Jail Time

Four days before the birth of the Salisbury girl he would be accused of kidnapping from her bedroom and killing, Thomas J. Leggs Jr. pleaded guilty to his first sex offense. Over the next 11 years, as Sarah Haley Foxwell grew into a bright, lively middle school student, Leggs was charged with five other crimes against girls and young women, including raping a teenager on a Delaware boardwalk and grabbing a 13-year-old the same day his newborn child was brought home from the hospital.

Dan Rodricks has once again visited the topic of national public service for young Americans, and once again he proposes to sacrifice their freedom. The headline of his column reads, "Young Americans will serve -- if we ask" (Jan. 31). But in the text, Mr. Rodricks reveals his proposal for two years of national public service: "For every American once he or she reaches the age of 18, with deferment optional until the age of 21, when service becomes mandatory." Is Mr. Rodricks incapable of distinguishing "ask" from "mandatory"?

It was a day packed with official events for Mayor Sheila Dixon: approving millions of dollars in contracts at a Board of Estimates meeting, holding a news conference to urge parents to vaccinate their children against swine flu, pushing health care reform at a town hall meeting, surprising a Baltimore school with a visit, even playing bingo at a senior center that she had fought to keep open. Throughout the day, she assumed multiple roles, from chief executive to mayor-as-mother to champion of communities.

They worked at a Walmart in Laurel, Bibi Karpaiya in customer service and Mary Hummel in the garden section, often walking across busy Route 198 together to reach the store. As they crossed on Feb. 12, a car struck them, killing Karpaiya. On Friday, the driver, Patricia Ann Rowland, 48, was convicted of reckless driving, a traffic violation, saying that the sun's glare was so strong that she did not see that the traffic light on Route 198 at Russett Green East had turned red. The Anne Arundel County jury found her not guilty of the criminal charge of automobile manslaughter, in a case that is reigniting calls for legislation to address what prosecutors say is a gap in the law. "If you are negligent and somebody dies, there should be possible jail time," said Anne Arundel County Deputy State's Attorney William Roessler, who prosecuted the case against Rowland.

Even a gun bust made by Baltimore's top cop can't buy jail time. Two brothers detained by Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III on New Year's Eve after he chased down men firing shotgun blasts into the night accepted plea deals Monday that will not require them to serve jail time. The arrests were dramatic, an example of Bealefeld personally carrying out his oft-reiterated strategy of going after "bad guys with guns." The commissioner and a member of his executive protection team pursued the suspects through an alley and into a rowhouse, and Bealefeld held one of them at gunpoint as a crush of officers converged to back him up. But the disposition in court eight months later highlights the city's continued challenges in translating such arrests into meaningful convictions.

Less than a year ago, a beautiful and wonderful citizen by all accounts, Aysha Ring, was viciously murdered by David Briggs - stabbed to death while standing in line at a convenience store. The perpetrator has been found not criminally responsible and is committed to the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center in Jessup. He will serve no jail time and will be re-evaluated in a year for possible release, although prosecutor S. Ann Brobst told this writer that her office will ensure that does not occur.

I talk to a lot of guys who just came home from prison - within the last week, the last month or the last year. They're looking for a job. They call here almost every day because someone - maybe a counselor at a drug treatment center, or a probation officer or cop or girlfriend - will tell them I have a magic list of Baltimore-area companies that have a record of hiring ex-offenders. The list is a few years old now. It's hardly magic. Still, when requested, I mail it to a guy looking for work.

Jason Bukovsky was a 32-year-old Columbia resident, owner of a 2000 Jeep Wrangler and, one Saturday afternoon last December, just before Christmas, so incredibly drunk he is lucky to be alive. Still, Bukovsky drove his Wrangler south on Aviation Boulevard in Glen Burnie, drifted off to the right, struck a guardrail, cut back sharply and slammed into a Honda Accord, killing its driver, 53-year-old Soon Youn Livingston. About an hour after the accident, Bukovsky's blood-alcohol level registered 0.39 percent, nearly five times what the state considers drunk.

In several speeches, Sen. Barack Obama has used an easy, if imprecise, formulation to express his despair over the high incarceration rate of young black men. "I don't want to wake up four years from now and discover that we still have more young black men in prison than in college," he said at a rally last year, repeating, more or less, a line used frequently by critics of the criminal justice system. But it's not accurate. There are far more young black men in college (about 530,000, ages 18 to 24)

An Anne Arundel County man who videotaped himself and his ex-wife in a sex act without her consent was spared jail time yesterday. William A. Hendry IV, 38, of Edgewater pleaded guilty to one count of illegal wiretapping before Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge William C. Mulford II, who sentenced him to a six-month suspended sentence, with one year of supervised probation. Hendry pleaded not guilty in January to two counts of illegal wiretapping and was scheduled to go to trial next week.