Jessamy

A gun a month. That's the legal limit for handgun purchases in Maryland: a dozen a year. And yet, it still sounds like too many. Having the freedom to buy as many rifles as you want or as many as 12 handguns a year isn't about freedom of choice. It's about the freedom of a few at the potential expense of far too many. Maryland is one of only three states that restrict handgun ownership. But there is no limit on the rifles or so-called long guns that a person can own here, nor is there a requirement to report a stolen weapon to police.

Patricia C. Jessamy, Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy started her legal career in 1974 in Cleveland, Miss., and practiced law in Michigan and Missouri before moving to another "M" state - Maryland - in 1985. In 1995, the Baltimore Circuit Court appointed her the first woman to serve as Baltimore City state's attorney. She successfully ran for re-election in 1998, 2002 and 2006. But while she has been the city's top prosecutor for more than a decade, she also has a soft side, as you can see from her list of must-have items.

A city grand jury that regularly inspects jails will be asked to review a human rights group's report that sharply criticized conditions for youths confined in Baltimore City Detention Center.Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy said she will recommend that the report by New York-based Human Rights Watch be reviewed by a new city grand jury to be impaneled in January.She disclosed those plans in a Nov. 16 letter to Jonathan M. Smith, executive director of Public Justice Center, a Baltimore advocacy group that provides legal services to the poor.

ClarificationAn article in yesterday's editions of The Sun reported that Sgt. Stephen R. Pagotto was the only city police officer convicted of a fatal shooting in the line of duty. The article did not note that Pagotto's conviction was overturned by the Court of Special Appeals, the state's second-highest court. The state is appealing that ruling to the Court of Appeals, which has not heard arguments.Maryland's black legislative caucus demanded yesterday that State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy quickly conclude her investigation into the death of Larry Hubbard Jr. and then send the case to a grand jury for a possible criminal indictment.

Patricia Jessamy's mouth has taken her a long way, from the Mississippi cotton fields to the job of Baltimore's chief law enforcement officer.She started talking in sentences at 10 months old. "My mouth is going to make my living," she once told a teacher trying to hush her in class.In recent months her mouth has gotten her into trouble. As suspects in violent crimes were being set free because of trial delays, Baltimore cried out for a crime-busting prosecutor. Instead, it got a state's attorney defending her office, complaining about lack of money, losing her cool.

A skeptical group of East Baltimore Latino residents demanded last night that a former city police officer be swiftly arrested and charged for allegedly stopping two Hispanic men and stealing their money."

Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy said yesterday that she will not run for mayor.Jessamy ended two months of speculation over whether she would join the seven-candidate Democratic field trying to succeed departing Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke in December.The 50-year-old prosecutor, who won re-election to a four-year term last year unopposed, said fighting crime is more important than seeking higher office."The state's attorney's office is underfunded and understaffed," Jessamy said in announcing her decision.

Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy broke her public silence and defended her office yesterday, saying that her prosecutors perform their work professionally despite having insufficient support staff.In the past seven weeks, Jessamy refused numerous requests by The Sun for an interview about evidence problems that have led to a wrongful conviction, trial delays and freedom for criminal suspects.But yesterday, The Sun received a letter to the editor from Jessamy, published in today's editions.

When Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy went before a powerful judicial panel in Annapolis last week, she tried to persuade the legislators that her office strictly follows the law requiring prosecutors to disclose evidence to criminal defendants.Any problems, she suggested, including a wrongful first-degree murder conviction and the dismissals of serious criminal cases, are isolated episodes, not part of a pattern at the state's attorney's office.The wrongful conviction and the dismissals amounted to a "tiny problem," she said.

Portraying a growing frustration with Baltimore's clogged court system, the City Council called on State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy last night to clear crowded dockets by weeding out weak cases and focusing on serious charges.By unanimous vote, the 19-member council passed a resolution that urges Jessamy to take from police officers the responsibility for filing charges against suspects.Prosecutors would review the arrests and decide which charges they could prove in court. Council members said such a move would help the courts dispose of cases more quickly.

Baltimore State's Attorney Pat Jessamy urged her counterparts from around the country to soak up the city's charms while in town last week for a meeting of the National District Attorneys Association. Good thing DAs aren't fainthearted conventioneers. During a lovely waterfront reception at McCormick & Schmick's on Thursday night, Jessamy encouraged the prosecutors to stroll back to their hotels along the Inner Harbor's brick promenade. Some of them took her up on the idea - and came across a body floating in the water.

City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake might be Baltimore's mayor-in-waiting, but there was no waiting yesterday. At 6:49 a.m. yesterday, her office issued an e-mail titled, "Council President Declares Victory in 9/11 'Run to Remember' Challenge." The 5K road race began 11 minutes later. The news release was embargoed until 7 a.m., but still! Don't runners usually cross the finish line before claiming victory? "I learned from working on campaigns that you declare victory as early as possible," said Rawlings-Blake spokesman Ryan O'Doherty.

If one were to grade the Baltimore state's attorney's office on conviction rates and public relations skills, it would get maybe an F. But if one were to grade State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy and her sidekick spokeswoman Margaret T. Burns on the fine art of political stonewalling - that is, the outright refusal to answer inconvenient questions - the grade would have to be an A+. Most of us remember the fuss kicked up by statements Ms. Burns made...

Witness intimidation in Baltimore had become such a threat to prosecuting criminals that State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy led a campaign to better protect witnesses. She has personally delivered copies of the bootleg video Stop Snitchin' to state lawmakers to emphasize the seriousness of the problem. Mrs. Jessamy has had to rely on federal prosecutors to go after some accused murderers and accomplices whom city juries just won't convict. Increasingly, her prosecutors have faced tough odds in trying to convict criminals.

Jury study targets very real problem According to reporter Julie Bykowicz's disturbing article on the findings of the Abell Foundation's jury study, Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy attacked the study as "divisive" and demanded that its recommendations be changed ("Jury study raises hackles in city," Aug. 18). The Abell Foundation report found that in the three Maryland counties it studied, 45 percent of defendants in jury trials were convicted and 27 percent were acquitted.

Having gratefully escaped being seated on a Baltimore City jury despite multiple summonses for duty, I would have to agree with what Groucho Marx said in a different context: He wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have him as a member. City juries have a less than enviable reputation. You've heard the complaints no doubt, or grumbled a few yourself: Oh, they won't convict anyone. They're made up largely of blacks, and they don't want to send another brother to prison. It's jury nullification, doncha know?

The state's top public defender is calling on Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy to review closed homicide cases handled by one of her former prosecutors after it was discovered that evidence favorable to the defense was withheld or not turned over in two murder cases in 2001. State Public Defender Nancy S. Forster said that she also has asked lawyers on her staff to search for any of Cassandra Costley's cases that are on appeal or before a judge for "post-conviction relief" - a last-ditch effort by defendants to have guilty findings overturned.

About 60 people called for State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy to fire her spokeswoman in a protest yesterday outside Baltimore Circuit Court. The noon rally on Calvert Street was led by Anna Sowers, 28, the widow of robbery victim Zach Sowers, who died from the attack this year after spending 10 months in a coma. In May, Jessamy's spokeswoman downplayed the severity of Sowers' injuries in an interview with a reporter for a legal publication, saying at one point that Sowers looked like a "sleeping baby" at the hospital.

With supporters holding signs that read "No More Lies," the widow of a man who died after spending months in a beating-induced coma urged onlookers at the Baltimore Farmers' Market to join her movement to oust State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy's spokeswoman. The effort has been growing since late May, when Margaret Burns was quoted in a legal publication as questioning the severity of 28-year-old Zach Sowers' injuries. His wife, Anna, has been dissatisfied with the response from Burns and Jessamy's office, and a rally is planned for Thursday at noon in front of the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse.

A member of the City Council has called on State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy to fire her spokeswoman over comments she made about Zachary Sowers, a 28-year-old man who was severely beaten last year. Councilman James B. Kraft, who represents the district where Sowers lived, said the comments by the spokeswoman, Margaret T. Burns, were outrageous and that "Ms. Burns must go." In a May 28 article in a local legal magazine, Burns questioned whether the injuries Sowers suffered near his Patterson Park home were the result of a "vicious beating" and said he looked like a "sleeping baby" at the hospital.