Judge

A cabal of corrupt corrections officers and members of the Black Guerrilla Family gang enjoyed nearly free rein inside the Baltimore City Detention Center, federal authorities allege, smuggling drugs and cellphones into the jail and having sexual relationships that left four guards pregnant. An indictment unsealed Tuesday names 25 people - including 13 women working as corrections officers - who face racketeering and drug charges. Twenty of the accused also face money-laundering charges.

Anne Arundel County's Circuit Court judges this week began the process of selecting a new state's attorney to replace Frank R. Weathersbee, who is retiring to accept a gubernatorial appointment to the state Parole Commission. But as the application process opened, Anne Arundel Republicans leveled criticism at Weathersbee, alleging that he's "interfering" in the judges' choice by supporting one of his deputies to take over. "The State's Attorney's efforts to skirt not only the democratic process, but also a fair appointment process, are nothing but 'inside baseball' politics at their worst," said Alan Rzepkowski, chairman of the Republican State Central Committee of Anne Arundel County, in email remarks.

A 48-year-old Dundalk man was sentenced to 40 years in prison yesterday for committing sex acts with a 13-year-old boy whom he enticed with gifts, food and alcohol. Robert Paul Layton, 48, is to serve his sentence concurrently with a 25-year sentence handed down Thursday by a federal judge for sex offenses that he committed against two other teenage boys, Baltimore County Circuit Judge Dana M. Levitz said. Levitz said that he sentenced Layton, a registered sexual offender, to the maximum prison time not only to punish him but to prevent him from having future contact with boys.

An Annapolis man who admitted sending a threatening letter from his prison cell to an Anne Arundel County judge who'd sentenced him to serve 10 years for armed robbery had a year and a day added onto his sentence Friday. "I will send a firebomb into your workplace and destroy you if you become more resistant," said the letter that Richard Glenn Parker Jr., 26, acknowledged sending to Circuit Court Judge Paul A. Hackner after Hackner sentenced him in 2010. The letter was signed Jesus Christ, according to Anne Arundel prosecutors.

The state's second-highest court has erased the conviction of an Annapolis man who was found guilty last year of killing a man over a car. The Court of Special Appeals said Friday that John Thomas Logan III was unfairly convicted because the jury heard an Annapolis detective recount her interrogation of Logan. The judges said the questioning could have left the jury with the impression that Logan refused to give his account of the fatal shooting because he was guilty. Charged with first-degree murder, Logan, 22, of the Eastport Terrace community, was convicted in November of second-degree murder and handgun violations in the Jan. 22, 1999, death of Wayne Dwight Addison, 21, who lived nearby.

After speaking privately with homicide detectives investigating the death of the girlfriend of a man charged with dealing heroin, a judge ordered that the man be released to a Baltimore halfway house while awaiting trial on federal drug charges. But federal prosecutors immediately appealed the ruling, effectively blocking the release of Jermarl A. Jones before a U.S. district judge conducts another hearing next week. The decision came at the end of a detention hearing during which a deputy U.S. marshal detailed his nearly seven-month search for Jones and the ways he believed Jones and his girlfriend attempted to evade authorities hunting for him. Jones, 31, of Hyattsville was arrested last month on a year-old federal indictment that charged him with conspiring to sell heroin.

WHEN ELBERT Tuttle arrived in Atlanta in the 1920s to begin his legal career, his neighbors no doubt speculated in whispered tones that he must be one of those "Reconstruction Republicans" who had come to meddle in the affairs of the South. Little did they -- or he himself, for that matter -- know just how right they were.Elbert Parr Tuttle, who died 10 days ago, sound of mind to the very end of his 98 years, exemplified that vanishing species known as "the Eisenhower judge" -- the federal magistrates who assumed the thankless task of reshaping the social landscape of the South for all time.

A bankruptcy judge this morning approved the sale of Rosecroft Raceway for later this month. The approval means that potential buyers can try to outbid Baltimore Orioles owner and lawyer Peter G. Angelos, who is the "stalking horse," or lead bidder, in the auction set for Jan. 28. Angelos agreed to buy the Prince George's County harness track for $9 million in cash, plus $5 million if a referendum to expand gambling is approved and slots are...

Surrounded by dozens of judges, fellow lawyers, relatives and admirers in a packed courtroom in Towson, John J. Nagle III was sworn in Tuesday as a Baltimore County Circuit judge. "Above all, I will be fair and just," promised Nagle, whose appointment forced him to end his longtime partnership in a Towson law firm and who several times has been voted one of Maryland's top attorneys by his peers. As he concluded his remarks, Nagle received a standing ovation. Even with three decades of experience litigating all manner of cases and rising to the upper reaches of his profession, Nagle admitted to a mild case of nerves with the approach of his ascension to the bench, and seemed relieved when the long ceremony drew to a close.

A Baltimore County judge was reassigned Wednesday after he presided over the marriage between a man being prosecuted for domestic violence and the alleged victim - a marriage that led to the man's acquittal. Baltimore County District Judge G. Darrell Russell Jr. took the unusual step last week of allowing the defendant to leave court to obtain a marriage license and married the couple later in his chambers. About 20 minutes later, his new wife invoked marital privilege so she would not be required to testify against her husband.

The Social Security Disability Insurance system is supposed to provide a financial safety net for workers and their families in the event that a serious medical impairment prevents them from working ("Judges sue Social Security over 'quotas' on disability decisions" April 29). But it's really a parachute that often fails to open in time, sending the individual into a financial free fall with years of uncertainty over whether or not they are going to hit the ground - and it only opens for about a third of applicants.

A federal judge has ordered a West Pratt Street clinic and its former chief executive to repay more than 60 current and former employees nearly $50,000 that the private company never deposited into their retirement accounts as required. U.S. District Judge William D. Quarles Jr. also awarded $27,800 in attorneys' fees to lawyer Richard Neuworth and colleagues who represented the plaintiffs. The March 22 order marked the latest chapter in the troubled recent history of Baltimore Behavioral Health Inc., once a successful mental health clinic that ranked among the city's largest providers of drug treatment services.

Four judges and one lawyer have applied for the Court of Appeals seat that will become vacant July 6 when Chief Judge Robert M. Bell reaches the mandatory retirement age of 70. The applicants for the judgeship on the state's highest court are Judges Stuart Ross Berger, Albert Joseph Matricciani Jr. and Shirley Marie Watts, all sitting on the Court of Special Appeals; Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge W. Michel Pierson; and Baltimore attorney Mary...

Administrative law judges who evaluate disability claims for the Social Security Administration want a federal court to ease a workload that they say makes errors more likely - the latest in a series of challenges confronting the Woodlawn-based agency. In a federal lawsuit filed this month, 1,400 judges said the agency's expectation that they decide as many as 700 claims per year is causing them to rush evaluations and possibly approve claims that should be denied, at a potential cost of millions of taxpayer dollars.

An Anne Arundel County judge handed the Key School a victory Tuesday, allowing the 55-year-old Annapolis private school to go ahead with plans to turn the 70-acre Annapolis Golf Club into an outdoor campus for athletics. A request by residents of the surrounding Annapolis Roads community to block the proposed landscape of playing fields, tennis courts, parking lot and a maintenance facility was turned down by Circuit Judge Paul G. Goetzke. An appeal, however, is possible. "This is an important day for us," said Marcella Yedid, head of the school, noting that the school has been working with Anne Arundel County on the site plan.

The 19-year-old Harford County man with developmental disabilities who is accused of killing his 2-month-old niece was ordered Monday to continue being held without bail. Colin Christopher Wolf, of the 2000 block of Bay Meadows Court in Forest Hill, is facing first degree murder charges after he allegedly struck the child, who had been left in his care, in the face Thursday night and she later died, according to the Harford County Sheriff's Office. After an earlier bail review hearing Friday where Harford County District Court Judge Mimi Cooper questioned Wolf's competency, District Court Judge Victor Butanis ordered Wolf to continue being held without bail Monday and made no mention of any competency concerns.

In choosing Samuel A. Alito Jr. to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, President Bush seems to have appeased those hard-line conservatives within his political base who vigorously protested Harriet Miers, the White House counsel and personal friend who withdrew her nomination for the same seat last week. But the new nomination is generating similar questions of qualifications, competence and ideology, only from the other side. Some Democrats are raising red flags - and even the possibility of a filibuster - because they wonder whether Judge Alito is so far to the right that he's not qualified to sit on the High Court.

  Gov. Martin O'Malley has appointed Brian David Green to the district court for Carroll County. Green has served as attorney with the Office of the Public Defender in Carroll County for the past 23 years, according to a press release from the governor's office. An adjunct professor for the Criminal Practice Clinic at the University of Baltimore School of Law, Green has also worked for the Shemer Bar Review since 1999, according to the release. He began his legal career as an assistant state's attorney in Baltimore City from 1987-1990.

Maryland's highest-ranking judge, Robert M. Bell, likes that his courthouse is dedicated to his predecessor, pointing out that the letters etching Robert C. Murphy's name on the building's exterior are filled in gold paint to make sure even nighttime drivers can see it. As Bell approaches retirement, mandatory when he turns 70 in July, he scoffs at the notion that his name might someday grace a building as well. But then, his name is forever etched in legal history by virtue of the Supreme Court case Bell v. Maryland.

July 6, 1943 Robert Mack Bell born in Rocky Mount, N.C.; family moves to Baltimore about 11/2 years later. June 17, 1960 Bell and 11 students try to get seated at Hooper's Restaurant at Charles and Fayette streets in Baltimore. A hostess says the restaurant policy is not to "serve Negroes," and they sit down nonetheless, prompting a call to police that leads to their arrest and conviction for trespassing. Case becomes known as Bell v. Maryland because Bell's name came first alphabetically.