Gunshot Residue

A trial began yesterday in Baltimore Circuit Court for three of the men accused of killing five women in a Northeast Baltimore rowhouse in 1999, but the sole person who says he witnessed the killings probably won't testify. Prosecutors and defense lawyers for Ismael Malik Wilson, 28, Travon McCoy, 22, and Robert Bryant, 24, said yesterday that they did not plan to call Ronald McNeil to the stand. A fourth defendant, Tariq A. Malik, 21, who is Wilson's brother, is to stand trial in September because his lawyer had a scheduling conflict.

Baltimore crime analysts have been contaminating evidence with their own DNA - a revelation that led to the dismissal this week of the city Police Department's crime lab director and prompted questions yesterday from defense attorneys and forensic experts about the professionalism of the state's biggest and busiest crime lab. Edgar Koch, who had been the city lab's director for the past decade, was fired Tuesday because of the DNA contamination and...

Six years after being indicted for manslaughter in the shooting death of an apparently unarmed teen-ager, and minutes before the start of his second trial, Baltimore police officer Edward T. Gorwell II was unexpectedly cleared yesterday when new evidence emerged in the case.Surprised city prosecutors decided to drop the charges, but left open the possibility that Gorwell might be charged again.Gorwell has always contended that he heard a gunshot and fired in self-defense when he killed 14-year-old Simmont Donta Thomas on April 17, 1993.

A national legal group that works to reverse wrongful convictions called on state police yesterday to investigate possible "negligence" or "misconduct" in the city's crime lab after revelations that technicians had left their own DNA on evidence in at least 13 cases. Stephen Saloom, policy director for the Innocence Project in New York, wrote that Congress requires Maryland State Police to oversee the lab. Before receiving federal funds for its crime lab, Baltimore certified that the state police would conduct "independent external investigations" into allegations of serious negligence or misconduct, according to the Innocence Project.

The state built its case of physical evidence yesterday in Howard County Circuit Court against a Baltimore man accused of robbing and fatally shooting a Jessup deli owner in 2003. Prosecutors attempted to link clothing and a revolver to Walter J. Blannon, 39, during the trial in which he faces first-degree murder and related charges in the slaying of Kwang Jun Kim. Mike Nickol, a Maryland State Police firearms examiner, testified that a piece of a bullet that police said was taken from Kim's brain matched the .357-caliber revolver that police found in a gold-colored Chevrolet Malibu that they say Blannon was driving.

Baltimore County jurors began deliberating last night in the case of two men accused of robbing a Randallstown woman in her apartment and then fatally shooting her outside after she tumbled off her balcony. Shawn E. Gardner, 26, of Chase and Aaron D. Holly, 19, of Catonsville are facing murder, armed robbery and handgun charges in the June 7, 2002, death of Tanya Jones-Spence, 28 - a killing that prosecutors and witnesses said was the unintended result of a plan to rob and kill her husband.

Baltimore prosecutors often complain that city jurors are unduly influenced by TV crime dramas. They call it the "CSI Effect," a reference to the popular television show where fingerprints, bullet fragments, gunshot residue, bite marks and other forensic evidence almost always match a suspect to a crime. That's not the way it is in real life, though plenty of criminal cases have been decided on just that kind of evidence. Now, prosecutors in Maryland and across the nation will have to contend with a judgment of forensic science more troubling and problematic for the criminal justice system than any prime-time soap.

A Howard County teenager accused in the shooting of a 4-year-old Columbia boy as he colored behind his family's living room couch two weeks ago was being held at the Howard County Detention Center yesterday on charges of first- and second-degree attempted murder and assault and of reckless endangerment. A judge denied bail yesterday to Tion Jamaar Bell, 18, of the 8800 block of Tamar Drive in Columbia, who surrendered Wednesday evening in the wounding Jan. 20 of Fahad Islam, a pre-kindergartner at Phelps Luck Elementary.

The state's highest court erased Friday the first-degree murder conviction and life sentence of a Baltimore woman accused in the 2007 fatal shooting of her boyfriend, ruling that city police violated her constitutional rights. Investigators should have advised Juanita Marie Robinson, now 31, of her Miranda rights — the well-known warnings that begin with, "You have the right to remain silent" — before her second and third statements about the killing of Andre McBride, the justices decided.

NATIONAL Bush taps scientist for EPA post President Bush turned to a career scientist yesterday to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and push changes Bush wants in air-pollution and clean water programs. Bush nominated Stephen L. Johnson, a biologist and pathologist by training, to become the first person in the agency's 35-year history to rise from within its ranks to the top job of administrator. [Page 3a] Gene therapy recommendations Two gene therapy trials should be allowed to resume as a last recourse for the patients, an FDA advisory panel recommended yesterday.