history to plead guilty in a death penalty case.Under a plea agreement dated May 8 -- his 25th birthday -- and announced during a preliminary hearing Tuesday in Talbot County Circuit Court, Lovell pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the shooting last fall of Maryland State Police Tfc. Edward Plank.Plank, 28, was killed after stopping Lovell and his cousin, William Smith Lynch, on a dark stretch of U.S. 13 near Princess Anne early on the morning of Oct. 17. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Lovell.

A lieutenant in the Baltimore County Fire Department pleaded guilty yesterday to participating in a pyramid scheme, ending the state's lengthy and controversial grand jury investigation into a get-rich-quick frenzy that swept Maryland in 1994.Lt. Michael S. Nace, who had vowed to fight his Nov. 6 indictment with two fellow firefighters, entered his plea before Judge J. Norris Byrnes in Baltimore County Circuit Court.With the plea, In so doing, the decorated firefighter with 22 years of experience avoided two more serious charges, including evading state income taxes.

Four years ago, Mark Denisyuk broke into an apartment in Harford County. He fought with the occupants who threw him out and, when police arrived, he was standing outside, drunk, with slurred speech, his shirt and face bloodied. A judge later noted, "He had no realistic defense." Denisyuk pleaded guilty to assault. He was sentenced to serve two years in prison. But no one - not the trial judge, not the prosecutor, not his own lawyer - advised him that if he was not a U.S. citizen, and if he was found guilty of a crime, he could be deported.

The last of three people accused of a retaliation murder pleaded guilty yesterday to conspiring to kill a Baltimore teen-ager because he feared that if he was convicted, the Anne Arundel County circuit judge would give him the same sentence, life plus 18 years, that his brother got.Under a plea agreement, Judge Eugene M. Lerner cannot sentence Kenneth L. Blake, 33, of the 4100 block of Hague Ave. in Baltimore to more than 15 years in prison."